I work from home instead of the open floor plan hell my work provides. Something like 30% of us do so that have assigned desks. I get twice as much done at home (in 2/3 of the time) than I do at any day in the office with the noise and distractions.
But, as you said, satisfaction with the job isn’t a parameter to be cared about, just productivity.
This is true, but only if you believe that there are no correct meanings for these terms. So be aware:
Open Office planning refers to office space without fixed walls, that is divided, or undivided with demountable reconfigurable office desk systems.
Private offices are work spaces with permanent walls and doors.
Ignorance is then willful moving forward, agreed?
Wow, you’re like the open floorplan nazi, aren’t you?
You don’t work in office design or have some business interest in these things?
Yup. You can always quit and start your own business.
Ha ha ha.
This just about sums it up. “Hate open floorplans? Well, fuck you, stop bitching, and quit!”
I’m an architect, have designed offices, and have a blog about workplace design mostly inactive these days. But open or closed offices makes no difference in my "interest’ meaning compensation if that was what you are suggesting. I’ve no incentive to direct people one way or the other, beyond what works best for them.
Someday, you can show me an open office that actually works. 20+ years of being around them and I’ve yet to see one. They’re all kafkaesque nightmares of noise and distraction (and people walking up behind you and surprising you).
At least when I was at Microsoft, I got a door.
typical cube farm employee in discussion with management
That article by Michael Brill that was linked is full of thoughtful examples, at least in sketch form. For real examples - well here are some links:
Office Insight is a great blog about workplace design:
http://workplaceinsight.net
Its out of the UK, but gets in depth into design issues of the workplace.
HOK is a large american architectural firm whose blog often covers topics about workplace, including this rebuttal of the Times article:
Workalicious, my mostly inactive bog is here - very furniture centric, more for small workplaces than corporate: http://www.workalicious.org
On Office is a UK magazine about workplace design and they also have a website:
http://www.onofficemagazine.com
The Great Place to Work Institute is a way to incentivize companies to do better with the work environment:
They offer certifications which in turn can be used a recruitment and retention tool.
Then there are workplace gallery sites, which don’t offer much insight but lots of examples.
Office Design Gallery is more of a beauty show, but you’ll see some intriquing things there:
Office Snap Shots is like an online magazine of office design:
http://officesnapshots.com
This Aint No Disco is another office gallery site:
http://www.thisaintnodisco.com
They often have video tours which is fun.
Where we do what we do - more of a desk sharing site, but also interesting:
http://wherewedowhatwedo.com
Follow those, you’ll find some more.
And these will help me how? I’ve certainly never seen anything like these implemented and I really doubt I ever will. What’s the management incentive if job satisfaction is not something designers care about?
I have a simpler solution. When I am forced to work in these shit environments now, I find another job. That’s really your only option (and not an option for many, hence the violent hatred of open office plans).
20 years ago now, when I was a contractor (before being hired fulltime) at Micrsosoft, the running joke was the long rectangular space they put us in was the “Contractor Cattle Car” (or “CCC” for short). When I was working in a tech support call center years before that, I had a coworker (in poor taste) put “Arbeit Mach Frei” over the door to our work area in protest of the office plan and layout.
You wanted examples. Just sharing sources for where to find them.
Your examples don’t prove what you think they do.
A number of years ago I moved into a townhouse that had been designed by two eminent architects who have both won countless awards for their work, including the complex I was living in.
Living there made me come up with the idea – which really should be implemented – that all architecture schools should have a yearly symposium in which people who live and/or work in award-winning structures, or at least structures BY award-winning architects, present their views on what it’s like to live/work in those structures.
Hint: what architects think is “good design” is not what actually functions as good design for the people stuck dealing with the consequences.
This definition would mean that a farm of wall high cubicles with rolling tables in them would be an “open” design and an open room where people sit in cramped quarters but nothing can be moved or rearranged would not. I don’t know if this is a technical definition from architecture or something, but since I spent two years of my life working on a redeployment to an open office that would not be open by your definition, I feel like I’m going to keep using the term in the way that everyone around me uses the term professionally. I have no opinion on the efficiency of the design you are describing which is entirely focuses on whether walls are temporary and desks are demountable and is not at all focused on what the environment is actually like and whether it is open in any sense.
Can we stick with the common definition here? An Open Office is pretty well defined and has nothing to do with reconfigurability.
Plus that’s what the original article was about, and used open office the common way in the definition.
Open offices apparently are like communism. The problem isn’t open offices, the problem is no one ever does them correctly. 
You mean like…for the people? 
Remember, citizen, per @lava, the only measure of success is productivity, not subjective happiness or satisfaction by those that use said office plans.
I bet chaining me to an assembly line would make me more productive on the line (and sleeping beneath it for breaks) but I doubt we’d all want to do it.
And efficient productivity of course is vastly superior to effectiveness, especially where billable hours are concerned.
We’re getting suspiciously close to creating a module for the Paranoia RPG here, aren’t we?
Oh Paranoia.
The computer is your friend.
(side note: you may want to listen to the podcast ‘Sayer’ - if you liked Paranoia)
Like Communism, “Open Offices” only work for very small groups with shared goals…
… and who are willing to drive out anybody who fails to comply with social norms.
From my “Santa Claus is coming to town” series:
