[z0r]

I didn't use any hyperbole in my response, but you're projecting a lot onto mine. Let me give you a realistic personal example, something that might happen to me at least once or twice a week. I'm 20 minutes into establishing my bearings in a set of files I think I'll have to modify or at least understand for the next change I need to make. Someone comes over and asks me a technical question - maybe via a chat ping or a tap on the shoulder, or even just by walking behind me. Now I can choose to tell them it isn't a good time, but they've probably already started to describe their problem and that alone has stolen enough of the focus I was building up that I'm better off trying to help them first. (If I'm an hour in rather than 20 minutes in I'm more likely to tell them to ask me later). After giving them 5 - 10 minutes of my time, the original focus is lost. It may take me another 20 minutes just to get back to the cusp of beginning to write code again. There are only a few good sized blocks of time to work in the normal day, so that's more expensive than it seems.

I can deal with a nearby conversation and ignore it, although frankly it can be very distracting when it's about technical topics near my own work. Two or three at once is rarer but very irritating when it gets started up. Headphones are great for that, but when I'm suffering from tinnitus they no longer work. What's wrong with walking to a common space away from the work area when you want to have a 2 minute discussion with a coworker? If it's not worth the walk, maybe it isn't worth the discussion.

There's nothing strange about people having trouble in an open office space, all I would ask for is some empathy. I have internalized some of the lessons of my own problems by trying to resist the temptation to ping or otherwise disturb coworkers by non-email means unless it's absolutely necessary. A good deal of the kinds of questions I'm asked or I hear asked (maybe as many as half of them? and I would include my own questions here) could be solved by thinking or researching just a little more in solitude before reaching out.

I've also created improvised physical barriers around my desk to block visual distractions. As a result my current workspace is OK for getting things done, but it doesn't change the fact (for me) that open offices are bad by default and need personal and spatial modification to become acceptable, as compared to the mythical office with a door which would be good for getting things done by default. It's not about being incapable of function without "utter total silence", it's about being made slightly miserable every day on average.