I’m old enough that I worked in an actual office, like with a door and everything. It was the best. Truly. Not only was it a great way to be productive but it also spoke to how much the company valued you and your time.
When the cube farms came along it was billed as a cost cutting measure but in reality it about making office layouts more compatible with cycles of mass reorganization. In this structure, management needed the ability to shift bodies at will while still maintaining some semblance of structure. Cubes provided that flexibility while still giving the appearance of stability and status.
You would have slightly larger pens for more “important” members of staff. Higher walls were also part of the status game… But in reality, as the walls came down, the people became even more expendable.
As the nature of work trended further towards transient employment, the cube walls got shorter and shorter till they just did away with them entirely. Well, entirely for regular people. Management always had offices, even if it was just commandeering a conference room as an office.
I’m not surprised to see a new trend developing with tiny silos. I assume that they’ll add chutes below each workstation so employees can be conveniently flushed when a boost to the stock price is needed.
When the cube farms came along it was billed as a cost cutting measure but in reality it about making office layouts more compatible with cycles of mass reorganization. In this structure, management needed the ability to shift bodies at will while still maintaining some semblance of structure. Cubes provided that flexibility while still giving the appearance of stability and status.
You would have slightly larger pens for more “important” members of staff. Higher walls were also part of the status game… But in reality, as the walls came down, the people became even more expendable.
As the nature of work trended further towards transient employment, the cube walls got shorter and shorter till they just did away with them entirely. Well, entirely for regular people. Management always had offices, even if it was just commandeering a conference room as an office.
I’m not surprised to see a new trend developing with tiny silos. I assume that they’ll add chutes below each workstation so employees can be conveniently flushed when a boost to the stock price is needed.