In the Before Times, you just came to the office every day. It wasn’t even a question; “working from home” was just not practical. “Going to work” meant leaving the house. Then the pandemic happened.
Now that it’s over, even coming in three days a week is so controversial that unions are getting involved:
The union representing employees of the National Science Foundation are fighting orders reducing the number of days they can telework, warning people will quit if greater flexibility isn't preserved.
NPR tells us that back-to-office is facing stiff resistance. Some companies are resorting to bribery:
Salesforce, the business software behemoth, announced that for a 10-day period, it will give a $10 charitable donation per day on behalf of any employee who comes into the office (or for remote employees who attend company events). A spokeswoman said it was only natural the company would want to find moments for “doing well and doing good.” But to some employees, it might feel like a tonal shift, given that the company’s previous workplace plans were announced with fanfare for a future in which much of its staff could be fully or partially remote forever. (The company emphasized that this remains the case.)
Oh no! Employees don’t want to come back. Whatever are we doing wrong? Take a look at this and see if you can spot the problem
Be honest now: would you want to work in that?
How Did We Get to This?
From 1977 to 1983, I worked for Xerox; not at PARC but in the Systems Development Division that was charged with commercializing PARC’s well-known inventions (graphical user interface, laser printing, Ethernet, etc.). You would think that, with all this ground-breaking creativity going on, they must have been working in some hip environment like the photo above?
“Hey, Dave!” they must have yelled to each other across the room, “come and see this cool new use of the mouse!” Some wonderful open office layout surely stimulated this epochal explosion of invention, right?
Nope. It looked like this
In El Segundo, it looked pretty much the same, but drabber. I had a private office from my first days there, occasionally sharing with one other person.
Now the work environment is symbolized in this iconic image (from Office Space):
Who’s to blame?
In the 1960s, Robert Propst
headed the research arm of Herman Miller, whose office chairs you can still buy. His story has been told in many places, including the Wall Street Journal (look on archive.ph if you get paywalled on that link).
Propst actually invented cubicles to get away from the open office plans of the day:
The offices Propst so loathed were largely open, of the type we now see on "Mad Men": row after orthogonal row of serried desks, where accountants or typists clacked away from 9 to 5, often surrounded by a corridor of closed-door offices for managers and executives.
(I can’t help thinking of A Wand’ring Minstrel, I (from The Mikado) when I hear the word “serried.”)
His concept was the “Action Office.” The history.com article says
There had to be a better way. For Propst, the answer was in the “Action Office,” an office layout that relied on lightweight sitting and standing desks and filing systems. Acoustical panels helped insulate workers from the noise of telephone calls and typing.
But American offices didn’t exactly take to the new Action Office plan. The components were more geared to individual workers than to large companies that needed to accommodate large numbers of people, and they were hard to put together. And the concept of a completely customizable workspace didn’t sit well with executives who didn’t value the individuality of their workers. Instead, they often purchased the furniture for their own homes rather than placing them in offices. Action Office was beloved by designers—and dismissed by just about everyone else.
This is hilarious if you think about it: the Action Office furniture was too nice to waste on ordinary peons, so the executives took it home instead.
Propst reworked his design, and Action Office II was the result. It was a smash hit.
Faced with the failure of his first concept, Propst went back to the drawing board and created the Action Office II. The new design took his acoustical panel concept to the next level. The panels became miniature walls of multiple heights that separated each space into its own office without completely cutting a worker off from colleagues. Lightweight and easier to assemble, it made more sense to executives.
But companies didn’t use the Action Office II, and the many knockoffs it inspired, the way Propst intended. Instead of going for roomy desk spaces with different designs and walls of different heights, they opted for tiny, boxed-in desks instead. They ignored Propst’s vision of a flexible workspace and visual sightlines. Using Propst’s brainchild, cubicles were used to cram even more workers into offices. The office he had invented shrank and shrank until it became impersonal and crowded. The age of the cubicle farm had begun.
I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Offices
Propst had an Oppenheimer moment when he saw what his invention had turned into (this is the WSJ article again):
The real problem isn't the furniture; it is how the furniture represents the arbitrariness of power in the workplace. "The dark side of this is that not all organizations are intelligent and progressive," Propst said two years before he died. "Lots are run by crass people who can take the same kind of equipment and create hellholes. They make little bitty cubicles and stuff people in them. Barren, rathole places…I never had any illusions that this was a perfect world."
