While modular office space is expensive,
once you own it, you can rearrange it.
jcwren, have you
ever worked someplace where the cubes were
actually rearranged while you were working there?
Do you know of anyone who has?
I'll be really surprised if that's the case.
The idea that cubes are more cost-effective
because they can be rearranged doesn't hold up, overall.
The problem isn't the cube walls themselves,
it's all of the
wiring that has to get snaked through them.
Redoing the wiring drives up the cost of rearranging cubes
to the point where you have to absorb the cost
over
multiple rearrangements
for cubes to win in the long run.
And rearranging cubes interrupts work,
so no one does it often enough
or frequently enough to recoup the extra initial cost.
Most research shows that (most) programmers
produce the most code
when they can spend
3-4 hours at a stretch on a problem,
uninterrupted.
You know, that midnight-hacking
zone we've all experienced,
when the ideas are right there in your head
and the code is flowing freely...
After an interruption,
it takes (on average)
about 10-15 minutes to get your head
back to where it was pre-interrupt.
(Yes, that's an average,
so not everyone conforms to the model;
more than a few monks here
seem to bounce back and forth effortlessly
between answering every question in sight
and writing some amazing code.)
So the "best" environment for writing a lot of
code is one
that minimizes interruptions.
For most people, that's walls and a door
that can be shut.
Many can put on the headphones to work uninterrupted
in a cube,
but you don't lose that ability if you're in a room instead.
You're right, though, that facilities people
(including landlords) love cubes,
but in my experience, it's simply because they're more
convenient for them to work with.
That convenience creates some small,
artificial savings that lose out
when you take a look at the overall cost,
especially in terms of programmer productivity.
A company gets more bang for the buck out of
making its people as productive as possible,
not sqeezing a few more dollars out of facility costs.