I hear where you're coming from, but have you been a part of a real estate search process for office space?
Open offices are crazy cheaper, and most retail developers don't build real offices anymore (and or when they renovate a commercial property pull all these walls out).
It is about cost, for anywhere I've worked or any clients I worked for. I haven't ever known a manager that wanted an open office to control or oppress their staff.
This is (mostly) why new occupancy tech exists as well btw -- the "crotch sensors". Not usually for specific employee surveillance, but to map occupancy trends and determine what parts of a space can be hot-desked or otherwise over-assigned to further reduce space requirements.
I haven't ever known a manager that wanted an open office to control or oppress their staff.
The way it works is similar to attitudes toward remote work (until a few months ago): barriers help people waste time and get away with stuff.
Control is not all about what an authority can do (which is actually the least efficient form of control), it's also about what other people are prevented from doing, sometimes structurally so, as in the context of office layout and design.
There's a simple solution. Just give up on the idea that we can expect people to work many hours ~continuously, on a regular basis.
Sure, there must be times when ~everyone is available to talk. But otherwise, just let people work when they're ready to work. And let them self report their work time.
you hit the nail on the head. The main issue here is also that MOST employers/managers don't really know how to measure your productivity, especially in modern software engineering.
That's why "Busyness" and "Butts in Seat Per Hour" are seen as proxy for productivity. That's also why politics play such a big role.
Until we find a GOOD way to measure productivity, Control and "Busyness" (the illusion of productivity) is unfortunately not going to go away.
I asked "How is that?" because relying on worker-reported hours is no less consistent with the profit motive than are current standards for salaried employees.
Employers can still calculate "profit per worker hour". And it's arguably more accurate when based on reported work time, rather than just days worked.
What would you do with it in an office, though? It's well known that you can't just throw man-hours at cognitive tasks and expect linear or even monotonic returns.
if you are flipping burgers, sure, you are expected to work continiously every hour.
but for salaried people - it doesnt make sense, sometimes you just need to sit on a problem for some time to solve it, or just sit and think about it. Salaried people arent paid by the hour, so why control them? this I dont understand
You say that salaried people aren't paid by the hour, but that's arguably a fiction. There's always a defined work day. Some employees end up "working" for inordinate amounts of time. And some employers do push employees to be more productive.
So if the standard is 40 hours per week, I'm just saying that you do the work whenever, not eight continuous hours per day, for five days per week. That decreases control of employees by employers.
I think the common counter-argument is to ask whether it's cheaper when purported productivity drops are factored in. A lot of people work more poorly with distraction but it's dressed up as collaboration.
Even if the floor space itself is open, that doesn't mean that decently high cubicles (or even floor to ceiling dividers) had to go along with it. How much is it really saving to shave 1-2 feet off cubicles for your six-figure staff? Smart workplaces don't think twice about $400 for a second monitor.
Say occupancy costs (all in) are $60 psf. Now assume occupancy is around 1 employee per 200 sf (inclusive of indirect circulation space). That means occupancy cost per employee is $60 x 200 = $12,000. Now make some assumptions about the total labour cost (salary, bonus, benefits, etc) - say $200k - and look at how little the occupancy costs are relative to that - 6% with these examples.
Jam more people in so you get it down to 1 employee per 150 sf, and you've saved $3,000 per employee, or 1.5% occupancy to labour, which can easily be lost in terms of decreased productivity with people shoulder to shoulder.
Lesson: You need only a very, very small change in productivity to counter any savings in relation to occupancy. And not just in terms of productivity of existing employees, but also the cost of lost productivity due to lower retention, or lost productivity due to more sick days given the closer proximity. This is why I've never understood why companies go anywhere but the best locations with the nicest office space... People really are the major cost and the only asset a company has. Do everything you can to make them love every second at work. The added cost of free food, nicer office, better location, etc is insignificant.
Manager here: keeping a physical eye on my directs screens seems like a lot of work that’s above and beyond my actual responsibilities. The thought of it tires me out. I’ve always assumed that it’s about land cost, especially in expensive urban areas.
The principal of the Panopticon Prison design is economic. Because the Guard can always, theoretically, be watching the prisoners assume themselves watched. It's economical because the Guard need only be plausibly watching at any time, and not actually watching.
Some of this has to do with people feeling qualitatively better by being in a small space that feels like it is part of a bigger space. Compare an American hotel room to a tiny Japanese hotel room. If you can't give actual space, make things transparent or cut down the size of the walls so there is openness when you stand up. It's a balance between openness and privacy.
Open offices are crazy cheaper, and most retail developers don't build real offices anymore (and or when they renovate a commercial property pull all these walls out).
It is about cost, for anywhere I've worked or any clients I worked for. I haven't ever known a manager that wanted an open office to control or oppress their staff.
This is (mostly) why new occupancy tech exists as well btw -- the "crotch sensors". Not usually for specific employee surveillance, but to map occupancy trends and determine what parts of a space can be hot-desked or otherwise over-assigned to further reduce space requirements.