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Cubicles a Giant Mistake

Posted by Zonk on Thu Mar 09, 2006 04:13 PM
from the we-already-knew-that dept.
Businesses Technology
J to the D writes "Apparently even the designer of the cubicle believes now that they are a bad idea." From the article: "After years of prototyping and studying how people work, and vowing to improve on the open-bullpen office that dominated much of the 20th century, Propst designed a system he thought would increase productivity (hence the name Action Office). The young designer, who also worked on projects as varied as heart pumps and tree harvesters, theorized that productivity would rise if people could see more of their work spread out in front of them, not just stacked in an in-box."
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[+] Ask Slashdot: How To Get Rid of the Cubicle? 368 comments
wikinerd writes "How can we get rid of the widely hated cubicle and its ugly cousin, the stressing open-plan office? Some business owners and managers cannot understand the advantages of teleworking, different office layouts, or the morale benefits of private offices with Aeron chairs. There are still people in high positions who seem to think that stuffing a bunch of engineers into a noisy landscaped office is the best way to organize a company. It is not, and we all know it, but can we prove it? How can we communicate to them the fact that living in a groundhog warren is bad not only for the engineers, but also for the organization?"
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  • Stuff that Matters... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Slipgrid (938571) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:14PM (#14885721) Homepage Journal
    My cubicles walls help give me more free time to spend on Slashdot... And, that's Stuff that Matters...

    • Re:Stuff that Matters... (Score:5, Funny)

      by sgt_doom (655561) on Thursday March 09 2006, @06:29PM (#14886984)
      It still beats being shackled to those damn oars...I hated those Roman overseers....

      • Re:Stuff that Matters... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Slipgrid (938571) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:43PM (#14886007) Homepage Journal
        Now, I'm a bit smarter than that. All my surfing is logged on my home computer. My home computer is my proxy. Easy enough to do, though I did study CS for many years. Funny, though, because the system admin wanted me to run a spyware remover on my desktop at work, that I've used for two years now. It came back with only one cookie that it thought was set to last to long. He was stunned. Not bad for all that time here.

  • Just Another Tool (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tverbeek (457094) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:14PM (#14885725) Homepage
    Like any tool, the fault isn't the tool but the people using it. I've worked in (and helped design) some "cubicles" that were closer to Propst's vision... less a cubicle farm than a garden. They beat working in a doored, fully-walled office, and definitely were better than what used to come before them (rows and columns of desks, one-room-schoolhouse style).

    • Re:Just Another Tool (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mordors9 (665662) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:42PM (#14886004)
      But there is also human nature. Someone hidden behind any sort of wall MAY take the opportunity to goof off. Having said that, the fault then really lies with management. They have to recruit good people, train the people properly, motivate them and reward them for good performance. It doesn't matter if there are cubicles, offices or an open area. We are all adults working together to reach the obejctive.

    • Re:Just Another Tool (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Abcd1234 (188840) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:55PM (#14886136) Homepage
      They beat working in a doored, fully-walled office

      You must be on crack to believe that. Anyone who works in a job that requires any kind of concentration (software development being the most obvious example) will, given the opportunity, enter a state of "flow" where they are wholly committed to the work they're doing. Many people have likely experienced this: ever start working and then suddenly realize it's already lunch time? Have you had periods where you spend a couple hours deeply focused while getting enormous amounts of work done? That's flow.

      The thing is, getting into this state requires at least 20 minutes to a half an hour, and it can be very easily disturbed by outside distractions, such as noise, conversations, etc. And any break in ones concentration just requires another 20 minutes of recovery time. Consequently, open, cubicle-style workspaces are exactly the *worst* kind of work environment for these kinds of professions. All they do is increase the amount of distraction and make it more difficult for employees to enter a proper state of flow, when they are most productive.

      This would be why I greatly favour offices over any other kind of open concept design, at least for these types of jobs. Does that mean slackers can slack off more easily? Sure. But you'll see greatly increased productivity from the quality employees, as they'll be able to get more work done due to less distraction. And for those slackers, well, the more they slack off, the more obvious it is that they're doing it, giving you the opportunity to cut out the chaff from the wheat.

