Spaces that set trends on the big screen icons

Office Space (Trabajo basura in Spain and Enredos de oficina in Latin America) is a 1999 comedy, directed by the director of Ecuadorian origin, Mike Judge. This director is particularly known for creating the series: Beavis and Butt-Head, King of the Hill and Silicon Valley. Although Office Space did not cause a great impact when it was first released in theaters, it would become a classic for movie fans and even today all kinds of analyzes are written about it.

The film is a satire on the routine of work at a software company in the late 90s. In the eyes of the youngest generations, most of the office concepts seen in this film may seem incredible, that is why today we are going to compare what is going on in Office Space’s work style with the current modalities, what would this film be like if it would have filmed and premiered today?.

• Manual work vs. Automation.

Being the office of the film one of software, the daily bread was (same as today) to review programming codes on the computer, back then each line of code had to be reviewed one by one, and there were neither 10 nor 100 of them, there were up to 2000 lines to review manually. Today, an automated computing process does that kind of repetitive and tedious activity, leaving workers more time to pursue more creative activities.

• Commute to work vs. Home Office.

Until not long ago, commuting to work was one of the least favorite activities of all employees, both for those with their vehicles and for those who had to use public transportation. Today there is remote work and it is possible to work from home, avoiding headaches from first thing in the morning.

• Constant checks between staff vs. Agile and precise agreements.

In the past, it was a constant for the supervisor to visit the cubicle or work area of the employees to remind them of something, a request pending activities, or clarify misunderstandings. If this happened today, it would generate a lot of anxiety and stress for both parties, the supervisor and the employee. Work teams currently operate in agile spaces and with daily meetings that do not interrupt the workflow, in addition to the fact that today in all offices there is a visible whiteboard showing the status of all projects, as well as important reminders.

Here we end this first part of comparisons between the office of the past and the present. There are still many aspects to take into account, so keep reading each week’s posts and, if you have any thought about what has radically changed between the past and current work style, leave it in the comments.