What amazes me about this phenomenon and so many others is just how long the executive class are willing to stick with a counterproductive trend. RTO, open offices, development methodologies that disempower the developers, devops without people who understand ops, databases without dbas, Business Intelligence in basically every flavor. The unoriginality and lack of independent thought are striking. It’s as if they would rather fail doing the conventional thing than risk failure by doing something different.
smugglerFlynn · 8m ago
> It’s as if they would rather fail doing the conventional thing
Doing conventional thing is often expensive, requires skill, or requires organisational power to change the way things work.
Many of these counter-productive trends are the ways executives "deliver visible results" and maintain good optics after committing to something they have no means, in terms of resources, power or skill, to deliver by the book.
For example RTO is used as a short-term downsizing strategy as organisations often lack ways to monitor actual long-term impact from squeezing workers like that. BI bandaids are often applied to create visibility around certain issues (the easy part), and by extension build perception these issues are manageable, without actually solving any of them (which is the hard part).
bluGill · 17m ago
Many of those executives believe in the trend because they would like the noisy office environment. You can tell those executives because they are never in their office except for private meetings - if they are not in a private meeting they are wandering the halls looking for someone to talk to. These people don't need an office, they need a private meeting room that can be booked on demand.
There are also executives who hate open offices. You will find them in their office with the door closed, and they don't want you to knock on the door if it isn't urgent.
It is about personality. However few people are willing to admit that others are different and that it is okay.
triknomeister · 10m ago
You misunderstand their purpose. They would rather be in power in a failed company than see a company succeed without them having power.
vjvjvjvjghv · 27m ago
“ It’s as if they would rather fail doing the conventional thing than risk failure by doing something different.”
There is the old saying “nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft/IBM”. Most people, including executives, are just following the accepted wisdom with some slight variations.
happymellon · 18m ago
> executive class are willing to stick with a counterproductive trend. RTO, open offices,
What makes you think they actually care about productivity? It's pure narcissistic traits, they want to be able to easily waltz in and watch their wage slaves.
> development methodologies that disempower the developers, devops without people who understand ops, databases without dbas, Business Intelligence in basically every flavor.
Again, it's control. Us, with our MBAs will make far more than you, even though we contribute less than an LLM
You, with your decades of learning that we've demanded, are expendable and honestly we don't need anyone with skill doing your job.
> It’s as if they would rather fail doing the conventional thing than risk failure by doing something different.
The business just wasn't ready for their radical idea. See Adam Neumann. The difference between you and them, is that you are looking at this as work. A way to make money.
For most of these folks, they already have money. This is a game, a gamble, a way to pass the time, and to gain influence. If the company fails it's not good, but it's not the end of the world. They don't have to work and when they are bored then they can always start a new business.
leeter · 33m ago
> devops without people who understand ops
Or development... I'm SecDevOps and I consider the time I've spent doing all three to be critical to me being able to do my job. I still do development from time to time to keep those skills sharp to. But, I can't count the number of "DevOps" that I've met that had only done Ops or Development... not both and neither well.
> databases without dbas
What's another field on the schema that is required but can't be marked required because that would break code? Implicit knowledge that's not transferred and extremely fragile never broke anything in production... right!? /s
nimbius · 7m ago
anecdotal experience with the "open" office.
When i was apprenticing long ago on my way to master mechanic, I worked for a luxury dealership in the midwest. The manager was the owners son (as per tradition) and he had just graduated with a business degree. We had a good system of 3 closed office areas, one for sales, one for service, and one for management. In the managers wisdom, we should combine all 3 into an open office format.
this lasted nearly a year and was pretty similar to a nightmare-mode run in Doom. Customers eager to buy a vehicle would be immediately exposed to the masses of howling and screaming customers who couldnt fathom a $7500 suspension service as they barely made payments on their suburban assault tank. mechanics would routinely wander into the office to talk to the shop service lead, tracking all sorts of fluids onto sales floor carpets, and leaving greasy handprints on all the desks. the entire office usually smelled like burnt oil or gas (combined with the one peach air freshener the admin assistant bought.) finally management was becoming way too distracted with the heretical temptation to micromanage anything and everything. i was once pulled off the shop floor to clean carpets for 20 minutes, and another time i was tasked to restock and clean the customer lounge. 40 minutes of shop time (not cheap) to sit in the AC and munch on doritos while i watered plants and changed out the water cooler bottle.
