Open Office Plans are Bad
I've probably said this a hundred times before, but it's one of those things that you rediscover every few months, and it just slaps you in the face, and you have to come to terms with it.
Open Office Plans are just plain bad.
There's nothing really good about them. Not one thing.
Oh... I'm wrong - Cost. That's what they are good at - they hold down the cost of housing your staff. That's it. And even then, many would argue that it really doesn't save any real costs - it just diverts them to things like retention bonuses... hiring costs... lower productivity... all these and many more are the shifted costs of this style of housing people.
Sure, it may work fine for two or three people - working on the same thing, but even three people - working on different things will need some quiet. And headphones are just an annoyance to the wearer in order to obtain a little of that isolation that is lacking in the Open Office Plan.
Penny wise... Pound foolish. So true.