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Cubed: The Secret History of the Workplace
You mean this place we go to five days a week has a "history"? "Cubed" reveals the unexplored yet surprising story of the places where most of the world's work--our work--gets done. From "Bartleby the Scrivener" to "The Office," from the steno pool to the open-plan cubicle farm, "Cubed" is a fascinating, often funny, and sometimes disturbing anatomy of the white-collar world and how it came to be the way it is--and what it might become.
In the mid-nineteenth century clerks worked in small, dank spaces called "counting-houses." These were all-male enclaves, where work was just paperwork. Most Americans considered clerks to be questionable dandies, who didn't do "real work." But the joke was on them: as the great historical shifts from agricultural to industrial economies took place, and then from industrial to information economies, the organization of the workplace evolved along with them--and the clerks took over. Offices became rationalized, designed for both greater efficiency in the accomplishments of clerical work and the enhancement of worker productivity. Women entered the office by the millions, and revolutionized the social world from within. Skyscrapers filled with office space came to tower over cities everywhere. "Cubed "opens our eyes to what is a truly "secret history" of changes so obvious and ubiquitous that we've hardly noticed them. From the wood-paneled executive suite to the advent of the cubicles where 60% of Americans now work (and 93% of them dislike it) to a not-too-distant future where we might work anywhere at any time (and perhaps "all" the time), "Cubed" excavates from popular books, movies, comic strips ("Dilbert!"), and a vast amount of management literature and business history, the reasons why our workplaces are the way they are--and how they might be better.
In the mid-nineteenth century clerks worked in small, dank spaces called "counting-houses." These were all-male enclaves, where work was just paperwork. Most Americans considered clerks to be questionable dandies, who didn't do "real work." But the joke was on them: as the great historical shifts from agricultural to industrial economies took place, and then from industrial to information economies, the organization of the workplace evolved along with them--and the clerks took over. Offices became rationalized, designed for both greater efficiency in the accomplishments of clerical work and the enhancement of worker productivity. Women entered the office by the millions, and revolutionized the social world from within. Skyscrapers filled with office space came to tower over cities everywhere. "Cubed "opens our eyes to what is a truly "secret history" of changes so obvious and ubiquitous that we've hardly noticed them. From the wood-paneled executive suite to the advent of the cubicles where 60% of Americans now work (and 93% of them dislike it) to a not-too-distant future where we might work anywhere at any time (and perhaps "all" the time), "Cubed" excavates from popular books, movies, comic strips ("Dilbert!"), and a vast amount of management literature and business history, the reasons why our workplaces are the way they are--and how they might be better.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 181 reviews
July 14, 2017
One of the dirty little secrets of the modern world is how many people's waking hours can be reduced to sitting behind a desk in an office, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, droning away, performing tasks either tasteless or downright repugnant.
This little book about modern office cubes is most insightful. Having had the nasty experience of being chained to a desk myself as a young man, I offer the following warning in the form of a micro-fiction:
OVERTIME
For many years Neal Merman commuted back and forth to his place of work like the others. It was to an insurance office, a room with blank walls, linoleum floor and forty desks under naked florescent lights. Coming in with regularity, Neal performed the job of an everyday clerk.
This mechanical routine shifted abruptly, however, when Neal became part of his desk. First, the desk absorbed only two fingers, but by the end of that afternoon, his entire left hand was sucked up by the metal. And the following morning Neal’s left leg from the knee down also became part of his desk. So it continued for a week until the only Neal to be seen was a right arm positioned beside a head and neck on the desk top.
When the other clerks arrived in the morning, all of them could see what was left of Neal, head down and pencil in hand, reviewing a file with utmost care. To aid his review, Neal would punch figures into his calculator fluently and with the dexterity of someone who knows he is total command of his skill. Such acumen brought a wry smile to Neal’s face.
One day, Big Bart, the department boss, came by to check on Neal’s files. “Your work, clerk, is better and better, although you are now more desk than flesh and bones.”
“What files do you want me to review today?” Neal asked, still scrutinizing some figures.
“Not too many files, clerk, but enough to keep you.” Big Bart withdrew and Neal followed him with his eyes until his boss could no longer be seen.
Later that same day Neal’s right arm faded into the metal. Then, like a periscope being lowered from the surface of the sea, his neck, jaw and nose sank down, leaving his eyes slightly above the gray slab. Neal looked forward and saw his pencil straight on – a long gleaming yellow cylinder with shiny eraser band at the end. Over the pencil, his telephone swelled like some giant mountain. Hearing the phone ring, Neal instinctively reached for the receiver, but this was only a mental gesture. Neal felt his forehead sinking and closed his eyes.
June 10, 2017
I wanted to like this one but could not, even after reading the whole book. In Cubed, Nikil Saval offers an informative look into the history of the cubicle and the white-collar workplace. He delves into topics such as the architecture of the office, the sexism that female employees encounter, and what the cubicle's past portends for its future. However, Cubed reads more as a list of facts than as an organized cohesive whole. Saval writes about all of the topics listed above, but not in an inviting way. While he shows that he has done his research through the extensive knowledge he displays, I wanted more of his original voice, insights, and arguments. Recommended only to those who love the topic of cubicles and offices enough that they can pass on a more welcoming, reader-friendly writing style.
January 23, 2014
I feel pretty good about my own cubicle after reading this. Spacious. Permanent build. Personalization available.
But Cubed could have used a bit more focus. There are enough infobytes in here to hold my attention and the writing was easy. But the structure was weak. I couldn't tell if we were studying offices from historical documents, through film and movie analyis, or from architecture. I get that these are all necessary sources for a history of offices and obviously a lot of research went into the book. But it has that undergraduate quality of wanting desperately to show off all the research gathered rather than pruning and refining its findings into a tighter narrative.
So points for knowledge and effort.
Follow me on Twitter: @Dr_A_Taubman
But Cubed could have used a bit more focus. There are enough infobytes in here to hold my attention and the writing was easy. But the structure was weak. I couldn't tell if we were studying offices from historical documents, through film and movie analyis, or from architecture. I get that these are all necessary sources for a history of offices and obviously a lot of research went into the book. But it has that undergraduate quality of wanting desperately to show off all the research gathered rather than pruning and refining its findings into a tighter narrative.
So points for knowledge and effort.
Follow me on Twitter: @Dr_A_Taubman
October 26, 2015
This was an enlightening view on the history of the cubicle! A history of the cubicle is also a history of politics and capitalism and corporate bureaucracy and the traditional roles between men and women, not to mention Dilbert, Office Space, and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.
So now I know why we are stuck in cubes, looking at computer screens, getting only moderate outside light, freezing our asses off, and pondering why such a mind numbing job requires an expensive college degree. You can blame Propst for coming up with Action Office 2 and sticking us in cubicles in the 1970's, but cubicles like this were not his intention. He thought flexible walls would mean flexibility at work.
I learned quite a bit about the building of skyscrapers and office parks and what office space does to the psyche. Nikil Savral covers a lot of ground in a relatively short book and does it well. I'm glad not to have been a "working girl" in the 50's and 60's (Thank you, 9to5ers!).
