Surveillance is the primary reason for its use. It's the only way organizations would tolerate the cost-ineffectiveness of that working style.
Whether people can be conditioned for it is an interesting question. Naive young extroverts probably don't have much problem with it. Introverts of all stripes probably cannot be conditioned as easily since introverts are depleted of energy by social interaction.
One of my worst fears about our industry is that it will quickly become 100% open plan surveillance offices and 100% adoption of idiot time wasting Agile/Scrum/Kanban management process (which are yet another form of cost-ineffective surveillance).
Before he took down his blog, Michael O. Church had a great post warning about the "macho subordination" cultures that build up in these Panopticon-like work spaces. Young workers who don't know that the company is harming them via the surveillance culture will instead adopt a race to the bottom attitude in which people compete to be seen as most loyal by showing how much privacy and human dignity they are vocally willing to give up.
The state of physical working conditions in Silicon Valley is beyond deplorable, and the trend is quickly being copied even by large firms. And don't even think for a second that it's about money. Firms pay out the nose for idiotic, opulent showpiece offices, where rows of sweatshop-like engineering stations are just office eye candy, not means of production. When they are paying for fucking fountains, roof gardens, employee cafés, and on-site rock-climbing walls, you know the argument is not that open-plan saves money. They are just getting off on how much employees are happy to debase themselves to get foosball access or craft beer.
It tells me a lot about the integrity of Y Combinator when I see how many YC companies have deplorable surveillance and macho subordination work spaces, but that Paul Graham himself gained much notoriety for writing essays, like his pieces "Great Hackers" or "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule," which profoundly influenced me as a young programmer, that talk at length about the cost-effectiveness of providing people with protected, private, quiet space and time to get things done.
Modern YC companies, when contrasted against what Graham describes for almost a decade as good places to work, are a total farce (and the rest of the start-up world follows suit).
Whether people can be conditioned for it is an interesting question. Naive young extroverts probably don't have much problem with it. Introverts of all stripes probably cannot be conditioned as easily since introverts are depleted of energy by social interaction.
One of my worst fears about our industry is that it will quickly become 100% open plan surveillance offices and 100% adoption of idiot time wasting Agile/Scrum/Kanban management process (which are yet another form of cost-ineffective surveillance).
Before he took down his blog, Michael O. Church had a great post warning about the "macho subordination" cultures that build up in these Panopticon-like work spaces. Young workers who don't know that the company is harming them via the surveillance culture will instead adopt a race to the bottom attitude in which people compete to be seen as most loyal by showing how much privacy and human dignity they are vocally willing to give up.
The state of physical working conditions in Silicon Valley is beyond deplorable, and the trend is quickly being copied even by large firms. And don't even think for a second that it's about money. Firms pay out the nose for idiotic, opulent showpiece offices, where rows of sweatshop-like engineering stations are just office eye candy, not means of production. When they are paying for fucking fountains, roof gardens, employee cafés, and on-site rock-climbing walls, you know the argument is not that open-plan saves money. They are just getting off on how much employees are happy to debase themselves to get foosball access or craft beer.
It tells me a lot about the integrity of Y Combinator when I see how many YC companies have deplorable surveillance and macho subordination work spaces, but that Paul Graham himself gained much notoriety for writing essays, like his pieces "Great Hackers" or "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule," which profoundly influenced me as a young programmer, that talk at length about the cost-effectiveness of providing people with protected, private, quiet space and time to get things done.
Modern YC companies, when contrasted against what Graham describes for almost a decade as good places to work, are a total farce (and the rest of the start-up world follows suit).