I must admit that I breathed a sigh of relief when I read this blogpost about working conditions at Stack Exchange. At least if I’m crazy, there are some other crazy people out there too.
The issue is what is the best configuration for optimal productivity in a workplace? Notice that I’m not even directly worrying about a global maximum which includes the well-being of the employee.
Here’s a thought experiment. Let’s say that an evil predatory company wants to maximize its return on a labor force investment with absolutely no moral compass to guide it away from even horrific policies. What would that look like? Several hundred people packed into a shipping container? Certainly that’s an approach if warm bodies per square meter is your business. Is my imagination failing me? Can there be a worse system?
Consider the thalamite crammed into a crawlspace pulling an oar below deck on an ancient Greek trireme. This brutal arrangement was, as in many modern manufacturing jobs, necessary because of the very nature of the work. If you needed to get your warship over to a battle somewhere, this is just what needed to happen. It could easily have been optimal in its context. But now imagine the technology of sailing is greatly improved and clever rigging and hull design allow for wind powered propulsion. First of all, a lot of the manpower formerly required becomes unnecessary. That is the nature of progress. But for the ones that remain, should the captain strive to match the harsh conditions that existed on human powered ships because of the tradition that good crewmen need to be tolerant of such conditions? Apparently, that’s a tempting mentality judging by today’s tech companies.
With the exception of cleaning sewers, smoke stacks, and other dirty confined places, I can’t really think of worse working conditions than being confined with too many people. Overcrowding is even too unpleasant for places designed to be unpleasant, like prisons. How many people is too many people? In my experience the answer is one rude one.
The problem is more subtle than that, however. Luckily I have a nice perspective on the issue. I have my own private office (uh three actually) and often do my more serious work from home, but I also get many opportunities to hang out in overcrowded labs and grad student offices. Yesterday was a classic example. I was in a crowded office trying to fix some computer problem and a minor discussion blossomed into a 2 hour exploration of the human condition engaging the attention of at least three people. I noticed that a fourth went out to the hall, probably to get away from it. That kind of conversation could be great fun for me in the right context and perhaps appropriate for the classical concept of what a university is, but for directed productivity, it must be dreadful. What’s more, that kind of conversation would be ideal for lunches or some other designated time which we might as well call a "party". The idea that people packed together is somehow the best way to foster discussion, collaboration, and creativity seems to me to be facile at best.
What really drives me crazy is when not only does technology offer a better system (as described in the cited blog post), but when the companies in question invented that technology. One of my primary professional specialties thanks to my strong Linux command line orientation, is that I am an expert at using computers that are in arbitrary locations. I also have at least 25 years experience at communicating over long distances using computers. Why am I still required to come to an inconvenient and unpleasant place to do my job? It seems quite suboptimal to me. Perhaps this is because I am highly self-motivated and I do not need the mental framework of ritualistically making a pilgrimage to a place of work to do work, or the peer pressure of others to schedule it.
Instead of modern good sense with respect to workplace norms, it seems like the tech industry is content to use argumentum ad populum (that’s what everyone else does), argumentum ad antiquitatem (that’s how we’ve always done it), or misdirection (we have a ping pong table!).
Here’s the "obligatory" ping pong table at my workplace.