I remember my first glimpse of office life when I got a "real job" and was dismayed by the sea of cubicles, out of place in an office building from the 50's that still had actual fireplaces in the corner offices. Even in the newer building that I worked in, the cubes still seemed out of place - the building had not been designed for the amount of cubes that people were crammed into.
The author talks about newer types of offices at more progressive companies and what the vision is for the future. He doesn't mention anything, though, about the badges we swipe and the high security in our buildings. The futuristic talk about co-workspaces (which exist now) as places to go to meet people from other companies while you type away on your laptop does not address the chronic need for security - for our clients, for our company, and for ourselves. I don't know how that will play out in the future with all of the hacking of major companies underway and the tight regulations of the government.
A good book, worth reading if you're geeky like me and just have to know why office furniture is the way it is!
So now I know why we are stuck in cubes, looking at computer screens, getting only moderate outside light, freezing our asses off, and pondering why such a mind numbing job requires an expensive college degree. You can blame Propst for coming up with Action Office 2 and sticking us in cubicles in the 1970's, but cubicles like this were not his intention. He thought flexible walls would mean flexibility at work.
I learned quite a bit about the building of skyscrapers and office parks and what office space does to the psyche. Nikil Savral covers a lot of ground in a relatively short book and does it well. I'm glad not to have been a "working girl" in the 50's and 60's (Thank you, 9to5ers!).
I remember my first glimpse of office life when I got a "real job" and was dismayed by the sea of cubicles, out of place in an office building from the 50's that still had actual fireplaces in the corner offices. Even in the newer building that I worked in, the cubes still seemed out of place - the building had not been designed for the amount of cubes that people were crammed into.
The author talks about newer types of offices at more progressive companies and what the vision is for the future. He doesn't mention anything, though, about the badges we swipe and the high security in our buildings. The futuristic talk about co-workspaces (which exist now) as places to go to meet people from other companies while you type away on your laptop does not address the chronic need for security - for our clients, for our company, and for ourselves. I don't know how that will play out in the future with all of the hacking of major companies underway and the tight regulations of the government.
A good book, worth reading if you're geeky like me and just have to know why office furniture is the way it is!
February 3, 2015
An exceptionally tedious and academic read. This book seemed like a great potential read. I HATE the open office layout and cannot understand why so many companies use this. So it seemed like a book that had the history of cubicle and the office would be a great read.
I don't know what it is, but it strikes me as quite dry and academic. He starts with a history of the clerk and eventually branches out into various themes, such as what the future of the office might look like, with some "current" offices as examples. And I admit, some of it was quite interesting, especially if the reader traces the history of women entering the workforce, the problems they faced (lower pay, sexual harassment, little room to advance). Some of that has not changed at all, as many know quite well.
But overall there's a great review on Goodreads that says that seems like it was written as an undergraduate paper eager to show ALL of the research, rather than taking that research and creating a narrative with it. While it's great to get down to the nitty gritty of the history of the clerk and the origins of what we know as the office, I agree: the book could have used more pruning with a little less history and more focus on the modern day office.
As it was, I found it disappointing and could only skim it. Quite a few reviewers say the writing was witty and engaging. I have to look askance at that, because I felt like I read a totally different book.
I wouldn't recommend it. There are various interviews with the author out there and one might get the gist from reading/listening to those.
I don't know what it is, but it strikes me as quite dry and academic. He starts with a history of the clerk and eventually branches out into various themes, such as what the future of the office might look like, with some "current" offices as examples. And I admit, some of it was quite interesting, especially if the reader traces the history of women entering the workforce, the problems they faced (lower pay, sexual harassment, little room to advance). Some of that has not changed at all, as many know quite well.
But overall there's a great review on Goodreads that says that seems like it was written as an undergraduate paper eager to show ALL of the research, rather than taking that research and creating a narrative with it. While it's great to get down to the nitty gritty of the history of the clerk and the origins of what we know as the office, I agree: the book could have used more pruning with a little less history and more focus on the modern day office.
As it was, I found it disappointing and could only skim it. Quite a few reviewers say the writing was witty and engaging. I have to look askance at that, because I felt like I read a totally different book.
I wouldn't recommend it. There are various interviews with the author out there and one might get the gist from reading/listening to those.
October 26, 2019
You cannot tell me that there’s a book about the history of the workplace and not expect me to read it – I may have given up on history after O Levels but I love reading about the history behind things we take for granted (if you have any book reccs, let me know!). As a fan of Dilbert and someone who’s probably going to remain an office-dweller for the next few years, I was curious about the history behind the place I sit in almost every day.
While I never thought too much about when the office came into being, it makes sense that it’s fairly recent. It was in the mid-nineteenth century that clerks started working in dark, cramped, places – the proto-office. And when America industrialised and the railroad came into being, the need for administrative workers increased and the modern office came into being. It’s pretty interesting to see all these side effects of railways; did you know that another effect of the railways was the standardisation of time?
Apart from the physical evolution of the dark counting rooms to the office, Cubed also tracks the changes in the way Americans think about the office. At first, office workers were seen as “dandies” who didn’t do real work – unlike the rest of the Americans who laboured with their hands. But clerks were also one of the few jobs where it was possible to progress; with some hard work (and perhaps the wooing of the boss’s daughter), a clerk may become a businessman in the future.
As time went on, women entered the workforce (mostly because upper management realised they could pay people less for equally great work), were the target of some seriously sexist thinking (aka all women are here to sleep with men for work) and eventually started challenging these norms. This was something that resonated with me because even now, so many years later, we’re still feeling the effects of sexism in the workplace and it’s still something that we need to work to correct.
Another interesting section was about the evolution of the open-plan office. Apparently, the idea of the flexible office came from Europe, but the implementation went wrong. One of the ideas for revolutionising the office was called the action office and it eventually became… the cubicle. The original design was a lot more open, but someone soon realised you could turn it into a little box and save space.
I also learned that there was a “postwar mania for personality testing” as part of the corporate office’s efforts to “mould [the] personalities” of their workers. I don’t know if it’s still being doing in America, but when I was job hunting in Japan, personality tests were very common. I wonder if this was something that they took from America, given that the American army took control of Japan from 1945 to 1952.
Overall, I thought this was very interesting. The book talks about the evolution of the physical office and how that ties into our views and thoughts about the office. As such, the book draws upon significant American buildings, movies, and even comic strips to bring together a narrative of how the office came to be, how people have tried to change it, and what people are doing to try and change it.
This review was first posted at Eustea Reads
While I never thought too much about when the office came into being, it makes sense that it’s fairly recent. It was in the mid-nineteenth century that clerks started working in dark, cramped, places – the proto-office. And when America industrialised and the railroad came into being, the need for administrative workers increased and the modern office came into being. It’s pretty interesting to see all these side effects of railways; did you know that another effect of the railways was the standardisation of time?
Apart from the physical evolution of the dark counting rooms to the office, Cubed also tracks the changes in the way Americans think about the office. At first, office workers were seen as “dandies” who didn’t do real work – unlike the rest of the Americans who laboured with their hands. But clerks were also one of the few jobs where it was possible to progress; with some hard work (and perhaps the wooing of the boss’s daughter), a clerk may become a businessman in the future.
