To be clear, I'm not "recommending" open offices. Microsoft still has private offices and I believe it's still the majority configuration of their Seattle campus (MS employee can chime in to confirm this.)

>We're talking about private offices for engineers who are on the maker schedule, where interruptions are harmful.

The Intel programmers don't have private offices either. (The ideology was that the CEO's open cubicle was copied down to the engineers as well.)

Also, the problem is that "harmful" open layout has not been proven to lead to business failure nor has "beneficial" private offices proven to lead to business success. We need a company with private offices to beat Facebook/Google/Apple/Intel who all have open offices without doors for their engineers. Instead, what we have is a bunch of articles that do surveys and of course the employees will respond "open offices suck!"

What influences the industry is concrete business success and not employee satisfaction surveys that preaches to the choir. If people don't understand that distinction, they are being naive about what it takes to sway the industry.