This comment is spot on. The few times I brought up open offices (which I don't like) with my coworkers, most of them favored them. They liked being able to easily have a brief chat with someone, and generally having a more social feel to the office. They worried that in an environment with private offices, it would be harder to interrupt someone with a question, and that collaboration would suffer as a result. I feel like I almost never read this perspective on Hacker News, but it's very common in the real world.