A Personal Story
In 1985, I had a half hour private interview with Eric Schmidt at Sun Microsystems (yes, that Eric Schmidt). Sun had mostly private offices, maybe shared, and “cubes vs. offices” was a hot topic even then.
I didn’t end up going to work at Sun (I should have, but didn’t), but the one thing I still remember from that interview was that he said (a paraphrase, not an exact quote):
If you look at the total costs of private offices versus cubes, they come out about the same, and economics tells you that they have to. It’s just like owning versus leasing works out to be the same, because the market forces it to.
I also worked at Google in the same building as Eric for a while, and I recalled this event for him. He smiled and said (again, this is a paraphrase):
The one big thing I forgot about that was the value of the employee communications you get with cubes.
So that’s the conventional management story in a nutshell: We need those random encounters that you get with openness! People in private offices don’t talk to each other.
I’ve heard that argument over and over. It’s even employed to justify getting rid of the cubicle walls and making everything open (like the photo at the top of this article).
It’s utter bullshit and executive fantasy. If you walked around Google and their open offices, almost half the workers are wearing headphones to screen out the noise. Do you just yell over and communicate with people, like in the executives’ fantasy? No, first you have to wave your hand in front of their face to get their attention.
This CNBC article lays it out:
In open environments, executives imagine social collaboration and surreal collision between disparate disciplines. Executives wish for the the next magical idea born from the random chaos of the corporate universe. To executives, easy access means easy sharing and easy success; we should always be able to yell at our coworkers within 25 feet whenever the mood strikes.
At Google (actually, the years when I did work near Eric’s office), the best and most fun working environments I ever had were in shared offices, with walls and a door and a window. Even with three other people in there, it was still better than being out in the open.
Two of my officemates in one of those ended up marrying each other! I didn’t even know anything was going on, which tells you something about their discretion, or maybe my obliviousness.
My personal space allotment got steadily worse at Google. You can’t really blame REWS (Real Estate and Workplace Services) for that; they were forced to cram more and more people into a physical space that expanded very little. At the end, there weren’t even cubicle walls. There was literally nothing that separated my desk from the ones on each side. I hated it.
Tech Worker Preferences
I put this question to the Internet Old Farts group on Facebook, which is, as you might guess, mostly older engineers who worked with the Internet when it was new. Many have actually experienced both the old style (private offices around the outside, cubicles in the middle) and the newer open offices. Most younger people have never had a private office.
In less than a day, it got 103 comments and 37 Likes. Here’s a small sampling (names redacted unless they gave permission):
Some Photos
These photos (here’s one)
are from Paul McJones, who authored or coauthored many influential papers, including this from Xerox.
Another Famous Innovation Center: Bell Labs
Here’s Mary Ann Horton
who says:
I got a private office in 1992 when I was promoted to DMTS. I bought a recliner and had them deliver it to my office at Bell Labs, Columbus. You can see the chair at the right in this photo, taken in 1998, on my first day at work in my own office as Mary Ann. (In 1996 I transferred to a group at Indian Hill, so I worked from home 4 days a week. My private office was being wasted so I invited a coworker to share it, he took this picture.)
Bell Labs didn’t have cubicles, either:
Xerox PARC and Bell Labs are the two most important centers of innovation in the second half of the 20th century, at least in computers. Apparently they still managed to communicate enough to get their work done.
More comments
Tom Galloway: IMO, the best layout I ever saw was the old Tech Square MIT AI Lab (*not* the current Geahy monstrosity). Full offices all around the perimeters of the floors; grad students got tiny ones that two would barely fit in (but which had full walls and doors), faculty and research staff got larger solo ones. The key point though was at both ends of the floors were wide open areas, usually called a "Play-something"; playground, playroom, etc. Key aspects were a giant full wall whiteboard, couches and comfy chairs, the location of the floor water and coffee services, where tech reports were, coffee tables with a mix of research publications, newspapers, magazines, comic books, and other light reading, maybe some toys. If you wanted privacy and focus, you went to your office and shut the door. If you wanted to work but were open to interruption, you went to your office and left the door open. If you just wanted to hang out, collaborate, read in the open, etc., you went to a playroom.
I replied:
Smokey Wallace, our VP at Oracle (who came from Xerox and DEC) had the same idea: a common area for socializing, plus private offices for solo work.
(Smokey is RIP. May his memory be a blessing.)
In Smokey’s group, there was a very large common area, with giant whiteboards, sofas, and other amenities that made it a great place to hang out.
