The only redeeming feature of open plan comes from Hamming's essay, you and your research:
Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the
door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work ✥
done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't ✥
know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in ✱
importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets
clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect ✞
sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can ✝
say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ✝
ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow ✲
they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame.
Text makes it much easier to share a link, refer to something in the code, etc. It's not ideal for in-depth discussions, but it can often be better for handling typical questions.
Sitting in an office with the door open to welcome impromptu conversation is very different from, and much preferable to, sitting in an open floor plan with no privacy whatsoever. Hamming's essay doesn't redeem the open plan at all.
I had a single office at my last job. I'm in a shared office today. At my current job I feel much less aware of what's going on around me because I spend all my time with headphones on.
I sort of half concluded that people with closed doors are more likely to be introverts and thus less likely to look for fame. :)
I'm not saying that you are saying the opposite, I'm just saying that the cause/effect is very much up in the air. I never thought it was as straight forward as asking "what is better?" (as he rightly asks too)
Personally, I never looked for fame (and I'm old enough to say that I likely never will look for it). In the end, what I want is: to be right. Even if it takes 100 wrongs to get there. With that in mind, I would be better off if I was an extrovert as I'd probably get through the wrongs quicker than if I preferred my solitude.
But as it stands, I like to be able to stare absentmindedly in a random direction without the risk of accidentally glancing at someone's new hat or haircut.
I don't know if I am slower or slightly wrong. I would not rule it out, though. :)
I think Hamming's quote pretty much sums up my personal experience with both open and closed offices. In a private office, your personal productivity is maximized; you get the most lines of code written, the most research done, the hardest problems solved. And yet the cumulative effect of that productivity seems to be much less than that of peers who write little, endure distractions, but are always in tune with which problems people are interested in.
I think the real problem is one of aligning incentives. I would welcome open plan offices much more if I was incentivized for team performance.
Instead I get forced into open collaboration-enhancing offices with the idea of increasing team productivity. But on scrums and all other things I am judged on the merits of personal productivity (tickets closed, issues resolved, whatever). This leaves me disgruntled because I have no way of showing to project managers that I've helped N people with their issues. They only care how many issues I closed.
This then shapes my personal values and how I judge myself as well. Which in turn makes me shun the open plan office. Which in turn ultimately makes me a worse engineer a few years down the line.
We, as an industry, need to start pushing employers to make job posts talk more about "Management measures your value to the company in these ways, and rewards them in these ways" and less about "We've got a kegerator and a ball pit."
Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work ✥ done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't ✥ know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in ✱ importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect ✞ sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can ✝ say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ✝ ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow ✲ they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame.