Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Real engineers prefer cubicles

Well, maybe not really, but I could never tell from the work environment of software engineers that I see today.

Jim Showalter recently wrote a blog post called Open Cubicles Must Die ranting against you-know-what. I think he made some interesting points, and it's a post worth reading. Jim is hardly the only person who argue that private offices are more productive, but what I find interesting is the seeming lack of desire for private offices from the engineers themselves. Jim's blog post got a lot of page views, but did not really get many comments supporting his position. I personally have not discerned much interest among my software engineer peers, even disregarding cost. People are actually proud of their wide open spaces and are disdainful of individual offices. Have individual offices gone the way of the dodo? Would you prefer your own office if given the choice?