As time went on, women entered the workforce (mostly because upper management realised they could pay people less for equally great work), were the target of some seriously sexist thinking (aka all women are here to sleep with men for work) and eventually started challenging these norms. This was something that resonated with me because even now, so many years later, we’re still feeling the effects of sexism in the workplace and it’s still something that we need to work to correct.
Another interesting section was about the evolution of the open-plan office. Apparently, the idea of the flexible office came from Europe, but the implementation went wrong. One of the ideas for revolutionising the office was called the action office and it eventually became… the cubicle. The original design was a lot more open, but someone soon realised you could turn it into a little box and save space.
I also learned that there was a “postwar mania for personality testing” as part of the corporate office’s efforts to “mould [the] personalities” of their workers. I don’t know if it’s still being doing in America, but when I was job hunting in Japan, personality tests were very common. I wonder if this was something that they took from America, given that the American army took control of Japan from 1945 to 1952.
Overall, I thought this was very interesting. The book talks about the evolution of the physical office and how that ties into our views and thoughts about the office. As such, the book draws upon significant American buildings, movies, and even comic strips to bring together a narrative of how the office came to be, how people have tried to change it, and what people are doing to try and change it.
This review was first posted at Eustea Reads
January 8, 2015
I loved this book. Many of the other reviews mention that they found it distracting to wander through various topics - but I loved it. I felt like hearing perspective from films, books, labor unions, architecture, and office culture really added to a holistic picture of modern offices.
The author does take a firm point of view in the book (rather than just aggregating data), but that didn't bother me at all.
I particularly enjoyed learning about some of the things I'd totally missed - I had no idea that white collar workers had refused to unionize because they wanted to feel as though they had upward mobility. Similarly, I didn't realize that work "campuses" had been prevalent before the dotcom era.
(I'd agree that the tagline "secret" is misleading - but I hadn't really factored that into my decision to read the book).
The author does take a firm point of view in the book (rather than just aggregating data), but that didn't bother me at all.
I particularly enjoyed learning about some of the things I'd totally missed - I had no idea that white collar workers had refused to unionize because they wanted to feel as though they had upward mobility. Similarly, I didn't realize that work "campuses" had been prevalent before the dotcom era.
(I'd agree that the tagline "secret" is misleading - but I hadn't really factored that into my decision to read the book).
March 9, 2017
What I wanted was a book about cubicles. What I got was a cultural history of office work, from the clerkships of the 19th century to the GooglePlexes of the 21st. Saval is an intellectual omnivore -- it's a rare book that cites both Bartleby the Scrivener and Office Space -- and there some lively passages that transport the reader through the history of design and its mixing with popular culture (namely, the chapter on cubicles). But, taken as a whole, Cubed lacks heft: it has no argument, no angle other than the well-worn point that rote work is dehumanizing and cubicles are no fun. To his credit, Saval is skeptic enough to see that the latest innovations -- Open Offices and hip, collaborative Tech Campuses -- are just window dressing on the age-old problems of hierarchy and bureaucracy: cubicles in new clothes. What a cheery thought.
January 9, 2016
A book about the history and evolution of office (architecture), office workers (sociology), and work (business). "Nikil Saval does for offices what Foucault did for prisons and hospitals, transforming a seemingly static, purely functional, self-evident institution into a rich human story".
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The Clerking Class:
We can all nowadays related to the common stereotype of office workers being bored and doing doing repetitive tasks, but before 1850s office workers (clerks specifically) were a small minority (banks, insurance). Yet, they were mocked nonetheless from workers in factories, saying office workers with their paper copying and number counting weren't doing any real work; their work is feminine.
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The Birth of The Office:
From mid nineteenth century the way we work changed. Controversial Frederick "Speedy" Taylor was an OCD man obsessed with optimization, to the point he made his own tennis racket suitable for his body. This mechanical engineer provided his consulting services to a factory, measuring and timing (using newly invented cameras) each required task after these required tasks were written down and systemized and optimized (what we call nowadays bottom up approach), all to make workers more efficient thus higher profits for both the owner and the workers, Industrial Engineering along with Gantt Chart and Management Consulting like McKinsey were born. (This is what we call nowadays KPIs and Processes Reengineering). Taylor disliked unions, says that each worker is unique and the more work he does (the more efficient he is) the higher wage he deserved, dealing with all workers equally because of unions pressures was unfair he believed. Lenin and Stalin loved him and wanted to implement his ideas. Japan worshiped him. His ideas were the defense on East Rate Case were a railroad company was demanding higher prices for tickets in order to be able to raise workers wages, the defendant argues that if they "Taylorized" their work they can save enough money to compensate for the higher wages.
I just loved this chapter. It says a lot about how the mentality of work needed to change after the Industrial Revolution. Reminds me of mass production lines of Henry Ford; specialization of workforce and so on. (Also specialization has the known downside of the psychological dissatisfaction of "I'm not doing any real work"). The methodology of optimizing the work and making it more efficient by writing it down and analyzing the workflow supported by measuring each task has organically evolved into Six Sigma and Business Process Management. Big corporations like GE has a complete department that implements Six Sigma and actually each worker in the workshop has to time count himself using a special system, yes it is a costly overhead but it sure pays back!
What all of this has to do with "the birth of the office"? Well, with systemization a LOT of overhead positions were needed for management and so on, the men who provided the brain-work. Muscle-workers were no longer seen as the ones providing the "real work"; they became just a clog in the machine. "Joke on you now, I'll be your boss soon!", says the white collar to the factory worker who called the white collar guy's job early as "feminine".
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The White-Blouse Revolution:
Managers found out that women can do double the performance of men, for half of the salary, hiring women for typing and secretary jobs spread like fire, in 1920s almost 100% of these positions were filled by women and 50% of total office jobs. This started in 1870s after the Civil War with the shift from agriculture to offices (family agricultural businesses were filled with women workers).
It is at the same time that people started to seek finishing school (high school sufficiently) in order to get the fancy promising office job. It is also at the same time that institutions training women for office jobs spread. In my opinion, this sudden high demand for office professionals leading to more educated people had its downturns: Education became a factory that produced clogs for the machine. We still suffer from this. Your parents pressure you to get into Law college instead of Art (what you are passionate about) in order to be able to find a job when you graduate.
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Up The Skyscraper:
Just like the Taylorization of work, skyscrapers (needed to house exploding office jobs) were met with controversy from unions. "[In an article in Alarm magazine belonging to an anarchist faction of a union], Persons says: 'Each of you hungry tramps who read these lines, avail yourselves of those little methods of warfare which Science has placed in the hands of the poor man, and you will become a power in this or any other land. Learn the use of explosives!' The threat of a violent action against the city -bombs planted in a skyscraper- seized a city [Chicago] still traumatized by the fire of 1871" .... Rings a bell :(
The solution? "Divide blue-collar work from the office", thus highly increasing centralization. (Was centralization a common thing before Chicago?)
