[mulmen]

I would love to know more about this trend. It fascinates me that we have settled on something that is so widely hated.

It seems correlated with the decline in UI design. 30 years ago we had ideas of how people interact with computers which we had built up over decades. What appear to be dated UIs like Windows 3.1 or even XP actually had a lot of thought and care put into them, with sound reasoning. The modern take seems fixated on minor details without any holistic vision or even reason.

How did we get so bad at decision making? It seems like we stopped valuing insight in favor of data. But without insight we just chase the data we have.

[sokoloff]

Something which is hated by the not-decision-makers but costs 25-40% as much of a big number will be overwhelmingly chosen by the are-decision-makers.

[mulmen]

Yeah, this reinforces another perception I have. Which is that we have lost any concept of opportunity cost. We might save on commercial real estate but what is the cost in productivity, innovation, and ultimately profit?

[piva00]

Those metrics demand a much deeper and proper investigation of data to materialise into a quantifiable way for management, management is pretty blind to anything that isn't easy-to-crunch numbers. Probably due to education in most MBA curricula.

Everyone who has worked in an open plan office knows the pains, the constant interruptions, not only from chatter or shoulder taps but the incessant movement of people around, the alertness of being aware of people behind you, so on and so forth, but those are not easily quantifiable. Much like UX, to build a case for something that empirically most of us know is better takes a lot more effort than some bean counters/MBAs pointing to a number in a spreadsheet.

[mulmen]

Those “metrics” require good instincts. The kind that justify the eye-watering compensation packages that upper management demand.

I’m a data engineer but even I think we worship data instead of understanding it as part of a larger decision making process.

[JPws_Prntr_Fngr]

Opportunity cost is a concept from microeconomics, a field completely alien to the vast majority of the managerial strata, in my experience; any lingering principles from microecon 101 having been long since replaced by MBA dogma.

[thaumasiotes]

> It fascinates me that we have settled on something that is so widely hated.

It's not obvious that it is widely hated. You can find people who hate it. But that's true of everything.

[int_19h]

I've seen the transition from offices to open space in Microsoft first hand. The management basically made this same argument - "sure, you might not like it, but we did studies and most employees who participated in them think it's better! give it a chance!"

Somehow, those happy employees were never in my circles. Or in my colleagues' circles. Like, pretty much every time this subject come up in any context, the overwhelming sentiment was that there's no way the purported upsides are worth the obvious and unavoidable major downsides.

They moved ahead with it anyway, of course. And it sucked as much as everybody was expecting. Out of several dozen colleagues, I think there was a grand total of two who didn't mind it, and they were already doing the whole "roam around with a laptop" thing anyway.

[mulmen]

I don’t know anyone who likes it. Where are the people who love open offices? They probably exist but I have never met one.

[rightbyte]

They exist. They want to feel the pulse. The same persons that like bars where you have to scream to have a conversation I guess.

[red-iron-pine]

Nobody likes that either, at least not sober. But that's where the music is, the people are, the dancing is.

source: bartended in a VIP space in a casino while doing fiber splicing on the side. the number of people who bought into the VIP "because it's not as loud" was very high; I heard some permutation of "it's nicer in here, quieter, I can actually talk to people" every shift.

[thaumasiotes]

You don't think you might be seeing some selection bias in your sample of "people who paid to be somewhere quieter"?

[mulmen]

I like socializing in bars with people and I like doing work in quiet isolation. I also sleep in a bedroom but cook in a kitchen. There’s nothing inconsistent about that. Different settings are appropriate for different things.

[snapcaster]

I like them personally, or at least don't dislike them. I don't have the issues others talk about because I can just put airpods on

[mulmen]

What a strange take. So you derive no benefit but still like it. Would you dislike an actual office with walls?

[snapcaster]

No, i'd probably be fine with that too. I just can't relate to how passionate people are about this issue i've never really cared