[Tade0]

Going off on a tangent here but I clicked the link explaining why tower PCs used to be beige and it made me realize that my career didn't overlap with the era of cubicles - I entered the job market at a time when the norm was an open space plan.

I wonder if I would hate the cubicle as much as I hate open space offices?

Can anyone who's witnessed this transition weigh in?

[mistrial9]

yes - I worked in a computer-aided chemistry company as software engineer in California in the 90s. The culture there was from the 80s, but the scientists were very hard working! (scientists may not write very good code but you know, they can write a lot of it! athlete/scientist was common in my group). I was making pretty good money and my father wanted to see where I worked once. So I used my badge to walk in with the two of us, to a ~10 meter x 16 meter open room, with about four glass walled offices on one side and the rest of the area with cubicles.. maybe two dozen or more.. some of the cubicles were "big" with a table, some medium, and then a number of ordinary ones. I was used to it, but as a male, I could see over the cube walls while walking, whereas shorter colleagues could not. Other small things about it at another time.. (some offices at Apple Inc, Cupertino were also laid out like that -- maybe they got it from their HP-imported managers).

My father was silently aghast.. he was actually startled by seeing everyone in the room like that.. all the commotion. It had never occured to him that people could be arranged like a lab rat-maze (which it was really).

[notpachet]

You'd have hated cubicles too, before open office became the norm. Cubicles were the open office of their day. Before them, it wasn't uncommon to have an office with your own door. Or at least sharing a larger office with another person.

[TigeriusKirk]

The fun part was watching the cubicle walls get shorter and shorter over the years until they vanished completely.

[heymijo]

> Can anyone who's witnessed this transition weigh in?

Sure.

If you don't like the way you are treated in your organization today in an open office, you probably wouldn't like the way you are treated in one with cubicles.

Cubicle environments could be soul crushing (see the movie Office Space). They offer a bit of privacy, but noise, interruptions, a boss peering over your back at your screen unannounced could all still interrupt flow and focused work.

[amelius]

Cubicles were not that great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtTUsOKjWyQ

[Icathian]

I've just barely bridged it. Cubicles were better I think. It wasn't real privacy but it was at least something.