I would guess it has a lot to do with the team, especially the size but also the level of commitment to the work of the other devs. I've never been around a loud team or in a noisy environment (I'm not counting the sound of other people typing). Blocking out 50 conversations in a day, many of the much more inane or pointless, may be much harder for me than 5 business/tech-related ones. But I've never had to try to deal with that.
Though I doubt that it would be much different for me, personally, because when I'm really in the middle of an interesting problem and cranking stuff out, I just don't notice background noise in the same way I don't notice that it's suddenly four hours later... I mean, maybe I'm just lucky in that, but my own coworkers have never expressed frustration with the environment either, so I don't know just how rare it is. (So I guess the key thing is that if the environment is getting to you, don't just keep it to yourself!)
I also have a (maybe overly cynical?) hunch that in addition to the "ease of distraction by external noises" spectrum there's also a "desire to goof off more if nobody's going to notice" spectrum that comes into play. (He says, as he posts on HN in the middle of the day, heh...)
I've never bothered to look into research on it, but I also don't see any trends of companies with private offices outcompeting ones without. I know the output of the team I was on at the company I worked at where I had a private office was not great, but there are other factors involved there too, of course.
I also think the rotating "consulting developers" idea from grecy above sounds like a pretty good idea, regardless of office layout.
Though I doubt that it would be much different for me, personally, because when I'm really in the middle of an interesting problem and cranking stuff out, I just don't notice background noise in the same way I don't notice that it's suddenly four hours later... I mean, maybe I'm just lucky in that, but my own coworkers have never expressed frustration with the environment either, so I don't know just how rare it is. (So I guess the key thing is that if the environment is getting to you, don't just keep it to yourself!)
I also have a (maybe overly cynical?) hunch that in addition to the "ease of distraction by external noises" spectrum there's also a "desire to goof off more if nobody's going to notice" spectrum that comes into play. (He says, as he posts on HN in the middle of the day, heh...)
I've never bothered to look into research on it, but I also don't see any trends of companies with private offices outcompeting ones without. I know the output of the team I was on at the company I worked at where I had a private office was not great, but there are other factors involved there too, of course.
I also think the rotating "consulting developers" idea from grecy above sounds like a pretty good idea, regardless of office layout.