If you’re in a cubicle, people can still hear you. On the other hand, you can pick your nose.
I’ve spent 30 years less a year and a quarter in a real office, with a real door. Talking about collaboration is fine, but when I had a cubicle no one on my team was next to me, si it didn’t help. We had over 20 conference rooms per floor, most in use all the time, often for the kind of two or three person meetings you can have in an office. In an office, you can also close the door and have a conversation without worrying about bugging people around you. I also do lots of conference calls. In the cube environment we all had headsets, but you still hear the people near you talking. At least in this place everyone had cubes, right up to the CEO who was a billionaire. I interviewed in one place where the managers had offices and the peons had cubes - no thanks, I’m not Dilbert.
And no way I’d take an open office - I passed the cattle stage of my career a long time ago.
“Collaborate,” huh? That seems code for “watch employees like a hawk.” I definitely prefer my cubical to an open office plan. Like others, I’d prefer to have an office, but this is the next best thing. I’ve got my back to a window, which is nice.
I don’t mind my cubicle EXCEPT that my doorway is right across from the SQE’s door. So even though I have “privacy” - I can see what he’s doing, and he can see what I’m doing. Unfortunately, there’s no discreet way to ask that the panel in my cube be switched so I’m not staring at his ugly mug all day.
Like jjimm, I’m always amazed by how loud people’s conversations get because they think these thin walls buffer sound. I realize the advantages of hands free phones during long-winded conference calls, but i abhor the blatant use of speakerphones here in cubicleville.
As I have often remarked to my co-workers, “if you use speakerphone, SHUT THE DOOR. If you don’t have a door, DON’T USE SPEAKERPHONE.”
I’m not a bitch about it - I always hand them chocolate as I’m chastising them . . .
I’ve worked in a private office and in a split office (the private office had a cube wall installed down the middle); I’ve never worked in a cube farm or open office plan. The biggest thing I miss about the private office was the space; I had a large folding table that was great for working on small assemblies, or just storing paperwork in neat piles. In my current setup, all I have is my desk, a small credenza (part of the original office; I had to complain very loudly in order to keep it), and a short bookcase. I hate having unrelated stuff piled together, but it’s impossible to avoid doing that when there is such a lack of flat surfaces. Also, the cube wall used as a divider has wrecked the acoustics of the room; normal conversations seem to be amplified.
I prefer the split office to a cube though – at least I’m not out in the open, and I’m not forced to sit with my back to the door.
I wasn’t happy about the move to cubes at our place, but I’ve learned to be comfortable with my cube. It helps that I’m next to the window.
But if they went to an open plan, I’d leave tomorrow. Yeesh.
I prefer an office - even more so if there is individual climate control. I am usually too hot compared to others. If no office, then I want a cube. Although my Brit friends tell me I’m wrong, I have not found an open space to be conducive to productivity.
I’ve been in a cube for most of the last 15 years, and it’s okay. For a couple of years recently, I shared an actual office with another person: but it just didn’t work. It’s hard when your job involves HR and other personal information when your office mate is the equivalent of the town crier.
I’m back in a cube… sort of. It’s a 7 foot walled cube with a door. And I have it all to myself. I LOVE it.
The hierarchy of dehumanization - private offices>cubicles>pods>open office (no walls at all)>temp sitting at a table in a hallway somewhere. I could be wrong about this, but I don’t think I am.
Cubicle please. I need my illusion of privacy.
I’ve done open floor and offices. But open floor was a very small arrangement, there were just 4-5 of us with lots of room. I probably liked it the most when we were in a…don’t know what to call it…but we’d put four desks around a support pillar. But we were the entire tech team, so we had to talk to each other a lot.
I’m the newbie at this place, so I spent my first few months stuck at a table in the middle of the place. Then an office opened up. It’s windowless though, and the florescents give me a headache, so I brought in a floor lamp. I’d like more light, something more natural. Sometimes I feel way too isolated. It’s not the type of place you need a lot of privacy or where people talk a lot, so you’ll be in this void of silence.
Some jobs actually require employees to work together on stuff.
I’ve found that the most efficient configuration is to have a vast open “Productivity Pit” (with WiFi) where staff can be thrown in as needed. Middle managers reside in elevated “Coordination Platforms” where they can observe the work being performed. Attached to the ceiling is a system of cables and pullies called a “Coaching Matrix” where a manager can hook in and float above specific staff to provide guidance and instruction (think the Baron Harkonnan floating around the place). And of course elevated around the edge of the ProdPit, behind one-way-able glass are “Strategy Workstations” where the executives sit.
