I've worked in a situation like that and felt productive but that was only because we were all basically on a tiger team locked in a room together to work on th

I've worked in a situation like that and felt productive but that was only because we were all basically on a tiger team locked in a room together to work on the same project. Me and one other developer, a tech writer, a QA person, and a PM. In the end we were successful and it was a successful product for the company. Compare that with being thrown in an office with long rows of desks working with everyone in the company. That's not productive. That's a din of noise and people either interrupting your flow or interrupting the flow of the people immediately next to you, thus interrupting your flow. That, for lack of a better term, is a sweat shop.