I’ve written many times about the evils and absurdities of open plan offices. There’s lots of duckspeak about improving communication or culture building but everyone knows that its real—and only—virtue is that it’s cheap.
Given that fact, if you find yourself in such a place, the chances are great that it won’t change to a more sensible arrangement. Fortunately, Matt Blodgett has some simple suggestions to make open plan offices suck less. They’re easy to implement so unless your management have come to believe their own quacking, you shouldn’t get much pushback from managers.