Having a quiet office is a big plus for me. I would definitely consider that when choosing a company to apply to.

Yeah; I basically will not work anywhere without a private office ever again. That basically means a professional job, or a startup I run.

Interesting idea. I kind of doubt office layout is a dominating factor in how most people choose their next job though. This should be especially true if you're trying to choose a rocket ship startup right before it blasts off. Office dynamics, location, and layout will all change (and will be shaped by the employees) as the company scales.

You're right, but I think if an early stage company has "developers get quiet working conditions" in its DNA, it's more likely to persist as the company grows.

It is a litmus test issue. It tells you if the startup really is a rocket ship because it's run by people who know what they are doing, or if it's a roll of the dice.

They might all be crowded into a small room, but if the founder says "we believe in collaboration and will never put developers in silos" instead of "we'll be getting individual offices ASAP, but you can work from home if you need to" then you have some visibility into the companies chances.

Yeah, I agree. I mainly mention it because the way people comment about office designs around here, you'd think it was the only factor considered. But it might also just be cathartic to talk about disdain for open plan offices.

I had some coworkers that really couldn't deal with noise or open-plan offices. For them, it's really important that they have a quiet private office. For the majority of my coworkers, they didn't care, and did just fine in an open-plan office.

I think it's one of those things where if it's important to you, it's really important to you, but it's not important to all that many people. Which would make it a good sorting filter for a job-matching website. I don't think it'd really send much of a signal to companies regarding the relative merits of each, but it sends a very strong signal to employees who care regarding which companies might be a good fit for them.

Good point. I imagine it is a similarly strong signal for employees in the same way Remote Work can be. People who want it seem to only want it and nothing else.

I would suggest that many people have never experienced it, and so don't know how important it is to them :)

That's a good idea. We'll start asking the companies about office plan!