The Open Workspace

The year was 1999 and while the rise of the machines did not happen; the rise of open seating did. Offices grew at an alarming rate. The fall of the cubicle was well under way.

With workers abandoning their posts and coming in later and later to the office, one hero stood out from the rest and explained true freedom to the human tech worker: the open office.

“An office with unlimited freedom, no barriers; no borders.”. This hero passed the torch to other companies in the valley and soon the “open office” was standard.

First there were the dogs. They were asked to “feel at home”. Next were the catered lunches. Finally they brought in a playroom with minor staffing. While all sensibility had gone out the window; the teams velocity continually increased. The scrum master perhaps had lost track of what exactly a story point was. The final step was the noise canceling headphones. While the colleagues spoke via Slack and Skype (some even via iMessage) there was something missing.

In 2016 sign language was introduced. Several experts in optimization were brought in. For the sake of diversity; they were all deaf and mute. While some thought that this to be a disadvantage; management took interest. Newly graduated MBAs to monetize diversity encouraged the use of American sign language at the office. They kept their headphones on, their messages in Slack, and their person to person communication was done with ASL.

It started out sublime. Next, were the perverse sexual innuendo hand signals delivered from one end of the room to the other. Only human after all. While HR rapidly banned speaking with hands; the innuendo only continued. Soon all communication was sent through an AI known only as Melinda HR. Melinda was a sentient email program that filtered out all non-pc messages: sometimes leaving/creating even blank emails.

In the end …. everyone began to work at home. Velocity was accelerated. Work was churned out. Were they even human anymore? All that mattered was that they were alone …