Abstractly, you're choosing to only hire from a limited radius, taking these really expensive knowledge workers and shipping them all into a big room where comm

Abstractly, you're choosing to only hire from a limited radius, taking these really expensive knowledge workers and shipping them all into a big room where common sense and study after study shows they can't concentrate. It's kinda bizarre. Forgetting a wider cheaper talent pool and increased concentration - even the math around commuting alone should be enough: E = size of engineering team C = round trip commute (45 *2 ~= 90 minutes) P = Productivity increase per day H = Avg hours worked per day per engineer (E*C)/(H*60) = P For a 20 person engineering team: (90 minutes * 20 engineers)/(8*60) = .1875 or 3.75 more engineers or almost another working day per week. I like the absurdity of the self driving analogy - We're inventing this fantastic new technology so we can better shuttle people around instead of bits which we're already pretty good at. My theory is that the people making these decisions are usually extrovert MBA-types who like the 'energy' of open offices and or most tend to generally model successful companies who have, so far, yet to make a big move here but the dominoes seem like they have to fall at some point.