Private offices sounds terrible to me. I wonder the extent to which silos of knowledge are created by confining every developer into their own office and discou

Private offices sounds terrible to me. I wonder the extent to which silos of knowledge are created by confining every developer into their own office and discouraging outside communication. I would suffocate in that environment. I vastly prefer open office where developers work in frequently rotated pairs, with separate pairs close enough to talk as necessary. It's a little bit harder this way, but I've found that it leads to higher quality software, higher diversity of knowledge and it's just made me a better programmer (and a better Vim user and a better Unix command line user, etc). I hope I don't ever have to take another job where I'm not forced to both teach and learn from all of my coworkers directly.