[mh_yam]

Let me share some perspectives on the 'other side'.

1) I don't want people to be able to see me all the time. It's extremely nerve-racking and I feel like an animal in a zoo. And from my experience, people usually don't care whether I'm deep in some code or doing something less intense - they come over anyway. And people don't care whether their question is important enough to interrupt! As soon as someone taps my shoulder or calls my name, my concentration breaks completely and it takes me another half hour to get it back. Having offices makes people think harder and try to figure out the answer by themselves before going to someone else.

2) See above. The ratio of stupid questions that could have been resolved by Google or just another 2 minutes of thinking, to questions that ignited an interesting discussion is about 9 to 1.

3) How much work is going to get done by 'helping others'? 80-90% of a developer's work can be alone. Team productivity of course is important, but in development teams, this is really just the sum of individual developers' productivity.

[bigdubs]

Not only can the majority of a developers work can be done alone, but the majority of intra-team communication can be done over campfire/irc/im. You don't need to do meatspace communication to talk about code.

Unless there is an issue and things get heated, then it helps to sit people down in a room together. But this (should) happen rarely.

[hacknat]

Number 2 is totally accurate. I can't tell you the number of stupid questions I have fielded by our Junior devs, just because I'm in their site line.

I have the unique experience of having been both in offices and an open floor plan (most recently) for the same company. I can unequivocally state that I was more productive with an office. Junior devs had to measure the opportunity cost of coming to my office before asking me a Googleable question, I'm fairly certain one of them doesn't even use Google anymore.

[twic]

> I don't want people to be able to see me all the time. It's extremely nerve-[w]racking and I feel like an animal in a zoo.

I don't feel like this at all. In fact, that seems like an unhealthy reaction to me (so apologies for being judgmental). May i ask if you feel like this in other environments where there are other people around? Like, in a restaurant, or on public transport?

[mh_yam]

No, because in public places there is a degree of anonymity.

At work, people all know each other. Inevitably, you get nosy and annoying people who constantly check out what others are doing and peer into their screens.