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I just want a fucking office. I don't want to listen to my coworker with volume control issues. I don't want to hear every last word wrung out on a video chat. I don't want to hear every loud presentation. I want four goddamn walls and a door and a minute alone with my thoughts. I'm begging; no, PLEADING for it. I promise, you can have as much of my labor and productivity as you want if you just give me some fucking peace and quiet.

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Hahahaha, you basically said what I came here to say.

Being old enough to have lived the "old school" days of actually having walls, I've never liked the "open office" concept. I wonder if it wasn't management's version of how JavaScript devs are always super quick to adopt the next framework. In this case management had to be the adoption hipsters jumping on the latest bandwagon. That or the cynical part of me thinks perhaps management buys in because it gives them more visibility and control into what people are doing, not for "collaboration" and things like that...

This is one of the main reasons that I work from home / remote entirely. The worst office configuration I ever saw was a San Francisco open plan environment in a loft style office where all the engineering desks had their back to a floor to ceiling window shining bright sun on every engineer's screen for roughly 1/2 the day. I don't think that company (Kleiner funded) was ever profitable.

Every single engineer had eye strain as well the normal noise distractions.

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