Recruiting costs of an open office plan: an anecdote

Since Facebook emerged to take over the world, many startups have emulated its open office plan, looking something like this:

However this trend got started, a little reflection can show some costs associated with it. How does a knowledge worker concentrate in a wide-open room like this, especially when conversations are going on? Doesn't productivity have to suffer?

I am normally an extrovert, but I do strongly prefer at least a modicum of privacy in my workspace. I don't know how prevalent my view is, but an experience I had last night makes me think some introverts may agree with me.

I attended a networking event at the fascinating startup climate.com, whose Seattle office is lovely but wide open with apparently no private space except a conference room. I mentioned my concern to the hosts. They responded respectfully, but obviously aren't in a position to rearrange the office after just getting it set up in February. Especially if I'm the only one whining about the issue.

I had a conversation with a fellow potential recruit who shares my view of this office layout saying, "it's lovely but our [less attractive] office is a quieter and nicer place to work." I suggested that he join me in emphasizing this to our hosts but he declined, not wanting to "come in and tell them how to arrange their office." Instead he left quietly and will probably stay at his current job rather than considering climate.com.

Maybe there are a lot of introverts who feel the same way; how would we know? Is there any measurement being done of the effectiveness of these recruiting events? I thought the company looked very attractive and interesting place to work, but ...

What would I do if I were in charge at climate.com? For starts, I'd allow/encourage any sort of shogi screen or other barrier between workspaces. I'd also allow anybody sensitive to the issue to work remotely up to about 1/2 the time, and in the meantime be looking for a longer term strategy of moving to or transforming the current space into one giving workers more privacy.

I don't think the definitive study on office space has yet been done, but I tend to think that in 20 years the open plan for knowledge workers may be considered as we now consider smoking in restaurants. What were we thinking letting this go on for so long?