[landswipe]

I worked for over 20 years in open office environments that were thoughtfully laid out with over 9m^2 space between stations. I then changed to a company where it seems 'space was a premium' with a dense open plan workspace with different teams mixed in the same bull pen and it is absolutely horrendous. There are specific people that don't take social cues like turning back to your monitor when you want to try and focus on something, yet continue to chit-chat all day. I can't believe the c-levels don't see this as a problem. The WFH policy is still reasonable but I have heard the occasional "see... this is why Elon is strict on RTO for collaboration" and I just scoff internally as I know they are desperate to revert it all. Fundamentally there is a huge issue of trust in these organisations, mostly driven by insecure egocentric managers, and I think that trust is satiated only through fear and subjugation of the employee, and more often than not a fallacy - if they go completely RTO I am looking around and/or changing careers.