-> It seems likely that you could find a number of areas where open offices look statistically better, and a number of areas where they look worse. To make thi

-> It seems likely that you could find a number of areas where open offices look statistically better, and a number of areas where they look worse. To make this claim convincing you're going to have to come up with some data. For developers, the data show clearly open offices are productivity killers. Some people may like them, but that doesn't make those people more productive. So what are the areas where open offices plausibly improve business function? Employee retention? This is possible, as some people clearly have a preference for them, but based on comments in this and other threads the people who hate them hate the a lot, while the people who like them aren't nearly so zealous. Productivity? The data show this is clearly not the case. "Communication"? I put this in quotes because I'm not sure what it means, although it gets touted as a benefit of open offices. Private offices and short meetings with small numbers of people result in good communications within and across teams, and I'm not sure what barrier to communication is imposed by being unable to interrupt the person three desks over (and distract everyone in between) that can't be solved by a simple messenger app. Scalability? Almost by definition open offices don't scale. Maybe opponents of open offices should start hitting on this idea hard: "Your architecture scales, why doesn't your workplace?"