I was on a team where the team jointly decided to convert their half-cubes to an open office. There were two hold-outs, myself, and another guy next to me who j

I was on a team where the team jointly decided to convert their half-cubes to an open office. There were two hold-outs, myself, and another guy next to me who just wanted to keep his cube. (He had a loud voice to begin with, but now he would have long conversations by yelling across the office.) Like any strongly held belief, you're going to find like-minded people and convince yourself that you're a majority. And, especially, we're unhappy and that means we want to justify our unhappiness, and if we were the majority we'd obviously be justified. But I think all these things are true at the same time: 1. There is a minority of people who are genuinely miserable in open offices. 2. A sizable group of people dislike specific things (too much chatter, clicking pens, etc.) but they don't think about it much. 3. A plurality are oblivious to the noise and are having fun at work. 4. And open offices decrease everyone's ability to focus and are no better for collaboration than any other design. 5. The raison d'etre of an office is to get work done and silence facilitates that. So we're a minority, but regardless there's a solid case against open offices.