This article annoys me to no end. This is my job, I should not have to fight for some peace and quiet in order to get some solid work done! Having to wear head

This article annoys me to no end. This is my job, I should not have to fight for some peace and quiet in order to get some solid work done! Having to wear headphones is a pain in the ass. Often listening to music is a distraction in and of itself, so you haven't solved the problem of noise at all. There's also a huge unaddressed problem of visual distraction. You can see people moving around, going to meetings, or having conversations even if you can't hear them! This is often more distracting than sound. You defend and have an open office plan so you can make the claim that you're doing everything you can to increase "collaboration" on the product, but I think you've completely covered up for yourself, the extreme downsides to the open office plan, and don't realize that the open office is probably hugely slowing down the development of your company's mission.