I don't understand if you like Fog Creek's environment or you don't.
At any rate, I'm so over the open floor plan/cubicle mazes. I get really distracted by the doppler effect that conversations (sometimes LOUD conversations) that pass by my cubicle, have. Perhaps I'm just a curmudgeon, but I much prefer the solitude that an office with a door provides.
I've heard that cubicles are worse than open offices in terms of audio distraction. In an open office, you've got a constant visual reminder that people can hear you. People tend to be more mindful of their volume levels and where/how they make noise.
I work in an open floor plan. We have fairly standard carpet and ceiling acoustic tiles, the walls are drywall, so we haven't gone to extremes to soundproof but it's not tile and open warehouse ceilings either. We have a culture of being reasonably respectful, but will still have conversations at times. In practice... I find myself hardly remembering the people that exist even 20 feet from me. In theory I can see about 50 people, but I almost never actually remember that. I'm somewhat sensitive to conversation and extremely sensitive to music (can not stand music I'm not in control of), and I'm fine.
I do have modestly nice passively acoustically isolated headphones and frequently use them, but I do that anyhow, not because I'm trying to dodge noise, and I can go hours without them just fine, usually putting them on because I want music, not isolation.
I find myself wondering what percentage of open office complaints come from A: people who are simply psychologically unsuited to them under any circumstances B: people whose open office experiences involved tile floors, warehouse ceilings, and glass walls, which would be a completely different acoustic experience and C: people who haven't actually spent any time in a decent one and are just assuming they'd hate it. No sarcasm. For that matter the studies that keep asserting how bad they I find myself wondering about A and B... certainly you can construct an open space that does suck, but that doesn't mean they all do, and I've never dug into one enough to see what they specify as the "open space".
And to be clear, I'm not asserting that they're obviously better and everybody should love them (and let me reiterate I completely believe in the existence of a set of people who will never like them), but my experience just doesn't seem to bear out the "they suck and can never work and why on Earth would any company ever put them in" attitude... at most it seems like they might be slightly worse on average but it may be below the noise threshold, and it would be the incredibly-perfectly well-run company for whom this would be their biggest problem.
Open offices are more vulnerable to bad cultural practices that you have no control over. A private office fixes these issues with pure physics. If open offices had librarians shushing everyone for talking too loud constantly and stopping people from shoulder surfing they would be a lot better for many people.
Managers hate these solutions because they are explicit social conflicts that creates a lot of ill will and negative morale. If a pre-commit script enforces something vs. an angry email from another engineer it's far less personal.
Worse yet, you have to be a pretty high level manager to make the middle managers do this, because some of them like the noise, or being able to get status any time, etc.
I wish that was true here. One big floor, I can clearly hear several conversations right now. I should be doing math; I'm here posting on HN. We have one guy that likes to put somebody on the speakerphone, and then yell into it. For hours. I'm so distressed.
The guy the other side of the corridor likes to play the radio allllllll day long over some large studio monitor speakers. I shut the door to this office but another guy who sits at the opposite end of this large office (therefore as far away from the door as you can be) likes to open it and jam it open.
I truly despise the flow of bland music that I have no control over, and the ongoing chatting/arguing that passes for radio entertainment. It's like listening to other people's pointless conversations.
I sometimes put headphones on but incessantly bombarding my ears with noise just to cancel out other noise is like spraying deodorant on excrement - pointless. It also means I'll suffer gradual hearing loss
I sometimes wonder if people don't understand that we need time to solve problems and problem solving is best done in quiet! The other guys in this office do not write software so I sometimes wonder if people don't "get" it.
I can beat that. At one job, I had a person a couple cubicles to the left of me regularly call the person a couple cubicles to the right of me, and both would turn their speakers on. I could hear each half of the conversation coming at me from two different directions.
Maybe invest in some noise-cancelling headphones, and use a white noise generator. I like SimplyNoise for that. It does a great job at drowning out background noises.
And then if you can STILL hear them clearly, put in earplugs under the headphones and crank up the volume.
No, sorry, not damaging my ears for bad decisions of management.
I don't mean to be argumentative, you are just trying to solve the problem that I am in. I've done the headphone thing, they are noise cancelling, I listen to SimplyRain on them, and that helps, but I just can't take all that input. I want quiet. I need quiet. I don't want distraction that is slightly less annoying than the current distraction, at the risk of my health besides.
But yes, your suggestions are really good for the people it can work for.
At any rate, I'm so over the open floor plan/cubicle mazes. I get really distracted by the doppler effect that conversations (sometimes LOUD conversations) that pass by my cubicle, have. Perhaps I'm just a curmudgeon, but I much prefer the solitude that an office with a door provides.