I worked for a fairly large company (Gemalto). Developers had shared offices, two to an office. The office had a partitioning wall through the middle, but it di

I worked for a fairly large company (Gemalto). Developers had shared offices, two to an office. The office had a partitioning wall through the middle, but it did not extend the whole width of the room, so it was semi-open space. There was also a fairly strong open-door culture, so you could hear, softly, the conversations happening in the other offices. That really worked for me. When I needed serious focus time, I just popped on some headphones.