I have worked in the open office all my career but couple of years ago I got contract job on the customer who gave me tiny office with small window. That silence was amazing, if I wanted to talk to someone I could just walk out of office and knock the door or book a meeting. Otherwise, I could just code. It was the most productive time of my career, too bad it ended and I returned back to modern times.

> Sitting in a 2 people office all day is also not great, is it?

Why isn't it?

The only better thing I can imagine is a single office. Closely followed by home office.

Once you're sharing space, you're sharing space. In some ways, I'd think a shared office creates more pressure to interact with the other people in the office than in the case of an open office plan.

An office with a door is IMO clearly the best option for most employees. I don't even really buy the collaboration argument. Every place I've worked that had offices had at least an informal open door by default policy. You shut the door if you needed to really focus on something or have a private conversation. But otherwise people felt free to wander by.

I feel some people start talking all the time in the smaller offices. They don’t feel observed and then just talk all day, about everything, private and work stuff. When I’m at work I want to work and socialize at points I chose. People seem to be more cautious in open space

I had the opposite experience. Every single time I had to spend time in an open office environment.

There is just one person you need to tell to be quiet in a small 2 person office. There are countless people you want to tell to shut up in an open office. This is also the reason so many people work with their headphones on. For some time I had those massive over ear headphones with me while I traveled through our offices. I didn't even listen to anything. Just put them on so I didn't have to listen to the environment. It's hell...

Really? Sounds like you found a common sense solution. People can be so dramatic.

It's not a solution. It's a workaround which reflects a problem that is being sold as an improvement. Which also makes it a bigger problem.

This can't get enough drama to become recognized as a problem.

I see where you're coming from. We don't have open office, but I still deal with noise pollution; however I don't see the big issue with using headphones. There's health concerns (which can be mitigated), but I don't see any other big problems. And come on, there can always be too much drama. Anyway, I apologise for my tone, I just think it's worth considering.