However open plan, sales folks yelling on a phone, demands that I don't wear headphones to drown it out, is all so draining.
I remember the lead up to Christmas 2019, some fucking idiots decided that what we really needed in the open plan office, where I'm already positioned near the café, was removal of mini-meeting rooms, and 2 hours of carollers.
I don't want to listen to some people singing their echoing Christmas songs in a "jazzy" way. I still had to do calls and support other teams who I couldn't hear over the noise.
If working from the office actually meant having a small closed off space for my team so we could collaborate, have meetings, design sessions and planning it would be great.
If going to the office meant having other teams available to whiteboard their problems in an available meeting room, come up with a plan and roadmap the improvements it would be great.
However they got rid of offices for teams, they got rid of cubicles so that other people's calls would at least be muffled, they got rid of partitions between people's breakout spaces and the rest of the floor so I have to listen to inane conversations at other people standups.
If this kid wants an office because he needs social interaction, that's fine. We can do a hacking session once a week. We can go to the office to plan and design fortnightly. I've done paired programming, problem investigation, where we have just an open call between two people and a screenshare so that you aren't alone and we can talk it through.
In principle the office is a social space with productivity possibilities. In practice, most companies appear to want to make the office the most unpleasant location to be.