Your comment is not wrong but it's all problems and no solutions. If I was designing an engineering office I would not go open plan (or the open plan area would be small). But today we have a lot of open plan offices that inhibit productivity. I identified a way that a company can quickly and inexpensively improve productivity and happiness by creating more opportunities for deep focus. Perfect is the enemy of good.
My concern though is that when companies see an example in which someone deflects on addressing a real need for private space, and externalizes the cost onto the employee (via micromanaged work-from-home), it sets a precedent that further entrenches open plan designs for new offices later on, and also discounts the value of investing to rebuild office dividers and spending to change from an open plan back to offices.
I’ve had fully remote jobs before and jobs where I could generally WFH when needed, but neither option provides a good solution.
If your spouse lives with you, they might need to generate noise at home, especially if there are young children. Or you might just live in a cramped city apartment with no space for a desk, or noisy neighbors, etc.
The point is that this pushes the costs onto the employee: “here, you figure this out.” But providing good tools to get the work done is the employer’s responsibility. WFH solutions let them try to absolve that duty, often without actually resulting in private or quiet space for the worker anyway.
A better proposal might be that an employer will pay the cost to fully rent dedicated private offices at a coworking space, and then let the employees who want offices simply work from that company-rented private office space.
This way the employer bears the costs, and doesn’t view it as “right” to just lob the grenade back at the employees by leaning on WFH as the only possible way to work in a quiet setting.
