[gtirloni]

I see my more "communication" inclined coworkers talking all the time in our open floor office. They talk about work for sure, but also jokes, women, soccer, etc. This is very good for socialization and building relationships but it's terrible when I'm trying to find out the root cause for a difficult issue.

It seems the has been too much emphasys on the socializing aspects of open floor offices and not the equivalent attention to concentration and flow required for the type of tasks we're assigned to.

[sorincos]

I'm working on the same open floor with people from another company with completely unrelated duties. I fail to see how this socialization is helping my own team's work (incidentally my team is NOT colocated). Nevertheless, officially we're happy open office users.