Most people in this thread are focusing on developer effectivenss as the sole criteria for office layout. But developer effectiveness != startup's health. Ther

Most people in this thread are focusing on developer effectivenss as the sole criteria for office layout. But developer effectiveness != startup's health. There are three things many people in the discussion are forgetting: 1) Open office vs closed office is not a strict binary- I have noticed that employees in open office layouts are also the most lenient on WFH. I do not see as much leniency/openness towards WFH in closed workplaces. So we have to compare Open Office with lots of WFH vs Closed Office with less WFH. 2) Open offices lead to higher employee retention- Open offices might lead to more interruptions, which might decrease developer effectiveness. However, I have also noticed that open offices lead to a greater social cohesion (since people are more likely to talk and form social bonds), which in turn leads to higher employee retention. It is hard to leave a company where all your friends are. Which would you prefer as a CEO: A company where developers are 20% more effective but 50% more likely to leave, or developers who are more likely to leave? In my experience, CEOs would prefer the latter, as it's difficult to onboard new engineers. 3) Open offices engender more diverse ideas- Companies are also filled with product managers, designers, sales teams, marketing heads, customer and community support, finance, QA, and other teams. An open office will more likely lead to different teams talking to each other, which in turn creates a whole new batch of ideas. Startups rely on new ideas. New ideas often come from diverse group of people interacting.