This is about the environment often present with any sufficiently large open office. I have been in offices with 26 people in a space probably meant to hold 20. It speaks to a culture of cost cutting over engineer productivity; when even a low amount of tech discussions at a given time end up with 6~ people talking simultaneously constantly. (see comment re: emotional noise being worse than mechanical noise, in a prior sysadmin job I worked in an office next to a transformer room and would go back to that in an instant because if I really needed to focus at least I could shut the door; and the transformer wasn't going to ignore signs of focus like headphones and being heads down to come over tap me on the shoulder and context switch me to something that really doesn't need to be discussed.)
Similarly; not having enough private rooms when they're actually needed for focus work, being placed in rooms with entirely distinct feature teams, and being often shuffled between them.
These are all "non soft skilled" environmental factors that have made working in open offices FAR more unpleasant for me than private offices (By private I include up to 1-2~ other people sharing your literal role)
Let me address your "at a cto role you must handle distraction" comment as well, since while I agree, we are _not_ at the CTO role, and to pretend the nature of our work is even similar is dishonest. Long-term context dependent thought work has an extremely well documented penalty from context switches. The CTO role, as has been described in recent HN threads and elsewhere, is far more of a salesman/face/public mouthpiece than engineer or even a technical role, and these career skills lend themselves to very different traditional environments.
Some great points here. I'm on mobile but will try to respond to them all.
If your open floor plan does not have plenty of huddle rooms or jump in rooms for private conversations, as well as plenty of single-person focus rooms, then you very well may be in this situation where your employer is trying to cram you in too small a space like chickens in a modern day farm. If the space feels cramped you may be suffering. These are important details and my original comment did leave them out. Where I work we have plenty such focus areas, for individuals and groups, and as a courtesy to others we frequently make use of them. Meanwhile the office atmosphere is bright and open and feels like home.
I agree with your statements about a CTO role, completely, and so I suspect that my wording was confusing and insinuates that we disagree; but based on your statement, we do not disagree. To reiterate, I was trying to point out that interruptions will happen, and developing the skills to deal with them is important; simply changing your environment doesn't necessarily develop those skills, which may be equally or more important to your career than completing your next development task. We're all on different paths, and so if your goal is to always, eternally complete the next development task, then my suggestions do not apply to you, and you should work out of a private office, as learning skills such as dealing with interruptions and managing your time are skills less useful.
This is about the environment often present with any sufficiently large open office. I have been in offices with 26 people in a space probably meant to hold 20. It speaks to a culture of cost cutting over engineer productivity; when even a low amount of tech discussions at a given time end up with 6~ people talking simultaneously constantly. (see comment re: emotional noise being worse than mechanical noise, in a prior sysadmin job I worked in an office next to a transformer room and would go back to that in an instant because if I really needed to focus at least I could shut the door; and the transformer wasn't going to ignore signs of focus like headphones and being heads down to come over tap me on the shoulder and context switch me to something that really doesn't need to be discussed.)
Similarly; not having enough private rooms when they're actually needed for focus work, being placed in rooms with entirely distinct feature teams, and being often shuffled between them.
These are all "non soft skilled" environmental factors that have made working in open offices FAR more unpleasant for me than private offices (By private I include up to 1-2~ other people sharing your literal role)
Let me address your "at a cto role you must handle distraction" comment as well, since while I agree, we are _not_ at the CTO role, and to pretend the nature of our work is even similar is dishonest. Long-term context dependent thought work has an extremely well documented penalty from context switches. The CTO role, as has been described in recent HN threads and elsewhere, is far more of a salesman/face/public mouthpiece than engineer or even a technical role, and these career skills lend themselves to very different traditional environments.