It seems to me that it was hard to unionize office workers for they believed more in individuality, also this had a larger effect: "the office workers' resistance to unions was in fact preventing the entire working class from getting organized. They were acting as a buffer between capital and labor"
So after WW1, It seems that office workers confused Marxists, because they didn't fit to the "proletarian" or the "capitalists" classes. It was something like this: so blue-collars are trying to convince white-collars they are the same (working to the fat capitalist), but the whites were saying hey blues back off, we are higher than you. There was indeed a huge difference in the culture and income (almost double) between the two. Some german whites wanted to keep the statuesque so they didn't vote for the Left, and adding the fact that the Left was divided into many competing factions, Nazis won. Left in general blamed the office workers for Left loss. This was also the case in the US where American Marxists Magazine cartoons and lefty novelist were portraying office works teaming up with the police to beat blue-collar protesters.
That's for office workers. As for the offices themselves (skyscrapers), Architecture was heavily radicalized and modernized by Le Corbusier, a Taylor-like figure. First they were boring generalized concrete buildings that looked alike. Then, technical advancement of air-conditioning and steel frames that allowed usage of big windows, skyscrapers became more and more aesthetic.
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Organization Men and Women
Did you know that in 1950s it was common for companies to ask you to bring your wife with you to the interview, and that 20% of candidates were turned down because of their wives? The heck?! Lol
"The corporation had usually displayed a certain interest in the family lives of its male employees. When CEOs like Thomas Watson referred to the 'IBM Family' it was meant to suggest, warmly, that IBM hired not only an engineer but his wife and children as well". Also: "Who was the Mrs. Executive that the companies were looking for? In Whyte's summary of his interview findings, 'she is a wife who is highly adaptable, highly gregarious, realizes her husband belongs to the corporation'"
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Open Plans
In 1950s and 1960s, Robert Propst was a neo-Taylorist, applying it everywhere and not just offices or factories. Even when hospitalized, he took lots of notes on improving efficiency of the hospital . Then came Douglas McGregor who disliked Taylorism because it's built on the assumption that workers are lazy (Taylor did suggest blue-collars were lazy) thus they need to be monitored and measured (I think this explains why unions hated Taylor so much and most of blue-collars were against participating in Taylor empirical studies), he says it should come from within: worker intellectual potential with self-control and need for satisfaction of higher-level ego, will make this "knowledge worker" perform better.
These individualistic "knowledge workers" still ignored unions. And also: "social theorists all over appeared to agree that the labor market in the US was becoming less focused on manufacturing and more on goods and services". This is due to a shift in the mentality of businesses and consumers as it seems. There was more focus on quality rather than quantity, bachelor degree is now required for a position than didn't even need high school degree years ago. This highly educated intellectual knowledge worker was on high demand.
The obsession for optimizing offices to be more flexible and productive continued. Propst invented Action Office that was highly acclaimed by critics but not widely implemented because it wasn't practical. By time, and feedback from businesses, Action Office evolved into the cubicle. Propst regrets unintentionally unleashing this evil into the world.
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Space Invaders
Race and sec issues in the office. And more architecture talk of course.
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The Office of The Future
Mostly about the hip design of dot-com era offices that were very flexible which is consistent with the flexible business of such companies. This chapter ends with an interesting experiment done by the company Chiat/Day where they got rid of private desks/offices all together and people had lockers, it was a disaster and dot-com bubble bursted so there was no room for another experiment being conducted in other dot-com companies. So what the office of the future will look like, if offices continued to exist that is?
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The Office and its End
Post dot-come era Google-like corporations with their "work at home allowed" policies, and the effect of that on office design and work in general. I believe that is because work became paper-less, mostly emails and phone calls. Personally no one cares if I didn't come to the office, unless if there is a meeting and even then I can join the meeting through Skype.
Erik Veldhoen (marxist) suggests that a significant change in the way we work is coming, work will get back to Craftsmanship (pre-industrial era) instead of current industrialization (specialization, assembly line). It seems that he is right, specially with the sudden explosion of entrepreneurs and startups. That also affected the office, with the spreading of co-working space for these small businesses working together in the same building and floor.
We saw in The Birth of The Office that the office became more common when white-collar class risen because of technical advancement (such as telephony and fax) and the need for more management and optimization (brain work) for blue-collars (muscle work). It seems that the way business is conducted will change dramatically in the near future (freelancers, less management, worker-corporation relationship significantly changing to -mutual-deal instead of modern-slavery), which will lead to big changes in office, perhaps the lack of!
-----
The Clerking Class:
We can all nowadays related to the common stereotype of office workers being bored and doing doing repetitive tasks, but before 1850s office workers (clerks specifically) were a small minority (banks, insurance). Yet, they were mocked nonetheless from workers in factories, saying office workers with their paper copying and number counting weren't doing any real work; their work is feminine.
-----
The Birth of The Office:
From mid nineteenth century the way we work changed. Controversial Frederick "Speedy" Taylor was an OCD man obsessed with optimization, to the point he made his own tennis racket suitable for his body. This mechanical engineer provided his consulting services to a factory, measuring and timing (using newly invented cameras) each required task after these required tasks were written down and systemized and optimized (what we call nowadays bottom up approach), all to make workers more efficient thus higher profits for both the owner and the workers, Industrial Engineering along with Gantt Chart and Management Consulting like McKinsey were born. (This is what we call nowadays KPIs and Processes Reengineering). Taylor disliked unions, says that each worker is unique and the more work he does (the more efficient he is) the higher wage he deserved, dealing with all workers equally because of unions pressures was unfair he believed. Lenin and Stalin loved him and wanted to implement his ideas. Japan worshiped him. His ideas were the defense on East Rate Case were a railroad company was demanding higher prices for tickets in order to be able to raise workers wages, the defendant argues that if they "Taylorized" their work they can save enough money to compensate for the higher wages.
I just loved this chapter. It says a lot about how the mentality of work needed to change after the Industrial Revolution. Reminds me of mass production lines of Henry Ford; specialization of workforce and so on. (Also specialization has the known downside of the psychological dissatisfaction of "I'm not doing any real work"). The methodology of optimizing the work and making it more efficient by writing it down and analyzing the workflow supported by measuring each task has organically evolved into Six Sigma and Business Process Management. Big corporations like GE has a complete department that implements Six Sigma and actually each worker in the workshop has to time count himself using a special system, yes it is a costly overhead but it sure pays back!
What all of this has to do with "the birth of the office"? Well, with systemization a LOT of overhead positions were needed for management and so on, the men who provided the brain-work. Muscle-workers were no longer seen as the ones providing the "real work"; they became just a clog in the machine. "Joke on you now, I'll be your boss soon!", says the white collar to the factory worker who called the white collar guy's job early as "feminine".
-----
The White-Blouse Revolution:
Managers found out that women can do double the performance of men, for half of the salary, hiring women for typing and secretary jobs spread like fire, in 1920s almost 100% of these positions were filled by women and 50% of total office jobs. This started in 1870s after the Civil War with the shift from agriculture to offices (family agricultural businesses were filled with women workers).
