A “library rules” open office would be just fine. That’s not what happens, though. The point of an open office is that everyone is talking all the time. If you don’t want to hear every conversation everyone in your company is having, it’s your own responsibility to jam those signals, or leave.
This is not universally true. I've done a lot of working in university libraries recently, and many of them have switched to allowing collaboration in the main spaces.
> A “library rules” open office would be just fine.
This still wouldn't work for me personally. I listen to music pretty much all the time while working, and get really sick of wearing headphones all the time. The only option is a private office. (I've gotten this by becoming a remote worker.)
I prefer being alone. I don't really see people other than my wife outside of work. Work is my only chance to socialize, which makes an open office plan ideal for me. It's very easy to start conversations with the people near me and have them turn into fun group discussions.
Once you give up on the idea of having long unbroken periods of productivity, the open office plan can be a lot of fun.
I like working on stuff at tech meetups. I always bring my laptop, mostly because the speakers can be boring and being in a room like that helps me focus on personal projects. I use to go to writing meetups too.
That being said, I absolutely hate open layouts. I would much rather prefer a cubical.
I'm not sure if this generalization would hold out if you surveyed people, but it might. I'd be curious.
It's basically taboo to say anything positive about open office spaces online. There are many, many legitimately terrible open office workspaces in the world. Suggesting that open offices aren't always bad feels like an attack on those who are miserable in their open office. So it's safer to just never bring it up.
In the real world, a lot of people do enjoy open office style environments. They're probably the same people who went to their University's library to study in college or joined a study group so they could sit with others who were working on the same topic. Many (not all, obvious) college students choose these open, social study environments organically during college. It's reasonable to expect that they'd carry their preferences into the working world.
I have a theory that the more someone prefers isolation and being alone, the more likely they are to participate in internet comment sections and online forums. As a result, the deeper you go into internet comment sections, the more unanimously people rail against open office floor plans.
In a perfect world, we'd have a mix of companies offering both working styles and people could choose their preferred style up front. Anecdotally, I worked for a company that advertised private offices as a perk, but nearly zero of our candidates seemed to care. People tend to choose whichever company pays the best, regardless of the working conditions. I can understand why companies choose to save money on open office floorplans.