      • Re:Just Another Tool (Score:5, Funny)

        by RevMike (632002) <revMike@NoSpam.gmail.com> on Thursday March 09 2006, @05:23PM (#14886370) Journal

        Anyone who works in a job that requires any kind of concentration (software development being the most obvious example) will, given the opportunity, enter a state of "flow" where they are wholly committed to the work they're doing. Many people have likely experienced this: ever start working and then suddenly realize it's already lunch time? Have you had periods where you spend a couple hours deeply focused while getting enormous amounts of work done? That's flow.

        The thing is, getting into this state requires at least 20 minutes to a half an hour, and it can be very easily disturbed by outside distractions, such as noise, conversations, etc. And any break in ones concentration just requires another 20 minutes of recovery time. Consequently, open, cubicle-style workspaces are exactly the *worst* kind of work environment for these kinds of professions. All they do is increase the amount of distraction and make it more difficult for employees to enter a proper state of flow, when they are most productive.

        Even in a typical private office, however, there are still distractions. The telephone ringing or your neighbor speaking too loud or any of a million other things can be disturbing.

        A good compromise is to provide flexible space, cubicles for handling the normal day-to-day stuff, team rooms for collaborative work, and small private spaces with no distractions for deep solo concentration.

        Actually, lots of companies provide the third. The room is generally tiled and has a row of tiny offices equipped with porceline chairs.

      • Re:Just Another Tool (Score:5, Interesting)

        by kov (262834) on Thursday March 09 2006, @05:36PM (#14886508)
        At the risk of drawing derision on financial software development, we couldn't possibly do what we do with offices. When the trading desk has a problem with your software system and you're bleeding money, it's battle stations. Much easier to have a big wide open room with everyone right there madly working on the solution. More sources of input, less redundant communication. The benefits of that are too good compared to the benefits of an office -- you just have to learn how to concentrate in the middle of a battlefield, sort of like that guy in the Seven Samurai who makes himself sleep when the time's available (and only when it's available!).

        Course, we don't use cubes either, just a wide open floor with desks.

      • Re:Just Another Tool (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Tim (686) <timr@ u . w a s h i n g t on.edu> on Thursday March 09 2006, @05:39PM (#14886548) Homepage
        Anyone who works in a job that requires any kind of concentration (software development being the most obvious example) will, given the opportunity, enter a state of "flow" where they are wholly committed to the work they're doing.

        Yeah, that's nice in theory. In practice, the people most dedicated to The Flow (tm), are the antisocial, uncooperative nitwits who hole themselves up in their offices for 8+ hours each day, only to turn out piles of un-reviewed, un-documented, poorly-specified crap (whether code or otherwise).

        With no exceptions, the best tech workers I know are balanced, social people who prefer not to hole up in their offices. The best coding environment I ever worked in was a room of 6 developers, separated by bookshelves, with small break-out rooms available for truly private conversations. Of course, you do actually have to like your coworkers for a setup like that to work, but I digress....

        • Re:Just Another Tool (Score:5, Insightful)

          by aeoo (568706) on Friday March 10 2006, @12:33AM (#14888778) Journal
          Ah, you should open up your mind more.

          I've had from about 1000 friends (not kidding) to almost none. I'm not this or that. I'm not social or anti-social. Sometimes I chat up almost anyone, and other times I want my space. Sometimes I am a party/clown type fool and others times I'm serious. Don't stick me with your idiotic labels just because you didn't have the priviledge to know me for more than 3 years, please.

          Right now I work in a cube. I love talking to others. Right now. I am not obligated to keep loving it. I am not obligated to hate it. And here's the kicker, I still enter the zone! Even in a social situation I can be as focused as anyone in a completely isolated and sound-proof office. AND it doesn't stop me from being able to chat with my cube buddies once in a while, or maybe a lot on some days. Or maybe not at all on others.

          For Pete's sake, just stop stereotyping. The zone, social, anti-social, good, bad, asshole, nice, it's not how you imagine. It's really not. It only seems you got it nailed down. But once you start asking yourself tough questions and start being really observant, you'll see that people are individuals and that many qualities you previously thought to be exclusive are not necessarily exclusive.

