From the traction this article is getting, it sounds like there's interest, so I'm going to plead one more time for leads on companies that respect their employees right to work in peace.
If bootstrapped companies had a lower rate of open-office architecture than venture-backed companies, I'd take this as pretty good supporting evidence.
> if your company has an open office, your productivity as an employee isn't actually a factor in the company's predicted bottom line. The company exists as a talent pool to be acquihired,
The article:
>80 percent of all offices now have an open floor plan.
Does that mean 80% of companies are aquihire plays whos employees don't factor into the bottom line? I have a hard time believing that.
My cynical-but-less-cynical-than-that hypothesis is that it's cheap and hip. Doing the cheap popular thing is harder than the expensive unpopular thing.
I doubt there is a lot of correlation. Startups are often in the position of taking whatever office space they can find, because they are either short of cash or loathe to make long term commitments. The landlord holds a lot of power unless you are going to make a large long term commitment. Landlords don’t like building out offices, it’s less flexible and harder to re-lease when you leave. They really hate one person offices.
At one startup I ran development for, we were fortunate to have a CFO who understood the value of private offices. But our landlord still stuck us with a bigger deposit and made us pay for every bit of the rebuild.