I've recently entertained the heretical thought that cubicles, as much as everyone seems to love to hate them, represent a good compromise between private offic

I've recently entertained the heretical thought that cubicles, as much as everyone seems to love to hate them, represent a good compromise between private offices and open floor plans. Particularly when you talk about cubicles with "medium height" walls (around 53", from a little Googling), there's some acoustic and visual privacy from your neighbors, but there's still a good sense of openness. Also, a cubicle provides many more places to store stuff: reference books, office supplies, all the papers your supposedly paperless office still finds a way to generate, and whatever you've personally done to make your workspace your workspace. My cynical suspicion is that the biggest benefit open floorplans provide to employers is that they're much cheaper. Even if you buy everyone motorized sit/stand desks, floor mats and Herman Miller chairs, you're not only spending less per employee than you would on a cubicle (a standard setup with a generic chair, shelving and even a single file cabinet easily hits $2K), you're fitting more employees into the same space.