It is at the same time that people started to seek finishing school (high school sufficiently) in order to get the fancy promising office job. It is also at the same time that institutions training women for office jobs spread. In my opinion, this sudden high demand for office professionals leading to more educated people had its downturns: Education became a factory that produced clogs for the machine. We still suffer from this. Your parents pressure you to get into Law college instead of Art (what you are passionate about) in order to be able to find a job when you graduate.
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Up The Skyscraper:
Just like the Taylorization of work, skyscrapers (needed to house exploding office jobs) were met with controversy from unions. "[In an article in Alarm magazine belonging to an anarchist faction of a union], Persons says: 'Each of you hungry tramps who read these lines, avail yourselves of those little methods of warfare which Science has placed in the hands of the poor man, and you will become a power in this or any other land. Learn the use of explosives!' The threat of a violent action against the city -bombs planted in a skyscraper- seized a city [Chicago] still traumatized by the fire of 1871" .... Rings a bell :(
The solution? "Divide blue-collar work from the office", thus highly increasing centralization. (Was centralization a common thing before Chicago?)
It seems to me that it was hard to unionize office workers for they believed more in individuality, also this had a larger effect: "the office workers' resistance to unions was in fact preventing the entire working class from getting organized. They were acting as a buffer between capital and labor"
So after WW1, It seems that office workers confused Marxists, because they didn't fit to the "proletarian" or the "capitalists" classes. It was something like this: so blue-collars are trying to convince white-collars they are the same (working to the fat capitalist), but the whites were saying hey blues back off, we are higher than you. There was indeed a huge difference in the culture and income (almost double) between the two. Some german whites wanted to keep the statuesque so they didn't vote for the Left, and adding the fact that the Left was divided into many competing factions, Nazis won. Left in general blamed the office workers for Left loss. This was also the case in the US where American Marxists Magazine cartoons and lefty novelist were portraying office works teaming up with the police to beat blue-collar protesters.
That's for office workers. As for the offices themselves (skyscrapers), Architecture was heavily radicalized and modernized by Le Corbusier, a Taylor-like figure. First they were boring generalized concrete buildings that looked alike. Then, technical advancement of air-conditioning and steel frames that allowed usage of big windows, skyscrapers became more and more aesthetic.
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Organization Men and Women
Did you know that in 1950s it was common for companies to ask you to bring your wife with you to the interview, and that 20% of candidates were turned down because of their wives? The heck?! Lol
"The corporation had usually displayed a certain interest in the family lives of its male employees. When CEOs like Thomas Watson referred to the 'IBM Family' it was meant to suggest, warmly, that IBM hired not only an engineer but his wife and children as well". Also: "Who was the Mrs. Executive that the companies were looking for? In Whyte's summary of his interview findings, 'she is a wife who is highly adaptable, highly gregarious, realizes her husband belongs to the corporation'"
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Open Plans
In 1950s and 1960s, Robert Propst was a neo-Taylorist, applying it everywhere and not just offices or factories. Even when hospitalized, he took lots of notes on improving efficiency of the hospital . Then came Douglas McGregor who disliked Taylorism because it's built on the assumption that workers are lazy (Taylor did suggest blue-collars were lazy) thus they need to be monitored and measured (I think this explains why unions hated Taylor so much and most of blue-collars were against participating in Taylor empirical studies), he says it should come from within: worker intellectual potential with self-control and need for satisfaction of higher-level ego, will make this "knowledge worker" perform better.
These individualistic "knowledge workers" still ignored unions. And also: "social theorists all over appeared to agree that the labor market in the US was becoming less focused on manufacturing and more on goods and services". This is due to a shift in the mentality of businesses and consumers as it seems. There was more focus on quality rather than quantity, bachelor degree is now required for a position than didn't even need high school degree years ago. This highly educated intellectual knowledge worker was on high demand.
The obsession for optimizing offices to be more flexible and productive continued. Propst invented Action Office that was highly acclaimed by critics but not widely implemented because it wasn't practical. By time, and feedback from businesses, Action Office evolved into the cubicle. Propst regrets unintentionally unleashing this evil into the world.
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Space Invaders
Race and sec issues in the office. And more architecture talk of course.
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The Office of The Future
Mostly about the hip design of dot-com era offices that were very flexible which is consistent with the flexible business of such companies. This chapter ends with an interesting experiment done by the company Chiat/Day where they got rid of private desks/offices all together and people had lockers, it was a disaster and dot-com bubble bursted so there was no room for another experiment being conducted in other dot-com companies. So what the office of the future will look like, if offices continued to exist that is?
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The Office and its End
Post dot-come era Google-like corporations with their "work at home allowed" policies, and the effect of that on office design and work in general. I believe that is because work became paper-less, mostly emails and phone calls. Personally no one cares if I didn't come to the office, unless if there is a meeting and even then I can join the meeting through Skype.
Erik Veldhoen (marxist) suggests that a significant change in the way we work is coming, work will get back to Craftsmanship (pre-industrial era) instead of current industrialization (specialization, assembly line). It seems that he is right, specially with the sudden explosion of entrepreneurs and startups. That also affected the office, with the spreading of co-working space for these small businesses working together in the same building and floor.
We saw in The Birth of The Office that the office became more common when white-collar class risen because of technical advancement (such as telephony and fax) and the need for more management and optimization (brain work) for blue-collars (muscle work). It seems that the way business is conducted will change dramatically in the near future (freelancers, less management, worker-corporation relationship significantly changing to -mutual-deal instead of modern-slavery), which will lead to big changes in office, perhaps the lack of!
December 31, 2017
NERD ALERT: I totally gobbled this one up. Funny enough, I started listening to this one during a recent week of some serious overtime (because who doesn't love when a client rolls out a new feature right before the holidays??)
Also, I was craving Dilbert something FIERCE while reading and was delighted to see collected volumes available at my library! I plowed through one late at night and can't wait to dive into the rest.
Also, I was craving Dilbert something FIERCE while reading and was delighted to see collected volumes available at my library! I plowed through one late at night and can't wait to dive into the rest.
January 20, 2018
This book was a combination of really interesting and really boring. Also yet another misleading subtitle. Secret history, that sounds exciting, right? I don't know what secrets were shared here. The book focused a lot on office architecture and interior design. I was most interested in the parts about women in the workplace.
April 23, 2023
Close to the bone. There are some ways in which I felt this was veering toward the case study approach, but overall the historical tack worked remarkably and the lack of comparable books is a stark reminder why this one was so necessary. Really great stuff.
March 26, 2024
Subdued and slow, this recap of white-collar work won't keep you awake.
April 29, 2022
Interesting read but not sure what I reeeeallt learned tbh!
May 1, 2019
A very historical view of the workplace and how it evolved.
To highlight some of the interesting concepts of this book, it covered different angles:
- labor vs clerical jobs
- freelance vs employed
- shifting form a wage to a monthly salary!
- women entering the work force
- knowledge workers
- designing buildings exterior and interior, and workplace atmosphere
- silicon valley and knowledge workers (creativity), flixi time, and the future
it could make you look at your workplace in a different way !
To highlight some of the interesting concepts of this book, it covered different angles:
- labor vs clerical jobs
- freelance vs employed
- shifting form a wage to a monthly salary!
