[michaelochurch]

New Economy, it was called.

Oddly enough, we did end up with a new economy. Old corporations were torn down and new ones were built, and cultures generally changed for the worse. Employee stack ranking was still unusual when Enron rolled it out (leading to its demise). Open-plan offices for programmers were a minor startup negative to be put away after 50 people, not something to be celebrated.

We actually got a new economy in the early and mid-2000s (for those who don't know, 2002-5 and 2008-9 were horrible years for job seekers, especially recent college grads). It just wasn't a very fun one, and most of the newness had nothing to do with technical progress.

[jsprogrammer]

Early open-plan office designs for the enterprise: http://www.romanroadsmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/tr...

More recent: http://chsi.harvard.edu/markone/images/HumanComputers.jpg

Putting humans into rows and columns, performing the same tasks, is common pretty much anywhere you look.

The list is a (the?) fundamental data structure, and the two dimensional list is an easy extension.

For those who desire control over other humans, it's an easy way to check that things are (superficially) in line.

[] The trireme design is an arguably effective arrangement in terms of moving a boat.

[Retra]

Anywhere except where you want creative intellectual work to happen.

[saryant]

Stack ranking didn't help but Enron's problems were far deeper and had more to do with a fundamental lack of oversight. Stack ranking, if anything, was a symptom of the same disease that led Skilling to insist on mark-to-market accounting and Fastow to create special investment vehicles that profited himself rather than his employer.