<story><title>Meta rediscovers the cubicle</title><url>https://calnewport.com/meta-rediscovers-the-cubicle/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>imiric</author><text>Come on, realistically, no company can afford private offices for all their workforce. Even for roles that do require complete concentration like programming, it&amp;#x27;s not feasible to expect even Big Tech companies to foot the bill. The infrastructure cost alone would be astronomical. Such buildings just don&amp;#x27;t scale, and the setup couldn&amp;#x27;t keep up with the growth rate. So at best, they can have private offices for tech leads, managers and senior staff, but this undeniably goes against the &amp;quot;flat&amp;quot; organizational structure some companies like to virtue signal.&lt;p&gt;What can be much more manageable is to have comfortable cubicles for everyone (not the cramped desks with dividers, which is what probably gave cubicles the bad rep), and also have many small and large meeting rooms where people can congregate and collaborate in. This has the benefit of defaulting to semi-private workspaces which can easily scale, and moves the noisy collaborative areas to closed rooms, so that they don&amp;#x27;t bother anyone else. The smaller rooms could even serve as rotating private offices, if needed, that anyone can book for a limited period of time.&lt;p&gt;But the open floor office only has practical drawbacks, and definitely has to go. It only got popular because it&amp;#x27;s really the cheapest option for companies; just place some desks, chairs and monitors in a huge space, and sell it as &amp;quot;collaborative&amp;quot;. But if they really want to entice people to come back to the office, they need to invest in better working conditions.</text></item><item><author>mcculley</author><text>&amp;gt; personal space with a door, which most companies can&amp;#x27;t afford&lt;p&gt;A company that cannot afford proper offices is probably not creating much value. Big tech companies can afford offices. They choose to allocate capital differently.&lt;p&gt;When I ran a consultancy, I spent a lot of rent of making sure my employees had both proper offices where they could think and common areas where they could collaborate. Doing otherwise is foolish.</text></item><item><author>imiric</author><text>I was always a fan of cubicles, and never got the FAANG fascination with open plan workspaces, that the entire industry seems to have adopted. As the article says, the noise and distraction were always an issue. Even if you used headphones, as most people did most of the time, there were still visual distractions in your peripheral vision. It was a nightmare for productivity, and I&amp;#x27;m surprised that the false narrative of how they promote collaboration stuck around this long.&lt;p&gt;Cubicles were great, especially if you got one near a window. You had the outside view; desks were angular in large cubicles so you had ample space for multiple monitors; the barriers provided just enough visual and noise isolation, while you could always prop up and chat with your neighbors; the barriers also served as tackboards, and people decorated their spaces in unique ways. Et cetera.&lt;p&gt;I still don&amp;#x27;t want to go back to working in an office, even if I had a personal space with a door, which most companies can&amp;#x27;t afford, but they should bring back the cubicle. It will probably be renamed and marketed as something else, but kudos to Meta for taking the lead.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mcculley</author><text>&amp;gt; no company can afford private offices for all their workforce&lt;p&gt;Go visit any good law firm or CPA firm.&lt;p&gt;I benefit from my equity holdings in tech companies. They are choosing to give that money to me in valuation instead of building out proper offices.</text></comment>
<story><title>Meta rediscovers the cubicle</title><url>https://calnewport.com/meta-rediscovers-the-cubicle/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>imiric</author><text>Come on, realistically, no company can afford private offices for all their workforce. Even for roles that do require complete concentration like programming, it&amp;#x27;s not feasible to expect even Big Tech companies to foot the bill. The infrastructure cost alone would be astronomical. Such buildings just don&amp;#x27;t scale, and the setup couldn&amp;#x27;t keep up with the growth rate. So at best, they can have private offices for tech leads, managers and senior staff, but this undeniably goes against the &amp;quot;flat&amp;quot; organizational structure some companies like to virtue signal.&lt;p&gt;What can be much more manageable is to have comfortable cubicles for everyone (not the cramped desks with dividers, which is what probably gave cubicles the bad rep), and also have many small and large meeting rooms where people can congregate and collaborate in. This has the benefit of defaulting to semi-private workspaces which can easily scale, and moves the noisy collaborative areas to closed rooms, so that they don&amp;#x27;t bother anyone else. The smaller rooms could even serve as rotating private offices, if needed, that anyone can book for a limited period of time.&lt;p&gt;But the open floor office only has practical drawbacks, and definitely has to go. It only got popular because it&amp;#x27;s really the cheapest option for companies; just place some desks, chairs and monitors in a huge space, and sell it as &amp;quot;collaborative&amp;quot;. But if they really want to entice people to come back to the office, they need to invest in better working conditions.</text></item><item><author>mcculley</author><text>&amp;gt; personal space with a door, which most companies can&amp;#x27;t afford&lt;p&gt;A company that cannot afford proper offices is probably not creating much value. Big tech companies can afford offices. They choose to allocate capital differently.&lt;p&gt;When I ran a consultancy, I spent a lot of rent of making sure my employees had both proper offices where they could think and common areas where they could collaborate. Doing otherwise is foolish.</text></item><item><author>imiric</author><text>I was always a fan of cubicles, and never got the FAANG fascination with open plan workspaces, that the entire industry seems to have adopted. As the article says, the noise and distraction were always an issue. Even if you used headphones, as most people did most of the time, there were still visual distractions in your peripheral vision. It was a nightmare for productivity, and I&amp;#x27;m surprised that the false narrative of how they promote collaboration stuck around this long.&lt;p&gt;Cubicles were great, especially if you got one near a window. You had the outside view; desks were angular in large cubicles so you had ample space for multiple monitors; the barriers provided just enough visual and noise isolation, while you could always prop up and chat with your neighbors; the barriers also served as tackboards, and people decorated their spaces in unique ways. Et cetera.&lt;p&gt;I still don&amp;#x27;t want to go back to working in an office, even if I had a personal space with a door, which most companies can&amp;#x27;t afford, but they should bring back the cubicle. It will probably be renamed and marketed as something else, but kudos to Meta for taking the lead.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>shalmanese</author><text>Facebook&amp;#x27;s open plan set up didn&amp;#x27;t come cheap. A Facebook insider once gave me a ballpark figure of how much their giant aircraft hanger cost and I recall it being 3x the price per square foot of private office space which means about 1 - 1.5x the price per employee.</text></comment>