Other answers:
(name redacted) I worked for Smokey at DECWSL in the late 80s. We were lucky to have an office building layout (two different buildings, actually) with lots of windows and offices around the perimeter. Pretty much everyone got a private hardwall office. Some people ended up without a window. Summer interns got their own cube somewhere in the open area. A few contractors ended up sharing offices.
During my time at PARC CSL (early 90s), things were pretty much the same; researchers got a private office, mostly with windows, or at worst with a window in sight across the hall. Interns and staff were in cubes.
more from that same person:
When I worked at P&G in the late 70s, I was pretty junior, and either had a hard wall office with window shared with another engineer (that was common; managers got a private office), or my own cube in a cube farm (where there were no hardwall offices) depending on the building.
someone else:
This layout is called "caves and commons". It is also used at Xerox PARC. See Chapter 10 in How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand for more details.
and someone else:
I remember the first time I saw the layout at 666 Technology Pentagram, including the funny first floor (all that wood panelling...) I thought "this is how it should be" - and every time I started a company I considered that layout as something to be built - with the lego lounge and other things in the middle as shared space, and huge white board walls all over the place. wherever possible, hardwall offices for people - I trust them not to "goof off" and I want them to be able to have the right place for that serious concentration that serious work needs.
the rationale that I keep hearing for open office plans always sounds contrived at best, and some sort of strange torture ritual at worst.
So there you have it: the best office. layout was discovered over 30 years ago, and it’s not cubicles or “open plan.” The conclusion was:
why it's almost as if it's good for people to have choices!
Other Personal Reasons
Many “knowledge workers” (who can work from home, as the pandemic showed) have an extreme need for personal space. All that “communication” in the open office is actually counter-productive for them. As the person below says: there are also smells, noise, and unfriendly temperatures to annoy him.
This person, who’ll remain anonymous, sent me a lengthy message, which I’ll excerpt here:
I worked for mostly Universities and private tech companies. Both groups of organizations were absolutely terrible at directing and motivating talent. Working in a noisy, crowded open space was a huge part of that.
First of all, I hate office spaces. Poorly designed, lots of noise-reflecting surfaces, people always around creating distractions, a complete nightmare for people who have to use their brains. (Also, I acknowledge that I'm a bit sensitive to environmental things while others seem less bothered).
I'm also very cold-sensitive and found that most offices I was forced to attend had the A/C temp set to about 60 degrees, effectively turning the work environment into a meat freezer.
Anyway, a few times in my career I actually had my own private office with a door and I loved it. I believe I was spectacularly productive and focused, cuz I could close my door and read/write/concentrate for hours. Even if these were not my favorite jobs, they wound up being my favorite work environments.
Then I had many jobs where I was just on some noisy floor that resembled the stock market idiocy from the 1980's. Just phones ringing, people talking, clickety keyboards, and endless rude behavior from people who could "Just walk up to you and interrupt". I hated it and still do.
Once COVID hit and I could see our offices closing, I moved 800 miles away and began full-time telecommute. Some might say it is lonely or "disconnected" but it has been a boon and major improvement in my life. I have no need to hear chit-chat about others outside lives all day and then struggle to find a few quiet minutes to actually get work done. I can manage my own time, come & go as I please, as long as I get my work done satisfactorily. This is how I think this work should be done. (At least, if you want high quality work).
I abhor corporate real estate and those who own it. The only reason we have this insane push to get back into offices is because Company Owner's Rich Buddies are crying all the time about their crappy investments and begging CEOs the force us all back into the office.
I'd choose unemployment, homelessness, or death before going back into an office to work 40+ hours per week. It simply isn't worth it, and it drives my personal performance directly into a ditch.
All the "Collaboration happens when we're all in the office" is just Business School BS designed to guilt employees back into a life of abject misery. Yeah, I need a 2+ hour commute and stress, plus constant interruption to be "collaborative". Total BS.
So, I know some others might enjoy an open workspace, or talking with coworkers, but honestly those were the absolute worst parts of my entire career. Always made me wish I worked on a farm or was out digging ditches somewhere. If you know of any $250K/year jobs digging ditches or working on farms, then please let me know.
I haven't even touched on the jealousy and vindictiveness of hundreds of co-workers, who saw me as a threat and did everything in their power to get me fired or make me look bad. So far, I'm only talking about terrible fluorescent lighting, endless noise that doesn't help concentration, freezing cold air temps designed to store meat long-term, and the general "Forget about getting any work done today" nonsense that is open work environments.