- women entering the work force
- knowledge workers
- designing buildings exterior and interior, and workplace atmosphere
- silicon valley and knowledge workers (creativity), flixi time, and the future
it could make you look at your workplace in a different way !
February 19, 2017
Essencial para qualquer um que trabalha em escritórios hoje e quer entender how the **** we got here. Combina história, psicologia, arquitetura, estudos culturais, política e economia de uma forma fácil de ler.
March 11, 2015
Dubbed a "social history," Cubed doesn't strive after the science of sociology or history and instead takes a sort of long form journalistic tack on the evolution of the modern office. What's really fascinating is how Saval roots the history of design in the economic reality that shaped it: where businessmen sought power through dividing white from blue collar and dividing white collar employees among themselves - buildings and even whole districts designed to deepen "class unconsciousness" and dampen radical movements.
Drawing on film and novels as well as primary sources and scholarly work on business management, human resources, labor relations, and architectural theory, Cubed provides the reader a pleasurable tour of the ways an environment can shape its occupants' attitudes (think Alain de Botton's Architecture of Happiness with a much-needed - yet casual - dose of political theory). An often entertaining and informative read (I had at least 10 "That's where that comes from!" moments), Cubed is a very promising first book.
Saval's book also struck me as a more readable version (this time aimed at the workplace) of the genealogical work Foucault was doing with his lectures on "governmentality." By making this type of thinking more widely accessible to the contemporary office worker who would prefer something light to read on the Metro, this book has done the office world a vital service in favor of greater self-consciousness. It also takes the lustre out of the popular phrase "real job."
Drawing on film and novels as well as primary sources and scholarly work on business management, human resources, labor relations, and architectural theory, Cubed provides the reader a pleasurable tour of the ways an environment can shape its occupants' attitudes (think Alain de Botton's Architecture of Happiness with a much-needed - yet casual - dose of political theory). An often entertaining and informative read (I had at least 10 "That's where that comes from!" moments), Cubed is a very promising first book.
Saval's book also struck me as a more readable version (this time aimed at the workplace) of the genealogical work Foucault was doing with his lectures on "governmentality." By making this type of thinking more widely accessible to the contemporary office worker who would prefer something light to read on the Metro, this book has done the office world a vital service in favor of greater self-consciousness. It also takes the lustre out of the popular phrase "real job."
August 5, 2017
I picked up this book at the beginning of the year when I started a new job at an association for interior designers and wanted to learn more about the world of office design--it only took me about 6 months to finish (got distracted by too many other things to read). I'm glad I did finally focus on it, however, because it's much more than a history of office design over the years, it really gets much more into workplace culture and organizational development as it relates to and is influenced by design. The author traces the history of the whole concept of the office as we know it today, which really only developed in the last century. He dives into to the feminization of office workers and the rise of the secretary (and related discrimination and harassment), and documents the evolution of office culture. Along the way he presents a history of office design trends, from executive suites to the "action office"--which devolved into cubicle farms, and the current open office trend. His most recent examples are from 2012, when we started to see the most current practice of creating a variety of spaces in an office: open, private, "cozy," etc. This book would be fascinating for anyone who works in an office--you don't have to know anything about interior design to appreciate it.
April 27, 2014
It was a pleasure to read Nikil Savan's book. Cubed is a survey of sources from architecture, business, academia and pop culture, organized to resemble a chronological history of the working environment provided to office workers. The tone of the book is collegial and a tad wry, as the topic expects, and the prose is substantial but not at all difficult.
If you're expecting that this title:subtitle will turn out to be ironic, well, it really isn't. This is not the Dilbert attitude in book form. This is a book that distinguishes a topic and gives the topic form. I work in a cubicle in a grid of 300 above two floors of similar grids. I sit 30 feet from a window wall and probably 100 feet from the closest potted plant. The questions and issues defined in this book are directly relevant to the first leg of each of my weekdays, so I had plenty of appetite for the content. If you can relate to office work, then I can recommend Cubed as an enjoyable read that will make you a more aware and informed consumer of the environment you have been provided.
If you're expecting that this title:subtitle will turn out to be ironic, well, it really isn't. This is not the Dilbert attitude in book form. This is a book that distinguishes a topic and gives the topic form. I work in a cubicle in a grid of 300 above two floors of similar grids. I sit 30 feet from a window wall and probably 100 feet from the closest potted plant. The questions and issues defined in this book are directly relevant to the first leg of each of my weekdays, so I had plenty of appetite for the content. If you can relate to office work, then I can recommend Cubed as an enjoyable read that will make you a more aware and informed consumer of the environment you have been provided.
June 25, 2014
Cubed is a good, somewhat sprawling, social science book about offices, roughly in the same vein as Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do. It approaches the subject from a lot of different angles: Architecture, business thought, social and cultural movements in and around the office, office furniture and the men and women who occupied the spaces. It spends considerable time on the influence of women on the office and on the workforce and also on labor movements, which was refreshing for me as I'm not well-versed in that topic.
I enjoyed this book. I found myself skimming certain parts of it, but all-in-all it's an excellent holistic social science treatment of the people, societies, places and things that comprise and shape the office. A personal wish would have been for a greater treatment of the artifacts of the office in addition to the furniture and the attitudes found there.
I enjoyed this book. I found myself skimming certain parts of it, but all-in-all it's an excellent holistic social science treatment of the people, societies, places and things that comprise and shape the office. A personal wish would have been for a greater treatment of the artifacts of the office in addition to the furniture and the attitudes found there.
May 2, 2014
I was expecting the history of the office as we know it, what I got was mostly how the office revolutionised women in the workplace. With the office first liberating then oppressing women. Moving out of factories to being white collar secretaries and typist, on a male, blue-collar equivalent wage, only to become the office housewife/mistress; making coffees, getting the sandwiches, and reduced to weather overt sexual advances.
I found this was where the real meat in the narrative lay. The evolution of the workplace office I found was rather dry and lacking in fervour. The opposite was true for the women in the office components.
Nice piece, but the author could have dropped the "History of the workplace" pretext and focused solely on female working empowerment. I would have really enjoyed that.
I found this was where the real meat in the narrative lay. The evolution of the workplace office I found was rather dry and lacking in fervour. The opposite was true for the women in the office components.
Nice piece, but the author could have dropped the "History of the workplace" pretext and focused solely on female working empowerment. I would have really enjoyed that.
March 10, 2015
A book about offices and working there won't appeal to everyone, but I'm really glad I gave this a try. In equal parts it's about sociology and architecture, with some general history (e.g. the changing role of women) and economics thrown in for good measure. It sounds so mundane, but I found it fascinating. More than that, it helped me understand the context of my own professional lifetime, how some things I consider "normal" or just "the way the workplace works" to be relatively recent developments...and ones that are changing before our eyes.
September 11, 2016
Completely fascinating outlook at the development (and future obliteration?) of the office. There is a lot of smart synthesis of history, cultural studies, and examples from literature. Not just do we see the story of the creation of the office, but we are witness to the psychology of work and labor relations. I completely loved this book and look forward to discussing with co-workers what our best approach to making the most useful office space could and should be. Highly recommended!
