Unfortunately, while we talk about nuances and shades of gray, management has taken a clear black-and-white stance, which that we will have open offices, period, with no consideration for the issues mentioned in the article.

At my workplace, management is in love with open offices. The HR director spoke in glowing terms about another division of the company, where the entire workplace is one great big open office from end to end. The managers all agree that the open office improves "collaboration."

A danger to watch out for is that all management initiatives are successful by default. The open offices have been declared to be a success.

My desk is a face-to-face next to a hallway. I get interrupted every few minutes by people looking for my colleagues: "Is Alice in today? What time does she usually come in?" "Do you know where Bob hides?" "Is Cathy still in her meeting?" If somebody comes to ask me a question, my face-to-face colleague joins the conversation and dominates it.

Something that's helped me a lot is Portable Apps. I can have all of my apps and data on a pocket size hard drive, walk out of my office, plug it into any computer anywhere, and get to work.