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Re:Sound of Colleagues by wildmanx on Tuesday July 12, 2022 @04:57AM (#32067267)
Office designers on the European continent have come up with an ingenious invention for this: Individual offices!

Site managers in North America rarely want to hear this, since it's more expensive and supposedly prevents close collaboration and encourages slackers, but that's just a bunch of BS. It's absolutely fantastic to just be able to close your door and have peace and quiet if you need to get into flow. Much better than being forced to wear headphones all day, for noise-cancellation or forced-music-listening instead.

Re:Sound of Colleagues by bearmode on Tuesday July 12, 2022 @05:52AM (#32067672)
We have a big problem with open plan offices in Europe as well. Individual offices are far rarer than open plan.
Re:Sound of Colleagues by kgeist on Tuesday July 12, 2022 @06:04AM (#32067741)
We have special closed cubicles which aren't assigned to anyone on every floor (I don't know their name in English) which can be booked if you want isolation but they're in such demand that they're often unavailable.
Re:Sound of Colleagues by wreath on Tuesday July 12, 2022 @08:58AM (#32069207)
> Office designers on the European continent have come up with an ingenious invention for this: Individual offices!

Where did you get this idea from?

At best, companies have team rooms that hosts 5-8 people but not individual offices.

Re:Sound of Colleagues by wildmanx on Tuesday July 12, 2022 @10:03AM (#32070121)
I work in Europe at a nice company with nice offices. It's beautiful.

Most of the time we all have our doors wide open, it's glass doors, mostly glass walls, very bright, very modern. Everybody is welcome to stop by at any time when the door is open. Door closed means "please don't disturb unless it's an emergency". People close doors to have longer discussions, to have confidential discussions, or to have peace and quiet.

The doors basically serve the same purpose as headsets. They just make more sense and are more ... human.

Yes, some offices house more than one person. Typically 2, some have 3. But the employees in this situation are quite content with this and could request single offices at any time.