Workplaces need more walls, not fewer (2014)
As a remote worker that despises open offices, I don&#x27;t believe that nodding in agreement with opinion pieces such as those by Lindsey Kaufman is helpful to the discussion about it.<p>The 2 common cited reasons of <i>&quot;saves real estate costs&quot;</i> and <i>&quot;employee distrust&quot;</i> have become thought-stopping memes that prevents the analysis of executives who <i>prefer</i> working in open offices and became successful with it.  I previously posted an example of Mark Zuckerberg&#x27;s thinking:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13374848" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13374848</a><p>Look at those old photos and then listen to him speak about his new 2015 open desk in the video.  Contemplate whether he built the new open office to spy on everyone or... was it to recreate and extend the &quot;open office&quot; kitchen table at Harvard that let the team quickly iterate on software and get to $100 billion IPO?<p>Would Lindsey&#x27;s complaints sway him?  She says:<p><i>&gt;A 2013 study found that many workers in open offices are frustrated by distractions that lead to poorer work performance. Nearly half of the surveyed workers in open offices said the lack of sound privacy was a significant problem for them and more than 30 percent complained about the lack of visual privacy.</i><p>Why would Mark Z care about these surveys?  Of those respondents that were dissatisfied, what did <i>those workers who require private offices</i> build that was great?  He built a multi-billion dollar company with a cramped elbow-to-elbow open office.<p>Opinion pieces about this topic are not convincing.  Concrete business performance <i>superior to everyone else</i> based on private offices would be convincing.