Or they don't want to feel like I'm [0] locked in a room alone for absolutely no reason.

[0] Oops, we were using "they."

But if you want to kill the alone-ness, all you have to do is step out. Heck, people used to pair program in cubes long before this open space disease (sorry, my opinion). For those of us that are unable to function in the cage-free farm, our only option is to destroy our hearing with headphones to try to get some work done.

Step out to where exactly? Generally it's not just you in your own office, everyone else is too.

Maybe a hub-and-spoke type of setup like Bell Labs had?

Cal Newport wrote a bit about it in Deep Work [1] and I think it sounds like a potential way to get the best of both worlds.

[1] https://medium.com/@GrandCentralPub/excerpted-from-deep-work...

I think I misunderstood your original comment 'Or they don't want to feel like I'm [0] locked in a room alone for absolutely no reason.'. I took it to mean that cubicles/offices cause loneliness. I now see that what you were saying is that the reason people are stuffed in the bullpen is the 'concern' that you outlined.

Step out and walk around? Where I work, we have private offices, but people have self segregated into a chatty end of the hallway, and "Siberia."