I had dozens of terrible interactions with other employees, who tried their damndest to make my life miserable. I have ZERO of that with telecommute. Nobody wants to create drama and fight over IM/chat sessions, at least not nearly to the degree of competitiveness and vindictiveness I've seen in office work spaces.
Once I suffered thru being a Security contractor for the EPA, and their solution for the 8 of us in a Security Operations Center was to cram us all into a closet. I'm not even kidding. It was a 12' by 15' space and we crammed 7 desks in there (one staff was a night guy) and all had to sweat all over each other and breath the same stinky air for months. I finally quit and told them where to shove that job.
Addendum
There are so many responses on the Facebook group that I’m going to have to publish the rest in a followup to this. Those people deserve to be heard, too.
What’s the Real Reason?
“Follow the money” is always good practice if you’re diagnosing a business condition, along with “follow the current fad.” Take the rental for a square foot of office space, multiply that by the number of square feet each employee occupies, and you get a big cost. A private office with 80 or 100 square feet costs much more than the space for a desk, chair, and a filing cabinet. In theory, at least, cubicle walls are also simpler to reconfigure than hard office walls.
Although: Eric’s “equal costs” argument above is not the only place I’ve heard that. A former Taligent employee on Facebook said:
At Taligent, the company was building out a new building. Four facilities people ran the numbers. Private offices were no more expensive than cubeville.
I don’t claim any expertise on office costs. Maybe open offices are cheaper. But consider this: if employees hate them and resist coming in and occupying them, don’t you have to factor that into your cost calculations?
Innate Preferences of Executives
I won’t do a lengthy disquisition on personality types, but there’s a lot of scholarly literature on the subject:
MBTI Personality Types of Project: Managers and Their Success: A Field Survey talks about the Myers- Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and so does this:
The general bias (and of course I’m revealing my own bias here) is: managers and leaders are extroverts and communicators. This is considered Good by them.
The people I quote above would probably qualify as Introverts, mostly. This is considered Bad.
Extroverts always think, “We need more communication! These introverts who don’t like it need to be dragged out into the open where we can get at them!” I think literally every employee meeting I ever had to go to, where people were asked what they wanted, “more communication” was always top of the list. What they really mean is, “I want to know what’s going on without having to expend any effort!”
“Communication” (meaning: what’s going on in the company and in your department) is something you do for yourself by walking around and chatting; it’s not something the management or the office layout does automatically.
A big part of the resistance to Return-To-Office is people saying, “You know what? We hate that!”
And What About Those Costs?
We started this by noting that employees are rebelling against Return To Office. Of course, management can always just say, “Too bad. You do like getting paid, right?” Many hard-line companies are doing exactly that.
On the other hand, office rental costs are going down. A McKinsey report says
In most superstar cities, lower office attendance has similarly driven down asking rents in real terms.1 Rents in the US cities we studied fell especially sharply—for example, by 28 percent in San Francisco and by 18 percent in New York City from 2019 to 2022. Rents in the European cities we studied have been more resilient. In Paris, London, and Munich, they fell by 10 percent, 12 percent, and 9 percent, respectively. In only two of the cities we studied, Munich and Tokyo, did rents actually increase; they grew the most in Tokyo, increasing by 4 percent from 2019 to 2022.
Occupancy and rents may fall further still. Because their employees are coming to the office less often, many employers have downsized spaces to reduce costs.
The Commercial Edge site has similar news:
The average U.S. office listing rate stood at $37.35 per square foot, falling 1.8% year-over-year
Up 130 basis points year-over-year, the national vacancy rate was 18% in January
Tech and media companies are also laying off workers, which further reduces costs. So what, exactly, prevents an enlightened company from using some of those cost savings to create a genuinely better environment for their workers?
I’ll add that some/many companies have it backwards where managers have offices and rank and file live in cubes.
This is how it was way back when I worked at Apple and Intuit where at both companies I was an engineer and a manager. (FYI I also worked at Xerox which was all offices as you noted).
It really should be the other way around. The managers need to be wondering around and facilitating communication amongst the rank and file if needed but the rank and file need to be able to think/work in a private setting to get stuff done as they are the ones that really work.
Regarding cost; I think focusing on the marginal cost is more important; Sure, maybe it costs slightly more per square meter for an office. However, even if it does you also need to weigh in the productivity improvement per employee of having an office.