I realise my post was a little unclear. Yes, often they'd carry on a conversation between themselves, which was an interruption, but was a symptom of the poorl

I realise my post was a little unclear. Yes, often they'd carry on a conversation between themselves, which was an interruption, but was a symptom of the poorly designed office space. It's hardly their fault that their job and/or personality thrives on conversation. That was why the engineering team wanted a separate quiet work space for our team, so they could do their thing without breaking the productivity of the dev team. But what I meant with They'd walk into the office and immediately start up some useless conversation was that they'd start it with us. Partly because they wanted conversation but also because they thought it was good for us. That the office was too quiet and we needed to liven it up a bit. That the reason we weren't talking is because we needed someone to break the ice for us. That failure to understand what makes an engineering team productive led them to try and do things that were totally counter-productive, but they just didn't see it. It's in that context that they really needed to just stop.