Some people prefer them. We used to have small open offices available. They'd seat six to ten people comfortably. If the employee wasn't okay with that, there w

Some people prefer them. We used to have small open offices available. They'd seat six to ten people comfortably. If the employee wasn't okay with that, there were smaller offices with room for one or two people. Depending on which facility you were at, there were larger workspaces available that also worked for meetings and our HQ also had a larger conference room space. It worked for us. Not everyone enjoys working in close proximity to other people and technologically creative people are sometimes introverts or have behaviors that aren't social normatives. I'm not sure why companies are forcing people into open office plans. Unless things have drastically changed, real estate isn't a very high percentage of overhead. This might be different in SV, but it's not just being done in SV. I'd also expect the increased productivity of happy workers to mitigate the increased real estate costs.