It's almost comical isn't it, but it actually turns out that this is a big foundation behind behavioral economics. In essence you can get trapped in an upper level heuristic and never stop for a moment and thinks things through.

Another one of my favorite examples is that there is some research out of Harvard that basically suggested that if people would take and spend 15 minutes a day reviewing what they had done and what was important, they increased their productivity 22%. Now you would think that this is so obvious and so dramatic you would have variety of Fortune 500 companies saying "oh my goodness we want all of our workers to be 22% more productive" and so they would simply send out a memo or an email or some sort of process to force people to do some reflecting.

I would also suggest that Microsoft had a unique advantage based out of the idea that people should have their own enclosed workspace to do coding. This was deeply entrenched when Bill was running the company day-to-day. And I'm sure as somebody that was a coding phenomenon, it simply made sense to him. But academically, it also makes sense.

Microsoft has reversed this policy, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't have anything to do with the research. It has to do with statements about working together efficiently. or AI productivity. If there's real research then it's great.

My problem is it just doesn't appear to be any real research behind it. Yet I'm sure many managers at Microsoft thinks that it's very efficient. Of course, if you do know anybody at Microsoft that codes, they have their own opinion, and rather than me repeating hearsay, it would be fantastic to have somebody anonymously post what's really going on here. I'll betcha a nickel that 90% of them are not reporting that they feel a lot more effective.