The problem is that company actions are usually dictated by the bean counters in accounting/finance.<p>By forcing the company to an open-office layout, the CFO can claim an immediate reduction in rent cost (KPIs: short term profits, office space per worker) and the bonuses that go along with it.<p>When it inevitably ends up hurting the company because people leave, they can shift the blame by saying "those who left (or who don't want to join the company any more once they hear that it's open office) are not culturally fitting to our new ultra-agile, ultra-communcation mantra any more, it was neccessary".<p>And when shit really hits the fan (massive loss of staff/productivity), the CFO can still quietly depart, after all he likely already has pocketed the boni and stock options and whatnotelse. Or not depart at all by successfully attributing the problems to entirely unrelated things (e.g. a payment rise freeze, $new_attractive_startup opening up shop in the same city, rent risings forcing people out of town, ...).<p>But by that point, it will be <i>so</i> much more expensive to shift back into a closed space layout... because the place that has been "won" might be rented out to another company or filled with new hires (thus making a rescale == a move of the entire office).<p>The only places where open space layouts can work are places that have a strong remote culture by allowing those who suffer the most from open office layouts to simply work (more) from home or those with a CxO team with great managerial/psychological skills, where the leadership e.g. listens to the workers and installs plants as sound catchers or visual/audio barriers, so that the workers feel a subjective improvement in the kind of "meh, it sucks, but it's not so bad any more since we have the new plants and it doesn't suck enough to search for a new job".<p>tl;dr: wrong/toxic KPI focus in management is the problem, and there is no KPI for "employee happiness/productivity" that can be scientifically measured without a doubt, while everyone with a calculator can determine savings in rent and office space per worker.<p>Another thing that people often forget when discussing open-office plants is <i>smell</i>. Most focus on visual or audio distractions, but smell is an important factor, too. In a closed-space layout you stick the dog people with their dogs and those tolerant to dog smell into one office and be done, while the dog smell in an open space environment goes <i>everywhere</i>. This also applies to human odors and especially those of food - for example, I'm fine with nearly anything except fish. As soon as someone eats fish and I can smell it, I escape to somewhere where I cannot smell the fish any more. Other people react to other smells, and that may be something as simple as the colleague having jogged to the office and being sweaty.