October 12, 2015
Very interesting, but dry telling of the evolution of the office environment from an architectural, cultural, and literary point of view. Must-read for anyone seeking a PhD in Organizational Development.
January 21, 2015
Surprisingly interesting look at work, how we got where we are, and where we're possibly headed.
April 7, 2020
An ambitious effort to chronicle the American office's long cultural history, Cubed is an excellent read for the white collar laborer who gives even a single damn about their working environment.
Saval analyzes the dynamic between workspace landscapes, ideologies, practices, and inhabitants from a historical perspective, with an all-inclusive approach that must have been daunting to execute. He frames the evolution of the American office as a confluence of many cultural histories, filling his chapters with topics as wide-ranging as: economic mobility and the perception thereof, growth and recession, unionization and labor movements, gender and race, government regulation, urbanization/suburbanization, technological advancements, modernism/postmodernism, pop business psychology, theories of work like Taylorism, organization structure, architecture, interior design, city planning, the work-home relationship, contemporary reactions to and mass pop images of various office structures (physical, social, and conceptual), the semantics of work (e.g. the very definition of "white collar" and "information work")....
You get the idea. The scope here is huge, yet Saval wrangles these divergent threads into a coherent narrative full of meaningful insights. Cubed's many relevant historical detours make for a fun and thought-provoking read.
Because of its breadth, however, Cubed perhaps functions best as a jumping off point for additional study. Saval encourages this by citing other works of note and raising astute questions worthy of ongoing inquiry.
I found Cubed's later chapters describing the potentials/realities of telecommunication and non-hierarchal corporate structures to be particularly SPICY during this time of quarantine, when managers are forced to let their staff work from home. Will this period replicate the positive results from 80's-era telecommuting studies (and will orgs notice any positive impact)? Will telecommuting be seen as a net positive, despite the imposition of social distancing? Will the pandemic inspire new shifts in office structures and practices? Let's hope so.
I consumed Cubed via Audible, which I would not reccomend. Here's why:
1. The narrator was ill-suited for this audiobook.
Cubed has a observational, sometimes wryly critical tone, but the narrator was actorly, Big, and somewhat smug. He had the same cadence as a true crime narrator describing how many boyfriends a murder victim had. This sometimes made it difficult to concentrate on the subject matter, often because the tone or inflection didn't quite match up with a sentence and its context.
Another big narration issue: as many quotes as there are in this book, the narrator did not employ a distinguishing character for his "I am someone other than the author" voice. It was often hard to tell which parts were quotes.
2. Cubed addresses so many different topics and ideas that reading a physical copy of the book, and pausing to think and reflect as necessary, would have been a much more positive experience. Good thing I enjoyed Cubed enough to potentially buy a physical copy and read it a second time.
Saval analyzes the dynamic between workspace landscapes, ideologies, practices, and inhabitants from a historical perspective, with an all-inclusive approach that must have been daunting to execute. He frames the evolution of the American office as a confluence of many cultural histories, filling his chapters with topics as wide-ranging as: economic mobility and the perception thereof, growth and recession, unionization and labor movements, gender and race, government regulation, urbanization/suburbanization, technological advancements, modernism/postmodernism, pop business psychology, theories of work like Taylorism, organization structure, architecture, interior design, city planning, the work-home relationship, contemporary reactions to and mass pop images of various office structures (physical, social, and conceptual), the semantics of work (e.g. the very definition of "white collar" and "information work")....
You get the idea. The scope here is huge, yet Saval wrangles these divergent threads into a coherent narrative full of meaningful insights. Cubed's many relevant historical detours make for a fun and thought-provoking read.
Because of its breadth, however, Cubed perhaps functions best as a jumping off point for additional study. Saval encourages this by citing other works of note and raising astute questions worthy of ongoing inquiry.
I found Cubed's later chapters describing the potentials/realities of telecommunication and non-hierarchal corporate structures to be particularly SPICY during this time of quarantine, when managers are forced to let their staff work from home. Will this period replicate the positive results from 80's-era telecommuting studies (and will orgs notice any positive impact)? Will telecommuting be seen as a net positive, despite the imposition of social distancing? Will the pandemic inspire new shifts in office structures and practices? Let's hope so.
I consumed Cubed via Audible, which I would not reccomend. Here's why:
1. The narrator was ill-suited for this audiobook.
Cubed has a observational, sometimes wryly critical tone, but the narrator was actorly, Big, and somewhat smug. He had the same cadence as a true crime narrator describing how many boyfriends a murder victim had. This sometimes made it difficult to concentrate on the subject matter, often because the tone or inflection didn't quite match up with a sentence and its context.
Another big narration issue: as many quotes as there are in this book, the narrator did not employ a distinguishing character for his "I am someone other than the author" voice. It was often hard to tell which parts were quotes.
2. Cubed addresses so many different topics and ideas that reading a physical copy of the book, and pausing to think and reflect as necessary, would have been a much more positive experience. Good thing I enjoyed Cubed enough to potentially buy a physical copy and read it a second time.
August 23, 2025
Worthy, but less than I had hoped for. I wanted more Office Space and less rambling on about the Larkin Soap company.
On reflection, one wonders if, after a century or so of experimentation with various high-flown concepts respecting “office space,” there is any evidence that the particular manner of organizing the space matters one whit to creativity, productivity, or any other salubrious quality. Or, conversely, if there is any evidence at all that cubicles in and of themselves are a source of existential dread, anxiety, rage, et cetera. Are the various design concepts really anything more than the arbitrary imposition of the designer’s personal predilections?
One wonders still, after reading this book. Saval describes a lot of buildings and a lot of company’s experimentations with office space, but few of the facts or episodes are at all striking. (One exception: the concept of “scuttling”, supposedly prevalent in the 1950s office, which is impossible to un-think and which I will leave un-said here.) Where I had hoped for stark denunciations of the idea that most people benefit from working among general commotion, I got mostly descriptions of things.
Sometimes he devolves into frank hyperbole about “poisonous atmospheres” (formaldehyde fumes, asbestos, and disease), the “conspicuous silence hovering over the partitions, interrupted only by the tapping of keys, comes from the enforcement of surveillance.” Jeez, it’s not that bad in cubeland. Get a grip already, and show me evidence if you are going to thunder on like that.
The book does have its rare moments of insight: speaking of how qualifications-inflation occurred, how a college degree is required for working almost any kind of office job: “the jobs had not gotten more complex, the individuals working in them had.”
He often quotes from various books (The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, for instance) or movies (Babyface, for instance), and that was good. Although he cut off his description of the “Flair” scene with Jennifer Aniston in Office Space, just when I was looking forward to her double-bird takedown of her boss’s arbitrary and illogical expectations of her.
So, not bad, but not good either. Kind of like cubeland itself.
On reflection, one wonders if, after a century or so of experimentation with various high-flown concepts respecting “office space,” there is any evidence that the particular manner of organizing the space matters one whit to creativity, productivity, or any other salubrious quality. Or, conversely, if there is any evidence at all that cubicles in and of themselves are a source of existential dread, anxiety, rage, et cetera. Are the various design concepts really anything more than the arbitrary imposition of the designer’s personal predilections?
