Just shut up and let your devs concentrate, advises Joel Spolsky
If you search for &quot;open office&quot; on HN there&#x27;s a thread with a ton of comments in which one person described his ideal office setup as one that has an open&#x2F;communal area in the middle and individual offices surrounding it in all sides. The commenter said they tried this in real life and it worked well.<p>I&#x27;m curious as to why this isn&#x27;t as popular—it seems so obvious. I&#x27;m actually in a program with a similar layout (except there&#x27;s only individual rooms on two sides) and it works great.<p>I&#x27;m skeptical of &quot;serendipity&quot; arguments... Bell Labs had private offices and they did fine.