"instead of getting up and talking to a colleague in the office, people would just use Skype even if the person was a 10 second walk away" We all have differen

"instead of getting up and talking to a colleague in the office, people would just use Skype even if the person was a 10 second walk away" We all have different personalities and everyone is different, so I'm not suggesting I'm right and you're wrong, but for me I don't see that as a negative. Receiving a skype (or other IM-type of service) query is far less intrusive to my work than talking to someone in person at my desk. Better yet, ask me in an email if you don't need the answer right away since email signals that you don't expect an immediate response and maybe I'm deep in thought and answering your question to a useful degree will pull me out of the 5 levels of abstraction my brain is currently working under, losing me half an hour of real work to get back to that point later. On the flip side of your points I've found that open offices encourage people to ask me questions that they could easily google and find the answer in about as much time as it takes me to answer them, which means they are burning my time (and more importantly, my focus/flow) wastefully. Not to mention they are distracting everyone else around us as well. Multiply this by half a dozen times or more per day and it really starts to be a productivity sink.