Most software developers are introverts, though. So that may be fine for UX or graphics designers, but it is less reasonable for software development. My team

Most software developers are introverts, though. So that may be fine for UX or graphics designers, but it is less reasonable for software development. My team would all be on headphones at their desks. It was an actual team rule that discussions were not held at desks, you took them to one of the open areas with white-board walls and hashed things out. Or a conference room. We did that. It would have been much easier with cubicles or offices. I used to work in cubicles, they were an improvement over open plan. Space for your books, semi-privacy, the white noise speakers didn't need to be turned up as loud (my gosh when those things were off it felt like you were no experiencing auditory suffocation). But a few of the senior engineers had offices. When we needed to collaborate, we'd gather in the office, hash stuff out, and go. It was good stuff. I've also done the war room thing. We took over an exec's office. I played music for the team at a reasonable level (CDs only, 'twas in the time before YouTube), and we built stuff. But even there we developed a code of behavior of how not to interrupt each other. Even that was better than open plan, because we could close the door and do our job. Every once in a while a PM would knock for a question or two. Open plan was worse. Now we all work from home, more or less. In some ways, that's even better for focus, but definitely worse for collaboration.