One of the startups I worked for moved office a few times as we grew and leases expired etc.<p>The engineering team pushed for &quot;quiet private space&quot;. We avoided asking for &quot;offices&quot; so that the focus was on what sort of environment we needed, and didn&#x27;t jump straight into the status and&#x2F;or cost issues.<p>It never happened.<p>The main reason wasn&#x27;t cost savings (though that was definitely a factor) or management paranoia (which wasn&#x27;t too bad) or status&#x2F;ego. It was simply a total failure to understand the process of software engineering, despite being told by the people who were employed to do that job.<p>The people planning the offices were from a sales background. They were extroverts. They <i>hated</i> quiet spaces. They&#x27;d walk into the office and immediately start up some useless conversation that broke everyone&#x27;s concentration. No matter how many times we tried to explain to them that we got far more work done if they&#x27;d just shut the f* up (we&#x27;d usually put it more politely than that), they&#x27;d keep on thinking that he most important thing was to have a &quot;cool&quot;, &quot;vibrant&quot; space and, to them, that meant open-plan and loud.