That’s a great example - makes me wonder who actually liked it in the first place to sell it - my boss, his boss and basically everyone I knew hated open space. Where did this scourge originate?
It’s just much cheaper, and often you don’t even need one seat per worker. So the gamble is that “sure, people hate it, but we save so much money by making the office shittier that we can afford a slight dump in productivity per worker”.
It’s not that they actually think it’s good - that’s just something they pretend so that they don’t have to tell the truth. The truth is that they made a calculation and concluded that having happy employees just wasn’t worth it.
I think companies tend to underestimate the value of happy employees.
At the time, open office space was supposed to create a better environment for collaboration and as alternative to the dreaded cubicles.
This was also in time where people would send physical paperwork to each other through an internal mail system from one cubicle to another. Like there’d be an assistant to carry paper around.
It also made the office sizes more flexible.
It might work for people who desperately need to bounce their creative ideas off each other, but for anyone else it just plain sucks.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !technology@beehaw.org
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
That’s a great example - makes me wonder who actually liked it in the first place to sell it - my boss, his boss and basically everyone I knew hated open space. Where did this scourge originate?
It’s just much cheaper, and often you don’t even need one seat per worker. So the gamble is that “sure, people hate it, but we save so much money by making the office shittier that we can afford a slight dump in productivity per worker”.
It’s not that they actually think it’s good - that’s just something they pretend so that they don’t have to tell the truth. The truth is that they made a calculation and concluded that having happy employees just wasn’t worth it.
I think companies tend to underestimate the value of happy employees.
At the time, open office space was supposed to create a better environment for collaboration and as alternative to the dreaded cubicles.
This was also in time where people would send physical paperwork to each other through an internal mail system from one cubicle to another. Like there’d be an assistant to carry paper around.
It also made the office sizes more flexible.
It might work for people who desperately need to bounce their creative ideas off each other, but for anyone else it just plain sucks.