I started working in industry in the early 2000's. For my first job I shared a private office with one other person. For my second job I had my own private office to myself. Between those two jobs I had 7 years with either a private or a semi-private office. The depth and quality of my work definitely benefited from the long periods of uninterrupted concentration on the task at hand. I accomplished more in 2 years with a private office than I did later in ~4 years with an open office.

For my third jog I went to Google, where I was in open seating for about 10 years until the pandemic. The open seating was a big adjustment, but my brain was still young enough to filter out distractions well enough to get things done. My most productive work was accomplished as an individual task outside of any team effort.

My job after Google was with a company that had cubicles with low walls, but this was before the vaccines and so nobody was going in. I struggled to really integrate with any other teams as there was literally no face-to-face interaction. I never even met my boss in person. Again, I did accomplish some significant technical work, but they were lone projects.

My job after that again has open seating, Google-style. They've also started hot desking, so I have to reserve a desk for the days I go in. I get whatever monitor and chair are at that desk. Let's just say that the condition of the equipment is about what you would expect if it were rented on a day-to-day basis.

As I've gotten older I've found my ability to filter out distractions has suffered. I've read about some studies that suggest that this is common, perhaps even normal as the brain ages. In order to get into a deep state of concentration in an open office I need to put in noise-canceling headphones, turn on a film score, and pull the monitor close to my face so as to minimize movement in my peripheral vision. Whatever spontaneous collaboration is supposed to happen in the office isn't happening, and I consider interrupting me while I have headphones in and am zeroed-in on a task to be actually pretty rude. That doesn't stop some people (usually TPMs putting together a status report) from interrupting me anyway.

So I'm only happy coming into the office when I have a cluster of in-person meetings scheduled. I'll jump into meeting rooms and catch people in the hallway or the micro-kitchen to sync up on one or two things that I may not get as much traction on via random Slack messages. Then I GTFO of there and back to my private office that I customized at home during the pandemic to get any real heads-down work done. Even then I am only really productive when I close Slack and email for a couple of hours.

Meanwhile everyone is always complaining about lack of conference or phone rooms, and so they're trying to set up a bunch of pods throughout the office for people who need some degree of isolation for uninterrupted coding sessions or Zoom meetings. This whole thing seems really farcical to me. I joked with a co-worker, "Oh, I know! We could build 'pods' into the structure of the building with rectangular panes of glass and planks of wood mounted on hinges with a latch. That would make it more easy to get HVAC and sprinklers set up in the 'pods' too!"

I'd definitely come into the office for more full days if I had a private office again. As it stands I'll come into the office as infrequently as I can and for as little time as possible. It's just miserable compared to my workspace at home.

That said, if it's at all feasible, I will refuse to take another job ever again that has mandatory office attendance policies unless they can provide me a private office.