I went through a change from high walled cubes to smaller spaces where the wall came up to four inches above the top of the desk. It was shockingly depressing. I felt like a rat in an overcrowded cage. Someone would get up 100 feet away to go to the bathroom and you would catch it out of the corner of your eye. I'm not even going to read the article. The reason they do this is to more easily spy on people and shrink their space so they don't have to rent more office space or build.

I have consulted in a few places with both open floor plans and cubes. Unless open floor plans are all you know, adjusting to them is really tough. Fast forward to my current employer. The furniture is 80s with high walls and a big space. My boss apologized for it when I started two years ago. I said, "Are you kidding? I love this. If you hear facilities start talking about going to an open floor plan, DON'T LET THEM!" She didn't say anything. A year later the company announced how awesome it will be with new furniture, an open plan, and more COLLABORATION! I started asking about how we were going to collaborate without bugging everyone around us with conference calls, etc.

"Oh, we will have more meeting rooms to duck into!"

"So when there is an incident and I need to call the software vendor, put them on speaker, and walk through troubleshooting the problem, how am I going to do that if I am in a small soundproof room 50 feet from my computer?" Silence followed by a changing the topic. This got announced six months ago and still hasn't happened. I guess I can always hope.