Employers are rethinking open-plan office design
As a software engineer, I don&#x27;t see offices as something necessary.<p>Everything you do leaves a digital footprint: issue trackers, version control, instant messaging, e-mail. Everything is timestamped, everything leaves multiple copies.<p>If you want to check if someone is working, it is not necessary to see if someone is at their desk. If you want to grab someone&#x27;s attention, you can have a meeting that does not distract people in adjacent desks.<p>You can still gather and have IRL activities. That is OK. But I don&#x27;t need to that every day. Most days I need to get things done, and focus.<p>During meetings, the most important thing I need to get from that meeting is information in order to make decisions. I need to focus my attention on what&#x27;s being presented, not on how people dress, their haircut, their age, weight, stature and other superficial aspects that have no impact on the product whatsoever. Likewise, I don&#x27;t want the meeting to be interrupted by someone commenting about someone&#x27;s haircut.<p>Then, there&#x27;s non-verbal communication. Some will claim you need body language to perform sentiment analysis or to cross-validate what&#x27;s being said, etc. But those activities take away attention from the points being discussed.<p>Then, there&#x27;s legal liability. If you want to go &quot;off the record&quot;, then you will not like things being recorded. If you are a honest person acting within the law, you don&#x27;t have strong reasons to go off the record. If your modus operandi is to gaslight people, you won&#x27;t like meetings that are potentially recorded. Overall, visibility is accountability, and accountability is key to keep things healthy and legal.<p>People&#x27;s appearance and other superficial aspects of a contributor should have very little importance when compared to their deliveries. A remote culture helps people to focus on what&#x27;s important.