[Cthulhu_]

But it's not just about personal productivity, it's also about enjoying your work.

Spending a day in the noise, getting distracted, and simply unable to get your head down and finish the one task you're assigned to gets highly annoying and draining. Which has negative effects on that person and the team as a whole; poor mood (and attitude by extension), bad work, and a higher inclination to simply pack up and leave.

I work in a ~20 people open floor plan; fridays feel the most productive, because it's the quietest. Some colleagues feel hugely relieved after spending a day working from home and, by their own words, getting some work done for the first time in forever.

tl;dr we're individual people, not team productivity numbers.

[mankyd]

This raises an interesting point about design. I've worked for small (<8 person) startups where the open floor plan worked well. I now work for a large company (~50 people on my floor). We still use what I would call an "open floor plan" at the large company, but it has been carefully designed such that I only have 6 or so people in my immediate vicinity. Despite both being "open", they very different in layout from the each other.

At the large company, I can't generally here what's being discussed by folks in the next group over, except maybe as low background noise. I don't generally get distracted and I am easily able to grab my teammates' attention when I need it.

[prawks]

In the Cornell study cited, it specifically discusses that open plans should be fit for purpose. "There's no silver bullet."

I would love to be able to sit around my coworkers while I answer emails, catch up on the projects going on around me, bounce ideas off of people, etc. and then have a designated, quieter space to do "heads-down" work.

Why can't you have both?

[calinet6]

This is what I want. I've seen it work very well in coworking spaces, but never seen it in a dedicated office.

Trying to get my company to make this happen...

[twic]

The trouble with this is that if you have a quiet space, then they have a quiet space, which means when you're sitting in the chatty space, most of your colleagues will be in quiet spaces, so you don't get the benefit the chatty space might offer.