Cheaper in the short term. If your engineers productivity is constantly tanking because of noise and interruptions it will mean lots of wasted money.

But you can't factor that in a spreadsheet, right?

I wonder how many of these problems happen because of outdated management practices since the days of serfdom that treat people as two hands and with hours in a day whom they have to whip enough to pick as much cotton as they can.

So many companies are full of upper management who think as engineering output the way one would run a chair manufacturing firm. Too many people think everything there is in a chair has been made, and the only scope left now is a little innovation here and there. All they have to do is get people to saw, hammer and glue as quickly as they can.