NYT on IBM's NJ offices
In New Jersey, I.B.M. Cuts Space, Frills and Private Desks
“I wanted people to know we’re in a warehouse, and we’re paying warehouse prices,” said Duke Mitchell, the company’s general manager for New Jersey, who, like his staff, no longer has a private office — though his small metal desk is at least in the corner and permanent. “No walls, no boundaries, no compartments, no hierarchies, no epaulets,” he said. “You’re here because of your competence and there’s no frills.”
“If you rethought the office from the ground up, and said that the group, the team, is the primary contributor, you would think of the office very differently,” said Mike Brill, president of the Buffalo Organization for Social and Technological Innovation, a nonprofit think tank that focuses on office work and office design, and which advised I.B.M. several years ago in reorganizing the company. “What we’re starting to see is places that don’t look like conventional offices.”
