Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!sunybcs!bingvaxu!leah!itsgw!steinmetz!uunet!actnyc!gcf
From: gcf@actnyc.UUCP (Gordon Fitch)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Offices versus Cubicles
Message-ID: <676@actnyc.UUCP>
Date: 1 Feb 88 18:54:57 GMT
References: <2058@pdn.UUCP> <82@sickkids.UUCP> <1988Jan27.092204.22702@lsuc.uucp> <31577UH2@PSUVM>
Reply-To: gcf@actnyc.UUCP (Gordon Fitch)
Organization: InterACT Corporation
Lines: 38

In article <31577UH2@PSUVM> UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer) writes:
>I'm tired of reading about cubicles.  

But the issue of how software is produced includes the issue of how
people actually do the work.  It's all not just abstractions, as
some posters imply.

>                             .... The people who make that decision
>are doing the best that they can.  The people who design the software
>(us!) are doing the best that they can.
> 
>Most likely, the people who chose cubicles for their company are on average
>just as good at their job as the software folk are at theirs.
>     

But between these two sets of people, there is almost always a
difference in knowledge, culture, and motivational systems.  Most
software producers are laborers (as opposed to managers).  Most
cubicle-specifiers are managerial, or work directly with management.
In at least profit-oriented concerns, the motivation of management
is develop value as fast as possible at the least cost*.  This 
motivation may lead to a certain amount of short-sightedness.
It is easy to see that cubicles cost less, but the cost of the
detriment to technician productivity is harder to measure and easy to
forget or pass off with handwaving. 

>Everybody please get back to work 8-) doing what you do best.  The US is
>somewhat short of productivity these days.
>                                          lee
>
A lot of the literature I read on the productivity issue implies that
the problem is generally located with management.  Managers need the
kind of information the original poster was trying to develop in
order to manage better.  From time to time I manage projects, and I
find the political-managerial-environmental problems often more difficult to
solve, and more costly, than the technical problems. 

[* I pass over the question of productivity management versus marketing.]