[dkhenry]

I like open floor plans. I find I get more done in my open floor plan office then my closed off private office at my house. I hate how all these critiques are so absolute in that "Open Floor Plans are Bad". Open floor plans work, and they work well. Like Eric Schmidt if there was some secret benefit to having offices for everyone that could make workers so much more productive don't you think companies would jump at the productivity boost ?

[pekk]

So the reason businesses shifted to open floor plans when they didn't use them before was that they suddenly became optimal?

Or maybe there are fashions in management as there are in anything else.

[dkhenry]

There are totally trends in management, however the "shift" to open floor plans is not the new trend its a return to the trend we had _before_ we went on the quiet isolation kick in the late 60's. I think now that we have actual data point of isolation vs open businesses are seeing tangible benefits from the open floor plan. There is still experimentation going on with how to strike a balance, but to say open floor plans are all bad ignores the fact that in practice they work better then most everything else we have tried.

The real thing people are finally paying attention to is that not all human workers are the same. Some people thrive in an open noisy collaborative environment, while some can't operate at all in that environment. It is the real task of management to manage the work environment of all your employees.