> Cost cutting? Businesses pay engineers HUGE salaries; if there was clear evidence that a given office plan was significantly less productive it would logically be a huge waste of money to put their highly paid employees in it.
That depends on the business. I have only worked with companies that do primarily government contracting. Engineer salaries get billed to specific government contracts. Facilities costs come out of general overhead. The first bucket generates revenue for the company, since they bill us out for more than they pay us (including benefits); the second bucket is limited, severely in some cases, and pooled across the entire company. In such a system, cost cutting on perks and facilities makes rational sense because the people controlling the budget for those things don't give a shit about salaries. Any company wherein money for facilities is separated from money for salaries is going to be vulnerable to such pressures.
> Cost cutting? Businesses pay engineers HUGE salaries; if there was clear evidence that a given office plan was significantly less productive it would logically be a huge waste of money to put their highly paid employees in it.
That depends on the business. I have only worked with companies that do primarily government contracting. Engineer salaries get billed to specific government contracts. Facilities costs come out of general overhead. The first bucket generates revenue for the company, since they bill us out for more than they pay us (including benefits); the second bucket is limited, severely in some cases, and pooled across the entire company. In such a system, cost cutting on perks and facilities makes rational sense because the people controlling the budget for those things don't give a shit about salaries. Any company wherein money for facilities is separated from money for salaries is going to be vulnerable to such pressures.