My employer has the opposite of an open office plan after moving from our old location to our current one a few years ago.<p>Tech support has a cubicle layout, but they are big cubes and assigned to each person. There's no sharing even across shifts.<p>In other departments, each team has a "pod". You enter through a swinging door from the hallway into the pod. Inside, you find a conference room with conference table, whiteboard, and TV for shared viewing of code, project boards, or presentations. Around the conference room are individual offices, up to ten or so of them, mostly with sliding doors. A few offices have swinging doors. The offices are big enough for a desk, filing cabinet, bookcase, and a visitor's chair or a small couch/futon. Not every office is on the outside of the building, but they all have windows at the top to get at least some reflected natural daylight.<p>There are bigger conference rooms for bigger meetings, but a team can meet whenever without going searching for a room. They can have a hack session together or pair program right there in the pod. There's a break room on each floor. Besides drinks and snacks, the break rooms have power outlets, bar-style seating counters, tables, chairs for both heights, and great wifi coverage for anyone who wants to work in a more open environment or catch more hallway chatter.<p>Yes, the company had to expressly ask the architects for this layout. Yes, the architects originally thought our management was crazy. From what I've heard now the architecture firm has office pods and promotes the idea for their other clients.<p>Management also specified mostly redundant hospital-grade air handling systems that turn over the air in the building several times per day. We get not just minimum and maximum temperatures and humidity monitored and handled, but oxygen/carbon dioxide balance, too. There's no more drowsy afternoon mental fog from a literal lack of oxygen which many offices suffer.<p>The last time I interviewed with some Bay area companies, they tried to convince me that there are enough conference rooms to just duck into to get some peace and quiet. That, I think, defeats whatever purpose beyond being cheap that open offices are supposed to serve. I also think if you have enough extra rooms that are never booked that people can do this, you might as well put teams in those rooms instead of in a corral.