For instance, he conflates the move to open plan offices, which is seen as increasing communication within teams, but also enables an almost oppressive level of employee monitoring, with googles propensity to space hoppers. These are quite different things, coming from quite different places. Open plan offices have very little to do with happy employees, and everything to do with productivity.

I detect a subtext when he says 'hierarchical is better, managers should think about strategy, Blackberry CEOs are a professional manager and a technician (which is a loaded word, as it means a low skilled technical worker).

I mean, is this a backlash against the increasingly irrelevance of management in flat organizations? If we read an article by an IT worker, explaining that Amazon Cloud might be making him irrelevant, but companies migrating to it are making a huge mistake, then we would see his true motivations in writing that. I wonder if computer enabled flat management is making people like Schumpeter feel under threat.

The idea of risks and experimentation, is that companies like Google are not creating products through a predictable process - they are farming black swans.

You can manufacture software to spec predictably. If you can find developers who will work to spec, remain motivated without personal control of their work, and generally put up with being treated like a production line worker, you can make software on a production line. Infosys do just this.

But you can't manufacture technological progress, the next big thing. Because the creation, validation, and creative implementation of ideas is not something that comes out of a factory. Sony try this. Look where that gets them.

Montessori actively encourages children to develop the capacity to disagree reasonably within teams while preserving civility. The classroom environment and curriculum encourages solitary inquiry into subjects of great personal interest. Providing quiet spaces for individual students to carry out work is a high priority in Montessori classrooms. And, in marked contrast to a hierarchical, command-and-control style education, Montessori allows a student to choose to spend hours of the school day away from the noise and bustle of the classroom and their peers working on his/her project.

Aside from considering what Montessori "actually" is, the whole premise is blown by one fact: traditional, hierarchical education systems put students in the classroom, a completely open, depersonalized space that explicitly encourages surveillance and strips away individual privacy. So, tell me again, what does the model for open-space offices most closely resemble?

I've read some excellent critiques of open-plan, non-hierarchical office culture and management styles; this was not one.

The benefit is it is easier to communicate, and the downside is that it is harder to get away. We give everyone a pair of noise cancelling headphones as a way of shutting out the office noise. Its not as solid as an office but its better than nothing, and culturally if you're typing away with your headphones on its very similar to working with your door closed.

That said I don't think it is the ultimate answer, there is still stuff to be done. Maybe rolling desks around so you can move them into an office when you need to concentrate? Or perhaps some partitions for groups but not cubicals explicitly.

Definitely a work in progress.

"It is rather absurd for a technology firm to provide slides for staff to play on, and to let them wear silly propeller-hats"

"Time was when firms modelled themselves on the armed forces, with officers (who thought about strategy) and chains of command"

It always amuses me to read these lofty articles from academics and journalists about how multi-billion-dollar companies are doing it wrong.

Models are always faulty in some way, but using them appropriately can be a good thing. The problem many of these corporate styles addresses is that it's very easy to overconstrain your solution space without realizing it. This turns out to be extremely important in creative tasks. Not so much everywhere, but in places where teams are supposed to be both creating and radically optimizing their work streams? Makes a huge difference.

We're also seeing the emergence of a personal corporate brand, where companies are supposed to have personalities, like people. Employees are encouraged to get Twitter accounts. Everything that faces the public is supposed to look like "Hey! We're having a blast here, and we can't wait to help you out." The majority of the corporate submarine pieces we see on HN have this subtext.

These are major changes. Perhaps you can lay it all at the door of the Montessori style, but I kinda doubt it. Instead, I think the author is just making a blanket assertion, creating a bit of a straw man in order to set it on fire. As long as it encourages critical thinking about these things, that's not a bad thing.

Apparently the author and his editors failed to notice that he has already disassembled his straw man before he starts attacking it...

I'll be the first to rail against a lot of contemporary Silicon Valley/tech culture, but running your business like 1950s IBM has nothing to do with producing a quality software/hardware product. If you don't have a public facing job, then does it matter if you wear a t-shirt and jeans to work, and have video games in the break room, etc?

"Time was when firms modelled themselves on the armed forces, with officers (who thought about strategy) and chains of command. Now many model themselves on learning-through-play “Montessori” schools."--What do you bet that the author of this piece has never served in the military?

Specifically, the first half of the article is about "Montessory-style" business leadership. The second half cites a survey or two that criticize excessive collaboration within teams and open-plan office layouts.

It seems intended to mislead the reader into conflating these two criticisms of very specific issues with criticisms of the entire so-called "Montessory-style" business approach. But I don't think the article contains any actual evidence of the backlash claimed in the title.

This quote is everything that's wrong with science journalism. I'm sure there are some narrowly defined conclusions to be drawn from the study, but "collaboration had costs as well as benefits" is a truism, not a finding.

And I'm highly skeptical that Hansen said any such thing (that the results somehow say something new about the scale of costs relative I benefits of collaboration). Though if he did he and his reviewers bear some responsibility.

This always happens on these "it depends" questions. People see one thing that works and try it everywhere. Then people see that it doesn't work everywhere, and just assume it's bad. This author fell neatly into the trap.

Ah, just ignore me if I don't make sense .Kumbayah!(that's right just one Y)

Can't you just rent a 1950s vintage office building somewhere cheap and give your people the option? C.F. Claude Shannon (who stayed in a city centre building when his employer moved to the suburbs)[1].

I agree with others that the OA is confusing several issues (office layout and corporate goofiness).

[1] http://around.com/where-are-they-now-bell-labs/

For me, headphones would help but wouldn't be enough. I hate having people moving around behind me. I could have my back to a wall, but there's still a potential problem of visual distraction. I haven't had the chance to try that, but next time I'm in an open plan I'll ask for a back-to-the-wall seat.

Open floor plans with offices are among the most caustic I've ever encountered as everybody jostles and resents those that get offices. Inevitably some criteria for office assignment will get set and then you'll run out of offices and some various persons who've worked long and hard to "earn" an office won't be able to get one and now you have a senior disgruntled bad apple in among your rank and file.

Open floor plans are terrible too, but a step down from open with offices. They often backfire in weird ways as well. In one place I worked the dev area was an open office with breakout conference rooms. The unwritten culture was that it had to be as quiet as a tomb. Which also meant there was no communication happening...so it was pointless as a communication mixer. People stopped checking their email and communication deadlocked.

True. But, as with all things that have pros and cons, if your culture doesn't respect that you have headphones on it's not at all like working with your door closed. There is no barrier to a tap on your desk or shoulder with 'a quick question.' This happens quite often where I work and I find myself guilty of doing it as often as it is done to me. Speaking for myself, a cultural barrier is much less inclined to stop my behavior than a real physical barrier be it a cube with walls or even better an office witha door.

I have worked in a variety of situations the past 10+ years some cubes, once I had an office to myself and open floor plans the past several years. I think my optimal preference would be the shared office approach, with 2 or three individuals in the office. In a small group, it's much easier to request and establish a smaller customized set of things related to mutual respect for differences in how we all work.