[exelius]

I agree that open-plan offices drive the opposite behavior than they are touted to. They make it impossible to have impromptu discussions that have any sensitive aspect to them. I have a lot of those conversations.

I work from home or a coffee shop down the street from my office as a result and almost never even see my coworkers faces.

But the main driver of open-plan offices is usually density / cost. I suspect many of the cost savings of the most recent wave of office design are coming from employees who no longer come into the office because the conditions aren’t conducive to working.

[rightbyte]

We use MS Teams to chat with people at the next desk. Especially since some uses headphones and you would have to scream.

How much space does a indoor wall take in comparation to the space between the desk there are anyway in open offices.

You have to put cabinets on the floor since shelves can't hang on walls.

Whiteboards are on feet in the "hallway".

I have never been in an open office and though "Jeez look at all the space they save by not having walls" if you would compare to 6 or 4 person offices.

[exelius]

So imagine a single 6x12 table. You can comfortably seat 8 people at a table that size. Even if you packed those people into 4 person offices, 2 offices take more space than a big table in the middle of a floor that shares walking space with the other stuff around it.

They’re awful for productivity, but they definitely are cheaper.

[freehunter]

>They make it impossible to have impromptu discussions that have any sensitive aspect to them.

The only place I ever worked with an open floor plan, I worked as a security analyst/engineer. Behind me were contracted programmers from various outsourcing firms who could see my screens and hear my conversations when discussing sensitive security issues.

So much time was wasted trying to find an empty conference room for an impromptu discussion about an active security incident.