[dahdum]

Anecdote, but having spent years in an open office the amount of emailing and chat happening instead of talking skyrocketed as density increased.

Any time anyone spoke everyone else could hear the conversation, so discussions tended to be formal and short. No "how are the kids" or other pleasantries.

Meetings would drag on, if only for the added bit of privacy you had in conference rooms.

There were some benefits, but overall I'm not a fan of them.

[valuearb]

The only benefits are that open offices “appear” to save the company money. Since the cost of private offices is only a couple percent of an engineers salary, and the increase in productivity is far more, private offices are significantly cheaper. And better for collaboration.