Open-plan offices kill knowledge work. Doing something conceptually difficult, with focus, requires some degree of hermeticism. Why do they persist? The article below tries to hazard some guesses, and emphasises how bad for productivity open plan offices can be. Great piece.
If one person is wrong, they’re wrong. If a lot of people, some of whom got extremely rich off of their wrong ideas, are wrong, there’s a good possibility I’m the wrong one. At a minimum, it’s useful for me to understand where I’m differing from others. Open offices are one such puzzle. To me, they are obviously one step short of Azkaban. And yet everyone, including some exceptionally profitable companies, use them. Why?
At least Azkaban prisoners get their own cell
[I’m going to restrict myself to tech companies because that’s what I know]
One possibility is some people genuinely prefer them. I keep talking myself up to that, only to read another article about how everyone is miserable and unproductive in them. I talk myself up again, and find a peer reviewed study detailing their terribleness. I thought maybe they were for extroverts, but then I heard extroverts…
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