How horrible are those offices people talk about (I guess in US)? Is it really the norm that people look over your shoulder?

I like when it's quiet and private but I also like to come work from an office... Even though it's a basic small shared space and I literally work from my laptop (can't be bothered to hook up the screen etc). I do like not having to do it every day so I am free to come or not but I look forward to it usually. Or I may go out to that area for other reasons and just drop by.

If you've never seen one, an open office looks like a lan party. A really really busy and cramped one.

At my place, there are desks (about 4 feet wide, set in rows of 6, with people's backs facing each other and no dividers). There are about 200 desks, and about 250 employees. Desks need to be reserved, keyboard, mouse and charger all need to be brought by the employee to their desk each day. 50 or so people don't get desks and have to sit on couches, stools in the kitchen with no backs, or the floor.

The CEO said that we should just feel grateful that we have an air-conditioned office with snacks to come back to, poo-poo'd the concerns over: a lack of desks, the high noise-levels, the fact that most teams are distributed and so much of the open office is sitting in a remote zoom call talking over one another...

It's an incredibly hard environment to work in, and I was shocked that my company's CEO was so out-of-touch. Of course, he has a private office.

There's nothing quite as ridiculous as an open office with row after row of employees sitting shoulder to shoulder, half of whom are loudly talking on video calls with their teams which are distributed among other offices where they are also sitting shoulder to shoulder in an open office. I'd be shocked that any deep concentration work gets done in such an environment.

EDIT: Furthermore, I think some execs in tech companies (particularly those who never were engineers) really believe that's how software development happens! Like if you ask your company's CEO how software gets written, he pictures this Wall Street-like trading floor where engineers are yacking at each other, and having standup meetings and flailing about at whiteboards, and that's the sound/busy-ness of engineering being done!

Ouch. I see why people would WFH...