[StevePerkins]

Well yes, there are also elements of power and control. Management worries that employees will do less work if they are not present and under observation (sad truth: for the bottom 90% of employees, they're probably correct). And open floor plans, as the high-tech sweatshop model that they are, provide the lowest cost and maximum observation.

But to my point about the degree to which fads and fashion come into play... it's bizarre that so many peers either:

(1) argue in favor of open floor plans ("More collaborative! More fun! Not all old and stuffy like cubes!"), or

(2) argue in favor of work-from-home ("More productive! Less distractions! Not all old and stuffy like cubes!"), or

(3) both, from one sentence to the next.

Open floor plans and work from home are POLAR OPPOSITES. The only thing they have in common is that they're both "not cubes". So it's bizarre to me that there aren't more moderate voices calling for on-prem workplaces of higher quality.

[yourapostasy]

I suspect what is happening is no management team of a category killer company exists that comes out and says, "we treat our developers right, that is our key to success", or even a softer version of that, sufficiently to develop cargo culting by management in other companies. I don't think quantification will help in this situation, and thus even higher quality on-prem workplaces lose out, as the productivity metrics are confounded by too many factors, and are not simple to communicate to finance.

If I was on a management team of a category killer that figured out doing the opposite of what everyone else was doing was helping my company, then I wouldn't be broadcasting that. In this case, if I figured out that high quality workplaces (whether at home or on-prem) conferred substantial competitive advantages, then I sure wouldn't be telling my competitors that.

If it came out that Apple for example, consistently put in high quality workplaces for the teams that developed their category-killing products, and took steps to hide that fact from the world because they recognized its competitive advantage, then there might be some recognition and cargo culting. Much of management is a social activity as much as an analytical activity.