This has been the entirety of my career. No offices except for real seniors. My first boss had an office, went on vacation and when he got back his office had been removed and he was in the cubicles with us plebs.
Plus, most of said meeting rooms are permanently filled up with recurring meetings that could be held in people’s offices, if they had any.
At least I’ve generally had 6’ partitions between aisles, only worked briefly in an area with 4’ ones everywhere.
Honestly I don’t know if mine are even 4’. When they did the stupid temporary redesign before moving us to the final design I was sitting facing a glass partition with someone else sitting facing the same glass partition. Basically we were looking at each other’s faces all day.
We were also put in an open plan room when our hospital was redesigned. It sucks so badly that we take as much paperwork home as we can get away with. Then management gripe because they can’t actually see us working. If they insist on all admin time being worked on site I won’t be the only one who ends up doing less work. Just can’t concentrate on paperwork in a room with other people … 
Ugh. That feeling when the person next to you in public happened to be a cigar smoker.
I still think that the whole open office thing has nothing whatsoever to do with cohesiveness or productivity, and everything to do with the cost saving stinginess of wedging 12 people into a row that would have fit six cubes. The ability to brand people who complain as poor team players is just an added bonus.
I work in an open office in Japan. I use gun range ear muffs. Mine broke yesterday. I am patiently awaiting the Amazon delivery so I can start working today.
Since I live in New Zealand we don’t have HIPAA officers 
This is public health also (you know the one that taxes pay for for every citizen), so no health insurers to over-regulate everything.
There is no way I am taking paperwork home. I guess the earmuffs will have to work. Maybe I’ll need some blinkers also.
Hey, I have a thought. Maybe @shaddack can pitch in!
Virtual office space facilitated by everyone getting an oculus rift, their PC and a good noise cancelling headset.
Cram 150 workers into 1500 square feet! Everyone gets their own private “office”, as long as everyone uses the headset and rift at all times 
Wouldn’t work. The managers wouldn’t be able to stomach that the workers could work from virtual Tahiti.
Yeah, well, if my boss disrespected me that much, I might just virtually dangle him from tall buildings most of the work day.
I have worked in open offices, in my own private office and from home. How well each of those situations goes depends on many factors such as what type of people you work with, the type of work and how much collaboration is required.
For example I worked from home for about 5 years. The projects were well defined and required no collaboration. Life was fantastic. Then the company started trying different types of projects as the old work tapered off. So suddenly I was working from home but as part of a team that worked in an open space. Since it was an open space, everyone knew what was going on except me, the one remote person. It was a nightmare.
On transitioning between a solo office and a group space:
Solo -> Group: Noisy at first (quickly stop being an issue) but overall I liked the people and being around them I learned so much I wouldn’t have learned otherwise.
Group -> Solo: Felt all special and privileged at first (quickly followed by feeling lonely). I mean normally having to sit in a room alone for 8 hours is called punishment.
My current team has individual offices. So while I don’t have to worry about random noise I now have many extra meetings to make sure that everyone in their personal bunkers is not going off building the wrong thing (Which still happens even with the meetings).
The designer I work with is in a group space where 90% of the people there (including management) think making fart noises in a megaphone all day is fun. At least he can sit in my office when it gets really bad.
So I guess the bottom line is open versus private office success depends on the situation. Mindlessly following any work space theory is likely to end in failure. Picking the right space for the right situation thoughtfully has a better chance of working but ultimately any office space is a complex system that may not react the way you expect.
No, I did not. See my reply to the other comment.
And terrible terrible fiction
Back then, and nowadays as well. Oh those poor sods at the BBC:
I did see your reply. I still think you have the ratios backwards. I’ve rarely met a person who likes an open office environment but I’ve met many many folks over the years that absolutely hate it and find it distracting.
[ citation needed ] for your fictitious stats…
If everyone else is in Oculus Tahiti, you could dangle your boss from a real building and no one would see!
I might drop him IRL though, I’m not sure I can hold a full grown man’s weight by the ankles for eight hours 
I’m sure Someone here can invent a bad-boss torture machine.
As it stands though, I love my boss. He’s a cool guy, and has given me tips on recreational pot stores, and brings in his home brewed beer for us on the helldesk to enjoy (after going home, of course. But really, most of us could do our jobs while smoking hash, and nobody’d notice any difference in productivity.)
