I think googles own Eric Schmidt had the best response to this. If open office's were bad for buisness or destroying the workspace the free market would bear that out. There are tangable benefits which is why companies move towards it. I understand some people hate it, but most don't so why do we keep getting the same articles every few months saying the same thing. We get it _you_ don't like the open office space others do. I am sorry your not able to have the office the way you like it, I am upset that no one else seems to like TV shows I find enjoyable and they keep getting canceled.
I take issue with this point of view- Open offices can be terrible for some businesses and terrific for others. So "the market" isn't going to make some simple decision for everyone.
Google makes 250k per employee, and can afford to have a thoughtful and spacious open office that has sound proofing and sufficient break-out rooms and meeting places.
On top of that, they can afford to be picky with their employees and hire thoughtful intelligent people.
Compare that with a standard company workplace.
First, they get excited about saving money by smashing more people into a smaller area. Second, they are following a trend and don't know to care about the 'small' things that make an open office livable (adequate side rooms, soundproofing, etc) Third they have whatever hierarchy they had before, which probably prevents people from collaborating easily because they'll be stealing time from their bosses projects etc. Next, they aren't hiring to Google's standards. After that, they might not be in a tech industry with quick feedback to failure and success and be filled with people who therefore optimizing for weirder goals. Finally, all those employees aren't used to the open office plan, resent it, and are filled with bad habits.
So in the end it's easy for me to see tons of terrible open office plans, while acknowledging they work terrifically for some people.
The free market would take care of it if everything else were the same. Like a Google with open floor plan competing against a Google without. I rather think that these companies work despite the open floor plan, and would be even better without it. It's just that their advantage in other areas are big enough so they can afford to be sub optimal in this particular area. This of course implies that the effect can't be huge.
You raise a good point in my defense. When Toyota introduce 6-Sigma the benefits were so great that companies began moving to that methodology en masse. Private offices and offices with more privacy exist and people are moving _away_ from them towards open offices. In the case of 6-Sigma it costs more to run your assembly line in accordance with its principles, but when companies saw the tangible benefits they started to switch.
It's cheaper and the lost benefits of private offices don't show up on any spreadsheet.
Which is not to say that they aren't there, it's just that private offices are not investable, so they won't happen any more.
I wonder if Eric Schmidt believes that great art will be produced by the most efficient market, or if he thinks that breakthrough science will come out of the most popular lab?