all the while the 3 impact printers for invoices were wailing away in the center of the "open office" making casual conversation pretty challenging.
oddthink · 37m ago
Does the "standard office" even exist? I have never seen one in my working years. I don't even know what to imagine. The closest I got was a shared office in grad school in the late 90s, but after that it's been cubes at best, long slabs of desk in an open room at worst.
hcs · 2m ago
[delayed]
paulmooreparks · 23m ago
In my very first job as a software developer, in 1989 at the tender age of 19, I had my own office, with a door, which I could and would close when I needed to concentrate. It was beautiful. I had a side chair, and other devs would drop in and discuss designs and code. I also had an office at my next job, in 1993. It wasn't until I took a contract job in 1994 that I experienced cubicle life, but the walls were high and I could do some midnight construction to add a bit of privacy. I even had an office at a Seattle startup in 2001. It was afterward that things started to slide toward the open-office morass. Fortunately, I've worked only out of my home office since 2022, and it's been beautiful.
I still miss the old days: We had offices, we actually did design before we started implementing, we didn't do stand-ups but everyone still knew what was going on. I think I'll go yell at a cloud now.
bluGill · 26m ago
I've seen them, but they were rare already by late 1990s when I started work. I recall my dad having on in the 1970s, and I remember when I started they were tearing some out to put in cubes. Back then they told me offices were cheaper than cube (cube walls need to be stronger than regular walls because they cannot tie into the ceiling for support thus increasing costs), but they believed in the cube plan and so were willing to pay that price.
jon-wood · 20m ago
Cube walls are one off expense, while office square footage is a monthly expense, so if you can fit more people in the same size office by putting up some cubes it makes sense (so long as you ignore the lost productivity).
bluGill · 15m ago
An office or a cube takes up similar amounts of floor space - you have a lot of options for both. My current building is an open office plan which gives everybody more square footage than any cube or office walls plan I've seen. Building walls are a one-off expense just like installing cubes.
assimpleaspossi · 26m ago
One place I worked, till 1992 at least, had offices with doors for all the engineers. I loved it but, if I kept my door closed for too long, I often felt others thought I was hiding or goofing off.
If I kept my door open, I would still get distracted by people walking by. Even if they didn't say anything, they'd look in which would catch my eye.
rco8786 · 29m ago
I worked in one in 2008-09. Reception area and then a bunch of hallways with 20-30 individual offices and conference rooms. It was nice.
the_gipsy · 21m ago
At a former job, for quite some time, there were separated offices with about 3 devs per room. It wasn't quite "one room per dev", but much, much better than the regular open office setups.
WillAdams · 1h ago
Note that this is the architectural style, not the integrated application software suite.
tux3 · 50m ago
(The last release of which was in 2023. The Apache Open Office fiasco truly has no end.)
A lot of discussions around open offices is induced compliance/conformance.
Years back I was one of the decision makers for an office move for a mid-sized engineering company. I'm a big believer in private spaces such as offices, but where that isn't possible at least sound and visual distraction blocking cubicle designs.
I was treated like an obsolete relic that wasn't onboard with the whole mega teamwork, super-social open office trend. Was I anti-social? Don't I understand collaboration?
Regardless, I made my case and have a lot of pull, so we compromised and made two separate classes of work spaces. An open concept "bullpen" type design, and then a cloistered section of high-walled cubicles (all areas had loads of light, windows, and all other amenities, awesome desks and shelving, etc). Everyone got to choose which area they wanted to work in.
100% of those not given private offices chose the private cubicles. Not 99%, but to a woman it was the universal choice, including among the moralizing, very outspoken "team work" open office advocates.
Because they didn't believe a word of what they were saying. It was just patter to convey their great team bonafides.
rco8786 · 29m ago
Ah nice. This whole debate died with Covid but I guess there’s enough RTO happening to re ignite it.
Doing conventional thing is often expensive, requires skill, or requires organisational power to change the way things work.
Many of these counter-productive trends are the ways executives "deliver visible results" and maintain good optics after committing to something they have no means, in terms of resources, power or skill, to deliver by the book.
