<story><title>The collaboration curse</title><url>http://www.economist.com/news/business/21688872-fashion-making-employees-collaborate-has-gone-too-far-collaboration-curse</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tdaltonc</author><text>As I understand it though, open office is a trend. Your mechanism doesn&amp;#x27;t explain why there was ever a time without open offices. So what&amp;#x27;s changed to make office managers more penny-wise, or have there always been &amp;quot;open collaborative offices&amp;quot; just under a different name?</text></item><item><author>imgabe</author><text>The collaboration excuse is a red herring. I&amp;#x27;m sure some of the managers believe it, but it&amp;#x27;s not really the point.&lt;p&gt;Office space is leased by the square foot. $&amp;#x2F;sf&amp;#x2F; year. Building a new building is usually budgeted in terms of $&amp;#x2F;sf. (Aside from some base unavoidable costs, it more or less scales linearly with floor area in terms of square feet.)&lt;p&gt;The fewer square feet you need, the less your lease is, which immediately and directly decreases your overhead and increases your profit margin.&lt;p&gt;Open offices fit more people in fewer square feet. There&amp;#x27;s a specific dollar amount a manager can point to and say &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m saving that much money&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Maybe the productivity gains of private offices would more than offset the extra cost of needing more space, maybe not. It&amp;#x27;s not as easily quantifiable. Keep in mind that office leases are often signed for 10+ years and if you&amp;#x27;re building your own building you&amp;#x27;re stuck with it for even longer. Plus once you sign a lease you have to pay to build out the office. This can easily cost several million dollars in itself.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re a manager making this mutli-million dollar decision, are you going to go with the guaranteed overhead savings of minimizing square footage or are you going to risk millions of dollars on a vague promise of maybe increased productivity? Unless your company has the money to spare I don&amp;#x27;t see any rational person opting for the latter, much as I would rather have a private office myself.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aristus</author><text>I take it you&amp;#x27;ve never seen a newspaper &amp;quot;bullpen&amp;quot;, or a clark&amp;#x27;s office. :) It comes down to class. Many professions that were once afforded private accommodation are now being downclassed. It&amp;#x27;s also easier to scale up and down by moving what are essentially picnic tables.</text></comment>
<story><title>The collaboration curse</title><url>http://www.economist.com/news/business/21688872-fashion-making-employees-collaborate-has-gone-too-far-collaboration-curse</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tdaltonc</author><text>As I understand it though, open office is a trend. Your mechanism doesn&amp;#x27;t explain why there was ever a time without open offices. So what&amp;#x27;s changed to make office managers more penny-wise, or have there always been &amp;quot;open collaborative offices&amp;quot; just under a different name?</text></item><item><author>imgabe</author><text>The collaboration excuse is a red herring. I&amp;#x27;m sure some of the managers believe it, but it&amp;#x27;s not really the point.&lt;p&gt;Office space is leased by the square foot. $&amp;#x2F;sf&amp;#x2F; year. Building a new building is usually budgeted in terms of $&amp;#x2F;sf. (Aside from some base unavoidable costs, it more or less scales linearly with floor area in terms of square feet.)&lt;p&gt;The fewer square feet you need, the less your lease is, which immediately and directly decreases your overhead and increases your profit margin.&lt;p&gt;Open offices fit more people in fewer square feet. There&amp;#x27;s a specific dollar amount a manager can point to and say &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m saving that much money&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Maybe the productivity gains of private offices would more than offset the extra cost of needing more space, maybe not. It&amp;#x27;s not as easily quantifiable. Keep in mind that office leases are often signed for 10+ years and if you&amp;#x27;re building your own building you&amp;#x27;re stuck with it for even longer. Plus once you sign a lease you have to pay to build out the office. This can easily cost several million dollars in itself.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re a manager making this mutli-million dollar decision, are you going to go with the guaranteed overhead savings of minimizing square footage or are you going to risk millions of dollars on a vague promise of maybe increased productivity? Unless your company has the money to spare I don&amp;#x27;t see any rational person opting for the latter, much as I would rather have a private office myself.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mc32</author><text>As i understand it, open offices were the norm.  I knew paralegals who worked in open offices before it hit tech offices.  It also used to be that way in most offices before cubicles became commonplace (watch movies from the 40s or 50s which have offices as backdrops)&lt;p&gt;I think what happened is that as the work done in offices gained more value people who worked in offices were convinced that having your own space was more prestigious (by furniture companies, office space companies, etc.) so it became normal to move away from shared cattle pens.&lt;p&gt;Now shared space is being sold as collaborative so as to insinuate anyone not on board with the concept must be an uncollaborative sort of fellow.&lt;p&gt;I recall working in a high priced tower a place which made money, some people got proper offices, but most people got three foot beautiful mahogany desks side by side.  Expensive desks but floor space was even more expensive.</text></comment>