Escape

Jesus

Bullpens / Open floor plans.

ditty

A lot of corporate environments are forcing hoteling spaces on their staffs so now you don't even get your cube you have to share it with other randos you work with, can't decorate it, and have to share keyboards and mice!

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Yeah I thought of this right after I posted this. I still think it holds for certain professions though. Like engineers had offices. Now not so much.

Jesus

It kind of depends on the job and the size of the company. My father was an engineer and spent time in offices and open floors full of drawing tables. The small companies could accommodate offices, but that was too hard to pull off with larger companies.

I remember some old offices buildings at MS where they tried to give everyone a little baby office, and it was actually pretty depressing and weird.

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...where they non-violently threaten your family to keep you there.

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The cubicles with low or no walls, so you can watch your coworkers eat and pick their nose are scarier.

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This scenario has already inspired a lot of high-quality entertainment (i.e. Severance and the Stanley Parable).

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The best offices I’ve worked at did cubicles. I don’t understand why people don’t like the isolation, maybe it’s about how much they enjoy working by themselves.

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I don’t think it’s the isolation, but the endless beige monotony.

I didn’t mind my cubefarm when I was immersed in the cube, but it was hella depressing in the morning coming into that environment. Made me feel like a worn cog in the machine. Lunch, standing up to a beige hellscape, sucked all my creativity (which wasn’t great, as a designer).

Open floor plan, when that became the alternative, was worse, though.

Working from home is ideal. I haven’t been able to work for a few years, so maybe I’m out of touch, but I can’t fathom why anyone is against working from home, especially in software dev. It’s the best of all worlds – no office space fees, and most of us will work extra hours in our cost environment.

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There is a lot about working where they just don't trust employees and want to watch them.

They can try to make metrics to varying degrees of success, but ultimately they live in fear of those metrics being gamed.