[dbattaglia]

Funny anecdote about that: I briefly worked in one of those "startup inside a megacorp" companies, which had the typical trendy NYC startup look, open floor plan, free snacks and lunch, etc. Fairly often, you would see upper management types from the headquarters walking investors around. One of my coworkers, who worked for the company for many years, believed that we were basically just a zoo to look exciting for the investors compared to the stuffy corporate office. Good developer, here's a banana!

Of course I don't think that's necessarily 100% true, but it always stuck with me.

[mlthoughts2018]

I think this is pretty close to being 100% true. Expensive tech workers function more like office furniture in most companies, where the executives don’t actually care about productivity anyway, beyond a few senior engineers who decide everything anyway.

[talmand]

In a previous job I once had a VP make a quick run-through of the office to make sure everybody was at their desks doing something, anything. The reason being that they were about to walk clients through the space and wanted the appearance of hard work being done. The VP was very open about this reasoning with us as he was herding people into place. I believe a few people sat at different desks because their regular desks were away from the path.

[dbattaglia]

Oh yeah I've been there as well. I've also seen upper management insist on adding more infrastructure monitors on the walls for the same reason: clients think they look cool!

[ryandrake]

Wow, I remember being a junior guy long ago and getting assigned this task. They brought in two huge (at the time) monitors and had me set them up to show “real time” graphs and plots. Didn’t matter what the data was, just find a computer, plug it into those monitors and show some techinal-looking ambiance for the 15 minutes that some investor or other big shot will be in the room.

[mikec3010]

This is eerily similar of the stories about guided tours of Pyongyang.

[waylandsmithers]

Yes, just like suits in hardhats walking through rows of humming machines on the factory floor. Things are getting done.

[4029dlsdkld]

At my first startup job upper management would explicitly tell everybody to come in early and look busy whenever there was a board meeting or investors around.

[yourapostasy]

Lest someone think that description is hyperbolic, this is a real, recent event at IBM [1]. The audience was a marketing department, so the "spiff up the cubicles" talk isn't solely aimed at technical staff, it is everyone (except perhaps sales?).

/r/IBM is an IBM-controlled sub, and the original was deleted by the IBM-employed mod, hence the screencap.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/ajC1kNk.jpg