Pre-covid open plan offices had their problems. I sat elbow-to-elbow with a guy who always had Youtube bowling videos running on his spare monitor on one side,

Pre-covid open plan offices had their problems. I sat elbow-to-elbow with a guy who always had Youtube bowling videos running on his spare monitor on one side, and a junior engineer who had questions for me all the time on the other side. I say this without any rose-tinted nostalgia: it was way better than the post-covid office. Same space, but despite being half-deserted it is still too small for everybody to be on Teams calls at the same time, eight hours a day. I miss the conviviality of in-office culture, but pre-covid decisions about what constitutes an appropriate office space have made post-covid office work untenable.