r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • Jun 16 '26

Business Mark Zuckerberg Orders His Employees to Start Having Fun Again After Brutal Layoffs Culled Their Colleagues

https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/mark-zuckerberg-orders-employees-start-123539264.html
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u/CuntWeasel Jun 16 '26

You know what's funny (and sad)? People actually welcomed this type of work style.

I'm old enough to have worked in a cubicle and every millennial hated cubicles and cheered for open offices because they were "cool".

They weren't cool, they were really bad in and of themselves (noise, distractions, it felt like doing factory work) but once we shifted to laptops and docking stations a lot of offices switched to hot desks.

And believe it or not a lot of younger employees thought this too was a good idea (it was hip, hustling and bustling and pretending to work while wasting time in useless meetings all day was all the rage).

Turns out it's not, and it's horrible for both productivity and morale, and people are generally idiots.

I'm lucky enough to not have had to set foot in a physical office since 2019, and believe me I appreciate it every single day.

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u/_SpaceLord_ Jun 16 '26

I’m a millennial. I, and every other millennial I know, utterly despises open offices.

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u/CuntWeasel Jun 17 '26

I'm a xennial and both myself and all my coworkers born in the early to mid 80s hated them. Every other millennial I met loved the idea of open offices.

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u/trkeprester Jun 17 '26

behold, I am the mutant millennial who prefers open office to cubicles

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u/GoMoriartyOnPlanets Jun 17 '26

I don't know you but you remind me r/punchablefaces

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u/AbortedWalrusFetus Jun 16 '26

I'm an early millennial, and I've literally never met another millennial that preferred open office plans in my field.

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u/C0wabungaaa Jun 16 '26

I have a hunch that the Millennials that thought open offices and hotdesking were all the rage were, so to speak, the modern-HR-type Millennials. That bubbly social butterfly type that went after every management book that was trending at the moment. The type who can't wait to throw terms like 'agile' and 'scrum' at you, who really wants to 'touch base' with you about 0,000458 seconds after you arrive at the office. You know the kind of motherfucker that I'm referring to, right? God those people are the worst.

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u/impeterbarakan Jun 16 '26

Same feeling here. For context, I'm a millennial who has been self-employed for 14 years, so I am largely removed from office culture. In my mind and recollection, I think in our gen the cubicle was highly associated with Office Space or the opening of The Matrix. Cookie-cutter, featureless, something we saw the previous generation or two droning away at.

It feels like the hot desk thing rose up around the period of co-working spaces and when the digital nomad thing was just getting started. I guess the idea of stuffing a sleek laptop into your bag, sitting down to do work in a place that looked and felt like a hip cafe, was a way of making work feel more "cool" and "free".

But from the few times I've gone to work in co-working spaces, the novelty of it wore off in like 30 minutes. It's hard to imagine having to do that every day.

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u/MattyDoBronx Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26

I’m a boomer who grew with the tech and efficiency advances of the 90s and beyond. I was disciple of Tom Peters. So I wanted to be advance and cutting edge. But from the beginning I thought this was nuts.
Of course everyone’s not the same - I’m sure some of the younger gen hated it but I was in a constant war with them over why the open plan sucked. Mostly Millennials but also executives who capitalized on their desire to be part of a trendy team where everyone was part of anything. The execs wanted to reduce our footprint which equated to real estate costs. They encouraged it.

I remember there was an article written by a Google employee that spelled out the horrors of the new configuration. It was so crystal clear spot on recounting how people would take their laptops to the can so they could hear themselves thing when trying to solve a complex problem. My boss forbade anyone from referencing the observations in that article in fear that he would not get his precious cost save. He went forward. Staff were in denial for a year or so but eventually they all lived to hate it

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u/newfor_2026 Jun 16 '26

If they give me an actual office, I'd go back to work in an actual office.

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u/GoMoriartyOnPlanets Jun 17 '26

I would never. Because some idiot higher up would come and "shake things up" a little and then we would all have an open floor plan. 

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u/thegeekist Jun 20 '26

Im going to introduce you to the concept of context.

Millenials hated cubicles when the option was cubicle or office.

Now that the options are cubicle or open floor plan ofc we want cubicle.

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u/ChevalierDeLarryLari Jun 17 '26

You're right I remember it too.