For example RTO is used as a short-term downsizing strategy as organisations often lack ways to monitor actual long-term impact from squeezing workers like that. BI bandaids are often applied to create visibility around certain issues (the easy part), and by extension build perception these issues are manageable, without actually solving any of them (which is the hard part).
There are also executives who hate open offices. You will find them in their office with the door closed, and they don't want you to knock on the door if it isn't urgent.
It is about personality. However few people are willing to admit that others are different and that it is okay.
There is the old saying “nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft/IBM”. Most people, including executives, are just following the accepted wisdom with some slight variations.
What makes you think they actually care about productivity? It's pure narcissistic traits, they want to be able to easily waltz in and watch their wage slaves.
> development methodologies that disempower the developers, devops without people who understand ops, databases without dbas, Business Intelligence in basically every flavor.
Again, it's control. Us, with our MBAs will make far more than you, even though we contribute less than an LLM
You, with your decades of learning that we've demanded, are expendable and honestly we don't need anyone with skill doing your job.
> It’s as if they would rather fail doing the conventional thing than risk failure by doing something different.
The business just wasn't ready for their radical idea. See Adam Neumann. The difference between you and them, is that you are looking at this as work. A way to make money.
For most of these folks, they already have money. This is a game, a gamble, a way to pass the time, and to gain influence. If the company fails it's not good, but it's not the end of the world. They don't have to work and when they are bored then they can always start a new business.
Or development... I'm SecDevOps and I consider the time I've spent doing all three to be critical to me being able to do my job. I still do development from time to time to keep those skills sharp to. But, I can't count the number of "DevOps" that I've met that had only done Ops or Development... not both and neither well.
> databases without dbas
What's another field on the schema that is required but can't be marked required because that would break code? Implicit knowledge that's not transferred and extremely fragile never broke anything in production... right!? /s
When i was apprenticing long ago on my way to master mechanic, I worked for a luxury dealership in the midwest. The manager was the owners son (as per tradition) and he had just graduated with a business degree. We had a good system of 3 closed office areas, one for sales, one for service, and one for management. In the managers wisdom, we should combine all 3 into an open office format.
this lasted nearly a year and was pretty similar to a nightmare-mode run in Doom. Customers eager to buy a vehicle would be immediately exposed to the masses of howling and screaming customers who couldnt fathom a $7500 suspension service as they barely made payments on their suburban assault tank. mechanics would routinely wander into the office to talk to the shop service lead, tracking all sorts of fluids onto sales floor carpets, and leaving greasy handprints on all the desks. the entire office usually smelled like burnt oil or gas (combined with the one peach air freshener the admin assistant bought.) finally management was becoming way too distracted with the heretical temptation to micromanage anything and everything. i was once pulled off the shop floor to clean carpets for 20 minutes, and another time i was tasked to restock and clean the customer lounge. 40 minutes of shop time (not cheap) to sit in the AC and munch on doritos while i watered plants and changed out the water cooler bottle.
all the while the 3 impact printers for invoices were wailing away in the center of the "open office" making casual conversation pretty challenging.
I still miss the old days: We had offices, we actually did design before we started implementing, we didn't do stand-ups but everyone still knew what was going on. I think I'll go yell at a cloud now.
If I kept my door open, I would still get distracted by people walking by. Even if they didn't say anything, they'd look in which would catch my eye.
Years back I was one of the decision makers for an office move for a mid-sized engineering company. I'm a big believer in private spaces such as offices, but where that isn't possible at least sound and visual distraction blocking cubicle designs.
I was treated like an obsolete relic that wasn't onboard with the whole mega teamwork, super-social open office trend. Was I anti-social? Don't I understand collaboration?
Regardless, I made my case and have a lot of pull, so we compromised and made two separate classes of work spaces. An open concept "bullpen" type design, and then a cloistered section of high-walled cubicles (all areas had loads of light, windows, and all other amenities, awesome desks and shelving, etc). Everyone got to choose which area they wanted to work in.
100% of those not given private offices chose the private cubicles. Not 99%, but to a woman it was the universal choice, including among the moralizing, very outspoken "team work" open office advocates.
Because they didn't believe a word of what they were saying. It was just patter to convey their great team bonafides.