Dinosaur is not really the correct description, give it 20 years & cubicles will return. Dinosaurs likely will not. You can only torture your employees so much before they leave for another company that has a better working environment.

As a hearing impaired person, I can’t help but think the acoustic environment in these offices is probably downright hellish. I don’t see any particular sound-dampening or -proofing surfaces. On the contrary, there’s lots of sharp corners and largish hard surfaces that will probably echo badly.

Second, to me the office…

Yes. I contracted for a year at a certain popular search engine and I can tell you that this is so right. Neither I, nor anyone I worked with, went into the office to get focussed work done. I did that at home, then went to the office for meetings and collaborative stuff.

Yeah this is a workspace envisioned by someone thinking about everything except getting work done.

I feel you man. You have no idea. The funniest thing about the open workspace they moved us to about a year ago is that the Managers got offices. After about 2 weeks, they were annoyed at the distraction of seeing people walk by their huge glass walls all the time (you know, interupted their important conference call…

Ah, yes, what I like to call the low-productivity workplace, where you can see and hear everything everyone is doing at all times. Instead of having the focus to do difficult work, you’re distracted constantly and end up just taking your work home with you to do in the quiet hours of the night.