One private room per team works very well for programmers without the expense justification. The two most productive jobs I've ever had in an office were with that arrangement, not cubicles or open offices.

Cubicles are OK as long as there isn't a lot of chatter, people being on the phone all the time, talking loud, etc. Though of course id rather be in my own room no doubt.

Cancelling sound distractions with NC headsets isn't that bad. Cubicles will most likely help with visual distraction i have in an open floor plan.

> Cancelling sound distractions with NC headsets isn't that bad

For you. For many others (myself included), using NC headphones is even worse than putting up with the noise.

I never saw headphones mask voice adequately without playing music or other sound. Or wearable all day without discomfort.

same. you're basically getting earplugs at that point, or keeping something on in the background as a low drone

I usually put some 8~10 hour youtube lofi stream on when working.

I have no issues with NC headphones could even sleep with them, it has pretty much become a part of me.

how do you justify the salary of a junior programmer if you can't justify giving them the space they need to perform? isn't this just throwing money away?

note that private office rooms aren't the first or only option, but rather work from home

Junior dev left to his own devices will start reimplementing Linux kernel.

Skilled labor isn't cheap.

The buildings were put there to serve the people, not the other way around.

Even if you pay $1k per office per programmer that's still less than 5-10% of the cost of their salary, and would likely yield a performance improvement of greater than 5-10%.

You say you can't afford to, I say you can't afford not to!

> Even if you pay $1k per office per programmer

You mean per year? Private office costs are much higher than that.

If you mean per month, then you are assuming salary to be average of $100k-200k.

I meant per month.

Yes, that is indeed the average salary for a programmer in my area, that's the low end.