[mullingitover]

Open plan offices took off in larger companies in the mid-2000s, and I think it's a classic example of a cargo cult.

Executive management looked at the handful of hugely successful startups who had open plan offices and thought, "It must be these open plan offices, that's their secret sauce! We just need to copy that and we'll be successful too!"

...ignoring survivor bias, because for every hugely successful startup who did open plan out of necessity, there was a big graveyard of startups who had the same practice and failed.