<story><title>Employers are rethinking open-plan office design</title><url>https://www.citylab.com/life/2020/05/open-office-design-coronavirus-risk-safe-workplace-health/611299/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hpoe</author><text>So one thing that bothers me about this is they talk about not going back to cubicles and creating transparent dividers. I do not like this not one bit, I enjoy the privacy and distraction blocking of a cubicle, an office would be optimal but a cubicle is preferable to the open office hellscape that was looming before Corona stopped it.&lt;p&gt;But going from open office to plexiglass dividers seems to be far worse than a cubicle in every conceivable way.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>baron_harkonnen</author><text>Open offices are, and have always been about, control. Not about productivity, but exclusively about control (well maybe with a touch of thrift thrown in there).&lt;p&gt;We say this all the time but act as if it&amp;#x27;s some secret, or just a cynical remark, but it&amp;#x27;s not either of these. As a general rule your boss likes that you can feel their perpetual gaze as you work, even if in practice it means you are working less.&lt;p&gt;Because of course you aren&amp;#x27;t working all the time, and of course you are not 100% being productive. Everyone knows this. It is not a secret that even the most productive engineer spends a huge amount of office time doing nothing.&lt;p&gt;No worker (as I general rule, I know there are exceptions) prefers open offices to either cubicles or real offices (I wonder how many HN have ever had these?). Nobody feels that they work their best when someone is watching them. Everyone knows that part of working in an open office is figuring out how to create the illusion that you are working.&lt;p&gt;The only reason to have an open office is because the people making the decision for how the office should be, and the people reporting to them, do in fact like to watch you work, because they like the control that they feel when they do this.&lt;p&gt;Please let&amp;#x27;s stop pretending that we don&amp;#x27;t all understand exactly what open offices are about.</text></comment>
<story><title>Employers are rethinking open-plan office design</title><url>https://www.citylab.com/life/2020/05/open-office-design-coronavirus-risk-safe-workplace-health/611299/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hpoe</author><text>So one thing that bothers me about this is they talk about not going back to cubicles and creating transparent dividers. I do not like this not one bit, I enjoy the privacy and distraction blocking of a cubicle, an office would be optimal but a cubicle is preferable to the open office hellscape that was looming before Corona stopped it.&lt;p&gt;But going from open office to plexiglass dividers seems to be far worse than a cubicle in every conceivable way.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>onemoresoop</author><text>Yeah, the transparent modern panopticon. They think that when people feel watched produce more. Im in no way more productive this way. I have to make a hard effort to zone out into coding, and this effort is consuming a lot of energy in itself. I think its our time to bargain and not allow this to happen when we all go back to work. I hope for partial or full time work from home setup. The value extraction machine should keep that in mind</text></comment>