There's a bias toward the negative in writing, which I think comes from the fact that people write as an attempt to solve problems. So you're always going to see more negative reporting on shared offices than positive.

But I'm old enough to remember when private offices were still common, and there was a lot of negative writing about those too. As someone about to enter the software industry, I was very concerned that I'd be lonely and depressed from working alone in front of a screen all day.

I think the truth behind all this is that the people writing this negative writing are all mismatched with the offices they're in. If you put a bunch of introverts in a shared office, they're going to be distracted and stressed. And if you stick a bunch of extroverts in private offices, they're going to be lonely and depressed.

The answer for employers is to create mixed workspaces that are conducive to both forms of work, and make explicit the fact that nobody should be pressured to work in one space or another.

The answer for individuals is to know yourself and where you work best, and work at jobs that will allow you to work in a work environment that works for you.

Complaining about shared workspaces or private workspaces is counterproductive--it's just trying to force the kind of workspace that works for you onto a diverse industry that doesn't necessarily work the same as you.

Personally, I get a lot done in shared offices. I can relate to a lot of what the author complains about, but a lot of the problems he brings up are problems with startup culture, not with shared workspaces. We extroverts aren't idiots, we know that stuff like "the common themes of rap are in tune with the company’s mission" is ridiculous.