In Defense Of Cubicles

A reader writes:

It seems to me, as someone who spent a couple of decades working in cubicles, that Franz totally misses the significant feature of the cubicle from the perspective of the office worker.  It is not that it makes everybody equal -- after all, managers still tend to have offices in most companies.  Intel under Grove notwithstanding, virtually all second-level managers and above do.

No, spotting the critical factor requires knowing that, pre cubicle, most office floors were laid out as an open sea of desks.  The change was not the loss of individual offices for workers.  Rather it was that workers acquired some kind of privacy in which to work.

The walls are not high, and there are no doors. But at least they provide some muffling of sound from those surrounding you -- which can be important if you spend a lot of time on the phone, or if you are trying to concentrate on the program that you are writing.

Perhaps as important, from a quality of life perspective, the workers now have some wall space to personalize their work space.  Put up your kids pictures.  Put up posters, even.  Add a couple of shelves full of books, or manuals, or just pretty little dust-catchers.

In short, far from being the step back that Franz seems to assume, the cubicle was actually a step forward from the open floor covered with desks that actually existed.