Sounds perfectly horrible. You have a scary mind for these things. But I did get a good laugh out of the Baron image.
I’ve always had cubicles, but 3 different styles.
High wall - Probably 6’ to isolating. All you see if the walls in front of your face
Mid wall - 4’ nice compromise. I’m not distracted by people walking by
low wall - 8" over the desk top - ugh. Only slightly better than open plan (in that I can still stick stuff on the walls. This is a sales office. It got WAY to loud with those low walls.
Where I am now uses mid height walls, and all of the actual offices are inside, away from the windows. So I can see out the window over my cube wall.
I have a cubicle, and fortunately it’s one of the ‘big’ ones. The drones with less experience, lower position, etc. have smaller ones. They threatened to move us to an ‘open’ floorplan (4 foot high cubicles. fortunately it hot shut down before the completed the entire floor. We temporarily moved out of our cubicles on the north side of the floor so they could put in the half wall crap. Then we never had to move back. The project stalled for some reason. I can say with absolute certainty that if I have to move into a half cubicle, I’m looking for another job. I didn’t get my MSIS to work in an environment like that. You want me to produce like a professional, then treat me like one. I’m not one of the lackeys that need to be watched over. You can’t count how many calls I take or how many words I type. As you can tell this is a hot button with me. It really pisses me off how someone in a private office can decide the best working conditions for me and then try to put a corporate buzzword spin on it. The ‘office engineers’ came in with their clipboards and measuring tapes and were trying to silently do their business. I asked them if they were trying to cram more people into a smaller place. She actually said, “we’re trying to maximize employee density.”
From what I read on Wikipedia, cubes came after open plan. The articles were too boring for me to link to though. In fact, the only interesting thing I read in either article was that the concept was originally promoted by a company called Quickboner.
Except I read it again and it was actually Quickborner, which is a huge shame.
So far this has been interesting. In my OP I left out one piece of information. Would it make a difference to you the management had the same arrangement? No offices, no Supercubes, just plain old desks. To me it doesn’t change my own issues with the open floor arrangement.
I’m trying to figure out why cubicles would be more dehumanizing than an open plan with everyone just sitting at their desks with no privacy at all. Because you’re like cattle in a stall? Humans are territorial; we have a very deep, instinctive need to feel like this little bit of real estate belongs to me - I think you get slightly more of that with cubicles than with open plan offices, but I’m open to some reasons why cubicles would be more dehumanizing.
I think it’s the “farm animal” connotation. The image of endless identical workstations often makes people feel litterally like cogs or livestock.
I don’t think either option is necessarily dehumanizing. Cubicles are simply an attempt to provide some measure of privacy and uniformity to the office environment. A lack of cubicles IMHO implies either “cheap” or that they want people to interact freely and not be isolated behind walls.
I have worked in a few places where I had to share a workspace with others (where two use the desk during different shifts). This wasn’t bad in one place, but in another it was horrible. We had too many people sharing the space and no respect for anything. I didn’t stay there too long. The other shared space was alright. The girl that worked evenings was pretty cool, and she always had it set up nice when I got in for third shift, so I had little clean up and could get more work done. At another job, I started out with a shared space, but got promoted into my own office in a few months. It was wonderful - there was a nice glass window to the front, which only showed me the work environment, but gave me privacy through blinds when I wanted it. It also had a wooden door and a huge desk. When I first got moved into it, there was no lock on the door, but after a quick change in policy and a trip to lowe’s, both my boss and I got locking doors due to the others who did not have an office coming in for rather wrong reasons (stealing food on days off, looking through confidential files, etc.)
My current job is a world of difference. I am in a classroom with 10-12 cubicles for students, but not really cubicles, more like workstations for computers. My desk is at the front of the classroom, but pretty much open to everyone in the room. The problem is, if I face it one way, the students can’t see my computer screen, but the people who walk by the outside of the room can. The other way, the students can see some of the screen, but the people in the hall have no idea what I’m doing. I choose the second option usually, but move my desk about once a quarter and try to rearrange the room.
My own office is definitely my choice, but I am okay with where I’m at for now.
Brendon Small