          Someone in an office can be very friendly and social. Someone in a cube farm or in a completely open environment can be able to enter the zone. Someone who can enter the zone can be very considerate of others. Someone who is a socialite could be an inconsiderate and narcisistic asshole. And so on. Just because you talk to others a lot and get your code reviewed doesn't mean you write good code. You might be stupid and resistant to change, no matter how much your code gets reviewed. The reviewers might be idiots. It's really, really hard to say. It's very context/situation dependent. And please, I am not trying to know code reviews -- I love open source and I constantly solicit reviews of my own code, even though code review is not even a policy in my workplace.

          In a word, just try to grow an open mind. Please. For all of us! Not just for your own sake.

      • Re:Just Another Tool (Score:5, Informative)

        by fm6 (162816) on Thursday March 09 2006, @05:41PM (#14886580) Homepage Journal
        That's funny. I work at a company where almost everybody has a private office. And yet lots of people go home to work to get away from the distractions!

        The way to eliminate distractions is not to build walls, but to build awareness of people's needs. People need to be aware of how the noise they make affects others. That's not just important in cube land — somebody with a nasty case of "cell phone shout" can reach through walls!

      • Re:Just Another Tool (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Usquebaugh (230216) on Thursday March 09 2006, @06:01PM (#14886754)
        I'm just starting to experiment with sensory deprivation at work. I'm using a set of the monitors in glasses and also a set of ear defenders with an old set of mini headphones embedded.

        It's going pretty well and I can pretty much stay in the flow no matter what. Although I do worry about the fire alarms. Next I'm going to try a recliner.

        Ideally I'd like to dump the keyboard and mouse, but I can't think how.

        I'm much better at getting through work, although my wierdness factor is just gone up an order of magnitude.

      • Re:Just Another Tool (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ltbarcly (398259) on Thursday March 09 2006, @07:58PM (#14887593)
        Actually, that isn't 'flow'. It's Attention Deficit Disorder. It's very, very common among computer programmers, as intelligent people with ADD will self select CS because the instant feedback gives an immediate reward for concentration, and therefore they feel more successful at computer work than other endeavors.

        See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperfocus [wikipedia.org]
  • Without cubes, we never would have been given Dilbert, Office Space or User Friendly. Cubes aint all that bad!

    • Re:Yes! ...and (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NoseBag (243097) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:26PM (#14885851)
      ...don't forget the - to me - absolutely precious term:

      PRAIRIE DOGGING! ...naturally I mean the cube-farm-heads-popping-up kind, not the "I have to go to the rest room really bad" kind. Although the latter is mildly amusing too.

    • Re:Now wait just a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by susano_otter (123650) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:29PM (#14885881) Homepage
      Without cubes, we never would have been given Dilbert, Office Space or User Friendly. Cubes aint all that bad!

      The creators of these works are essentially profiting from helping us to relieve the stress and pain caused by bad work environments and policies.

      Imagine what rewarding and fulfilling work they could do, if society had no need for them to expend their creative energies helping us to relieve the stress of working in cubicles.

      Imagine what more we could all do, if we didn't have to relieve that stress in the first place!

      Dilbert, Office Space, and User Friendly all make the best of a bad situation. I'd rather their creators never had a bad situation to make the best of, in the first place.

  • Cubicles are Cubs Fans ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:15PM (#14885728)
    Cubicles are Cubs Fans who sit in their ice-cold stadium
  • tell me you all aren't pumped full of donuts, chained to the desk, allowed to get big and fat, and then sold for slaughter right before the holidays....

  • I agree completely! (Score:5, Funny)

    by rob_squared (821479) <rob.squaredNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:17PM (#14885753)
    To remedy this, I suggest corner window offices for all office employees.

    • Windows (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dpbsmith (263124) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:33PM (#14885919) Homepage
      I don't think it's practical to give everyone a corner office, but everyone _could_ have a window.

      In Peopleware, Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister observe that work better in offices with windows. When this is pointed out, management usually says "sure, but it's impossible to give everyone a room with a window."

      DeMarco and Lister's reply is that in fact every hotel in the world manages to do this.

      • Re:Windows (Score:5, Insightful)

        by XenoRyet (824514) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:40PM (#14885986)
        Yes, but hotels try for the most appealing use of their land space, not the most efficent. You could give everyone a window office, but it'll cost you. I imagine the price per day per square foot is much higher in a hotel than an office building.

