I should have and could have been clearer: I'm actually okay with defaulting to collaborative space. Collaborating with other coders is valuable (and incidentally: fun!) for the reasons you said.
There are so many workplaces that don't even have the option of reliably obtaining distraction-free workspace, though, and that's insanely harmful.
> So, I don't know if FB's new office has
> quiet spots (they should)
A lot of offices seem to have lounge-style quiet spots: nooks with comfortable chairs or some such. These are great for some things, not great for others. I've worked at a few companies where grabbing a quiet place to work meant parking yourself in an empty conference room and bracing yourself for the inevitable interruption of some other group of people walking in and using the conference room for its intended purpose.
> It's a lot harder to pull ourselves out of our
> focus zones into collaboration mode than it is
> the other way.
Yes, absolutely yes. Engineers often go off the rails when left entirely to their own devices. Often, they're not even maximizing their personal productivity - they may "go dark", spend time building the wrong thing, or needlessly spin their wheels and waste time solving something that another engineer could have helped them with very quickly.
However, I also think those things are also fairly trivially solved by adopting a software development method that fosters collaboration. Scrum is popular for a reason and feels like it's almost always a good start. On top of that team leaders can also block out time for code reviews, show-and-tells, pair programming, etc.
There are so many workplaces that don't even have the option of reliably obtaining distraction-free workspace, though, and that's insanely harmful.
A lot of offices seem to have lounge-style quiet spots: nooks with comfortable chairs or some such. These are great for some things, not great for others. I've worked at a few companies where grabbing a quiet place to work meant parking yourself in an empty conference room and bracing yourself for the inevitable interruption of some other group of people walking in and using the conference room for its intended purpose. Yes, absolutely yes. Engineers often go off the rails when left entirely to their own devices. Often, they're not even maximizing their personal productivity - they may "go dark", spend time building the wrong thing, or needlessly spin their wheels and waste time solving something that another engineer could have helped them with very quickly.However, I also think those things are also fairly trivially solved by adopting a software development method that fosters collaboration. Scrum is popular for a reason and feels like it's almost always a good start. On top of that team leaders can also block out time for code reviews, show-and-tells, pair programming, etc.