One wonders still, after reading this book. Saval describes a lot of buildings and a lot of company’s experimentations with office space, but few of the facts or episodes are at all striking. (One exception: the concept of “scuttling”, supposedly prevalent in the 1950s office, which is impossible to un-think and which I will leave un-said here.) Where I had hoped for stark denunciations of the idea that most people benefit from working among general commotion, I got mostly descriptions of things.
Sometimes he devolves into frank hyperbole about “poisonous atmospheres” (formaldehyde fumes, asbestos, and disease), the “conspicuous silence hovering over the partitions, interrupted only by the tapping of keys, comes from the enforcement of surveillance.” Jeez, it’s not that bad in cubeland. Get a grip already, and show me evidence if you are going to thunder on like that.
The book does have its rare moments of insight: speaking of how qualifications-inflation occurred, how a college degree is required for working almost any kind of office job: “the jobs had not gotten more complex, the individuals working in them had.”
He often quotes from various books (The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, for instance) or movies (Babyface, for instance), and that was good. Although he cut off his description of the “Flair” scene with Jennifer Aniston in Office Space, just when I was looking forward to her double-bird takedown of her boss’s arbitrary and illogical expectations of her.
So, not bad, but not good either. Kind of like cubeland itself.
March 31, 2023
Mr. Saval has written a fascinating book about the history of working in offices, as opposed to manual labor in America, but the history is told through an architecture and design perspective. By investigating the history of architecture and design, Mr. Saval traces the growth of the "knowledge economy" and the decline of farming and manufacturing. Mr. Saval is at his best when he shows how trends in society affected the design of offices and how the design of offices helped organize relationships among classes, sexes and races in America. As someone who has worked in an office for decades before the pandemic, I never really thought about the history of office design, although I have now lived through many of the trends Mr. Saval describes. I hope Mr. Saval writes a post-pandemic postscript to his book that discusses how the acceleration of work from home, the reluctance to return to the office, the labor shortage and the polarization of America have become reflected in the modern office. Mr. Saval could also discuss the de-urbanization of the modern American work force.
Mr. Saval starts in Antebellum America and discusses the early offices. He draws on literature and film to draw out the changing perceptions of working in American offices. Despite the academic nature of his subject, Mr. Saval does not slip into an erudite, academic discussion. The focus on pop culture (think Working Girl or Office Space to draw lessons) makes this work accessible to the non-academic reader. In fact, Mr. Saval illustrates how even the most well-researched theory with good intentions crumbles when it meets the reality of complex humans who interact in unpredictable and changing ways. Here of course, I am referring to his excellent discussion of the invention of the cubicle by Hermann Miller which was intended to liberate the productivity, serendipity and individuality of the American office worker.
Mr. Saval starts in Antebellum America and discusses the early offices. He draws on literature and film to draw out the changing perceptions of working in American offices. Despite the academic nature of his subject, Mr. Saval does not slip into an erudite, academic discussion. The focus on pop culture (think Working Girl or Office Space to draw lessons) makes this work accessible to the non-academic reader. In fact, Mr. Saval illustrates how even the most well-researched theory with good intentions crumbles when it meets the reality of complex humans who interact in unpredictable and changing ways. Here of course, I am referring to his excellent discussion of the invention of the cubicle by Hermann Miller which was intended to liberate the productivity, serendipity and individuality of the American office worker.
October 22, 2018
Such a great read! The "secret history" of the title is what makes this work so entertaining and valuable.
Saval uncovers the politics (cultural, economic, interpersonal, gender, in some cases government) that have driven the evolution of the office building as a whole, the individual office spaces inside office buildings, and how people negotiate the space and their coworkers.
He lays bare some of the assumptions about office work: it's been perceived as an "escape" from blue collar jobs, but that it may ultimately guarantee no more satisfaction or even earnings, that it promises upward mobility that it never really consistently delivers.
From ridiculed clerks during America's and Britain's industrialization, to Taylorism (think time-motion studies with an observer and a stop-watch), to the annoying "knowledge worker" rhetoric, to the open floor plans of Google and other tech firms (which offer varying degrees of sucess), Saval offers a readable, engaging, documented history of the position of the "white collar" worker.
You'll learn great terms like "soldiering" and "antagonistic cooperator." And if you don't see in Saval a bit of every single office you've ever worked in (and coworkers/bosses you've worked with), then frankly, I doubt you've ever worked in an office.
I enjoyed this immensely--read it!
Saval uncovers the politics (cultural, economic, interpersonal, gender, in some cases government) that have driven the evolution of the office building as a whole, the individual office spaces inside office buildings, and how people negotiate the space and their coworkers.
He lays bare some of the assumptions about office work: it's been perceived as an "escape" from blue collar jobs, but that it may ultimately guarantee no more satisfaction or even earnings, that it promises upward mobility that it never really consistently delivers.
From ridiculed clerks during America's and Britain's industrialization, to Taylorism (think time-motion studies with an observer and a stop-watch), to the annoying "knowledge worker" rhetoric, to the open floor plans of Google and other tech firms (which offer varying degrees of sucess), Saval offers a readable, engaging, documented history of the position of the "white collar" worker.
You'll learn great terms like "soldiering" and "antagonistic cooperator." And if you don't see in Saval a bit of every single office you've ever worked in (and coworkers/bosses you've worked with), then frankly, I doubt you've ever worked in an office.
I enjoyed this immensely--read it!
September 9, 2017
Nikil Saval's Cubed grabbed me in a way that I didn't think was possible. Perhaps it's my curiosity about the history behind mundane parts of our existence (one of many reasons why I listen to the podcast 99% invisible) but I found Saval's guided tour through the history of office work to be fascinating.
Saval doesn't take the easy approach of fixating on a few characters for each of the phases of office work that he has delineated the past two hundred years into. There are of course particular notable figures that he references throughout but the narrative is not built around them. Instead the narrative focuses on the office workers themselves and how their fate has been tied to the corporate overseers. Having the history laid out it becomes impossible not to see the themes Saval is presenting. The writing is top-notch and full of anecdotes that will keep you hooked even if architecture and interior design are not subjects you had been previously invested in.
Most people in current times have worked an office job at some point. As the workforce changes and we head into the new world of the gig economy and freelance entrepreneurs, this is essential reading to learn how we can shape that world for the benefit of the main character in the novel of the economy - the workers.
Saval doesn't take the easy approach of fixating on a few characters for each of the phases of office work that he has delineated the past two hundred years into. There are of course particular notable figures that he references throughout but the narrative is not built around them. Instead the narrative focuses on the office workers themselves and how their fate has been tied to the corporate overseers. Having the history laid out it becomes impossible not to see the themes Saval is presenting. The writing is top-notch and full of anecdotes that will keep you hooked even if architecture and interior design are not subjects you had been previously invested in.
Most people in current times have worked an office job at some point. As the workforce changes and we head into the new world of the gig economy and freelance entrepreneurs, this is essential reading to learn how we can shape that world for the benefit of the main character in the novel of the economy - the workers.
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