        It is, of course, entirely possible that the cost will be worth it, due to the incresed productivity, reduced stress, and general worker well being. It's just not as straight forward as it may appear.

      • Re:Windows (Score:5, Funny)

        by Zerth (26112) on Thursday March 09 2006, @05:20PM (#14886348) Homepage
        Hell, I don't even have an office, let alone one along an outside wall, and I have a window!

        In fact, nearly everybody here has a window, because the building used to be a window factory, so the previous company used their own product nearly everywhere in the construction. If it was to showcase them or to cut down on the cost of drywall, I'm not sure.

        Of course most of them look out onto stairwells or warehouse shelves, but at least they are windows:)

      • Re:Windows (Score:5, Funny)

        by Bull999999 (652264) on Thursday March 09 2006, @05:23PM (#14886379) Journal
        work better in offices with windows

        This is Slashdot. I recommend that they get Linuxes instead.

    • Re:I agree completely! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by infinite9 (319274) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:52PM (#14886110)
      To remedy this, I suggest corner window offices for all office employees.

      I would be far happier in my cube if the walls went floor to ceiling, and there were real sound dampening materials in the walls. I can hold a conversation with the guy on the other side of the wall while speaking in a low voice. And I'm sick and tired of impromptu speaker-phone conference calls in the cube next to me.

      I feel exactly the same way about bathroom stalls.

  • Easy fix... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bob Cat - NYMPHS (313647) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:18PM (#14885755) Homepage
    We just move to icosahedronicles.

  • What the dead believe (Score:5, Informative)

    by liveinthewire (648556) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:18PM (#14885759)
    "even the designer of the cubicle believes now that they are a bad idea."

    Unlikely, since he's been dead for several years.

  • Oh dear god no (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:18PM (#14885760)
    Open plan is even worse, jesus christ I can't bear open plan, oh dear god please don't make me go back to open plan, please!

  • Don't have that problem... (Score:5, Funny)

    by creimer (824291) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:18PM (#14885761) Homepage
    ... theorized that productivity would rise if people could see more of their work spread out in front of them ...

    What if your work is in front of you, behind you, on both sides of you, and even hanging above you like a 100-ton anvil? Some cubicles are death traps waiting to happen. Especially if you got a Star Trek nut in a cube.

  • Too little, too late (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AusIV (950840) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:18PM (#14885762)
    Unfortunately, stating that it was a bad idea decades after the fact does nothing for the poor beings trapped in these small cages.

  • Of course they are a bad idea! (Score:5, Funny)

    by DaveV1.0 (203135) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:19PM (#14885768) Journal
    Do you have any idea how hard it is to goofy off properly with people walking by?

    It bothers me even when I actually doing work.

    And here comes someone now.....

  • From the perspective of a new cube monkey... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MikeRT (947531) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:20PM (#14885779) Homepage
    My first real programming job had me working in a lab with a few other students at an internship. We worked in an environment where we could all see what we were doing because of the total lack of privacy. Now that I am a graduate and a cube monkey, what I see is that cubicles offer the worst of both worlds. They give people the illusion of privacy, which is why a lot of people look at porn at work, and it also makes it much more casual to walk in and engage in idle chit chat since you have no door to knock on or authenticate access to.

    Cubicles are, however, a very good way to cheaply maximize space use because you don't have to build the walls, buy the doors and install the windows that are, well, kind of par for the course with having a bonafide office of your own.

  • Not quite true (Score:5, Informative)

    by WindBourne (631190) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:21PM (#14885789) Journal
    Some of the other articles speak about that he still likes the cubicles. What he objects to, is small cubicles. When he designed it, they were about the size of a standard office. Now, they are about 1/6 to 1/8 of the size of an office. Big difference.

  • My personal opinion... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ErichTheRed (39327) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:21PM (#14885792)
    I tend to agree, although don't forget that cubicles are a huge imporvement over rows and rows of desks with zero privacy whatsoever. Personally, I'd rather have an office, or at least a cubicle-sized space with a door I can close. It's very distracting for some people to hear everyone's phone conversations, music choices, etc. When I work on a problem, I tend to go lock myself in a lab or some other closed space so I can have "alone time" and carefully consider things.

