When companies tear down office walls, they promise collaboration, transparency, and equality. No more corner offices signaling who matters most. No more closed doors hiding power from view. Everyone sits together, works together, builds together.

But spend a few weeks in an open office and you'll notice something strange. The walls are gone, yet divisions persist. New boundaries emerge—ones you can't see but definitely feel. The hierarchy hasn't disappeared. It's just gone underground, becoming harder to name and therefore harder to challenge.

Watch any open office carefully and you'll see invisible property lines everywhere. Someone's jacket draped permanently over a chair. A collection of personal items spreading outward from a desk. The senior developer who somehow always sits in the corner with the window view, even though seating is supposedly unassigned.

These territorial markers work exactly like office walls once did—they announce who belongs where and who has claim to what. The difference is that now status gets communicated through subtle accumulation rather than obvious architecture. A standing desk, noise-canceling headphones, multiple monitors—these aren't just tools. They're status symbols that establish boundaries in a space designed to have none.

The most powerful marker of all? Mobility. Junior employees stay anchored to their assigned spots. Senior people roam freely, taking calls in lounges, working from cafeterias, occupying space wherever they choose. In open offices, freedom to move becomes the new corner office. And just like corner offices, not everyone gets equal access.

Takeaway

Status doesn't disappear when you remove physical barriers—it migrates to subtler signals like equipment, positioning, and freedom of movement.

Open offices were supposed to increase accountability through visibility. If everyone can see everyone else, the thinking went, people will stay focused and collaborate naturally. What actually happens is more complicated—and more exhausting.

When you're always visible, you're always performing. You learn to look busy even when thinking. You minimize time away from your desk because absences get noticed. You adopt the body language of productivity: furrowed brow, rapid typing, screens full of work. The open office becomes a stage where everyone acts out their dedication.

This visibility creates conformity pressure that falls unevenly. New employees feel watched most intensely. People from marginalized groups often report greater discomfort with constant exposure. Meanwhile, those with informal power—the person everyone likes, the founder's college friend—can break rules openly because their status provides cover. The surveillance is technically equal, but its weight is not.

Takeaway

Constant visibility doesn't create accountability equally—it pressures those with less social capital to perform while protecting those who already hold informal power.

People are remarkably creative at finding privacy where none officially exists. Headphones become "do not disturb" signs. Meeting rooms designed for collaboration get booked for solo work. Bathroom breaks stretch longer as the only guaranteed escape from observation.

These privacy strategies reveal something important about human needs. We require moments of invisibility to think deeply, to make mistakes without witnesses, to simply exist without performing. When the physical environment denies this need, people construct workarounds—but these workarounds come with costs.

The employees with most success finding privacy are usually those who can afford it—literally and socially. They have the standing to work from home occasionally. They can expense the good headphones. They know which conference rooms stay empty and when. For everyone else, the open office delivers its full surveillance pressure with few escape routes. The playing field looks level, but the game still favors those who started with advantages.

Takeaway

The ability to create privacy in open spaces is itself a form of privilege—those who can carve out boundaries already had more power to begin with.

Open offices didn't eliminate workplace hierarchy—they made it harder to see and therefore harder to address. When power operates through subtle signals rather than obvious architecture, challenging it becomes more difficult. You can't demand access to the corner office if there is no corner office.

Recognizing these invisible structures is the first step toward changing them. Ask yourself: who moves freely through your workspace, and who stays put? Whose privacy gets protected, and whose gets exposed? The walls may be gone, but the barriers remain.