    It wouldn't be hard at all to give current cubicles full-sized walls and doors. I think it would greatly improve productivity. Think of how many times you've had to listen to people talking two feet away from you while you're trying to concentrate.

    One of the main barriers to adoption is the fact that you can't oversee your staff like you can in a cubicle farm or open office. But then again, if you have to constantly watch them, do you really want them as employees? :-)

  • You should know the sordid history of this design (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:28PM (#14885869)
    I worked on design of the cubicle. The original idea had us placing workers inside transparent spheres, but testing revealed some office environments devolved into crazy pinball machines or a bumper car ride from hell. Our second revision merely squared off the spheres and lowered the height for visibility. There was no long-term view to our design. We were just trying to meet a deadline.

  • Can we kill the paging system as well? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by newdamage (753043) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:28PM (#14885873) Homepage Journal
    The tandem of tiny cubes and the paging system is enough to drive one to insanity. Nothing like finally slipping into the zone to get some real work done when everybody leaves for lunch when suddenly there is the blaring overhead, "Will the owner of a black jeep please come to the front desk? Your lights are on."

    And suddenly I'm back to square one. I don't even think industrial strength ear plugs could block out most corporate paging systems.
  • If you read TFA, you'll see that Probst, the inventor of the cubicle, died in 2000. It was actually before then that he realized that cubicles were a mistake...

  • It's All Relative Really (Score:4, Insightful)

    by aquatone282 (905179) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:40PM (#14885989)

    Prior to starting a second-career as a software engineer for a medium-sized defense contractor, I was an avionics technician in the USAF. My work areas were either windowless labs, aircraft hangars, or aircraft parking areas.

    I'll take this cube in climate controlled building with big windows any day. I have more privacy and more comfort. Plus, my co-workers don't fart, spit, and discuss goose-hunting all freakin' day long.

    Just my 2 cents.

  • Bullpens are bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cgrayson (22160) * on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:49PM (#14886080) Homepage

    The collaborative power of people working on the same project sitting together is crap.

    For every time it saves time for one person (in a (typical?) four-person bullpen to be able to call out a question to the others, there's exactly three times it distracts and breaks the flow of the others.

    And that's purposeful interruptions; it's not even counting incidental distractions (phone calls, thinking-out-loud comments, etc.).

    I've worked in both private offices and open environments, and I'm with Joel [joelonsoftware.com]. Privacy and lack of interruption is key for developers.

  • Cubicles a Giant Mistake
    Impossible. Most cubicles are very tiny, and even of those that aren't I have never seen one that could be described as "giant".

  • Cubicles inhibit brain growth (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Doctor Memory (6336) on Thursday March 09 2006, @05:18PM (#14886333) Homepage
    Check out the article here [typepad.com] by Kathy Sierra (of Head First fame). She quotes neuroscientist Elizabeth Gould of Princeton saying "complex surroundings create a complex brain". Basically, a monotonous environment causes the brain to stop producing new neurons. For years, it was thought that we were born with all the neurons we would ever have, largely because all studies of primate brains involved keeping the monkeys in cages -- an environment that inhibits neuron formation and growth! Now research shows that a stimulating environment fosters neuron formation and reduces brain stress. Time to bust out the electric screwdriver!

  • Fun with cubicles (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ratbert42 (452340) on Thursday March 09 2006, @05:28PM (#14886425)
    In my office, one guy used cardboard to increase the height of his cube walls. We almost put in a masking tape / Les Nesman 4th wall and door for him, but he got moved to an office because he whined so much. Which led to everyone whining.

    I did something similar to keep my chatty neighbor from driving me nuts. I started by putting up a huge whiteboard so it stuck an extra foot above the cube wall. Then he couldn't Kilroy over the wall and chat. Then I put two extra desktop machines at the end of my desk to keep him from sitting on my desk to chat. As bonuses, it blocked the view a bit more and the extra white noise drowned him out. Then I had to put an old monitor and desktop on the floor behind my chair so there was nowhere left to stand in my cube to chat. My cube looks like something from Sanford-n-Son, but it keeps people away.

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