How about when they put the software team right next to the sales team?
This is exactly the problem with open-plan offices: they always do really stupid stuff like this, putting mostly-quiet teams very close to very talkative and noisy teams, with no barrier between them. Then everyone wants to work from home where at least they won't be tormented by listening to the obnoxious sales guy yap on the phone all day and can have their pet keep them company.
Airbnb was open plan (it still is, I’m just not there anymore). They also have an amazing Food team who would occasionally, randomly, bake treats for us (this is relevant, I promise).
There was no sales bell, but there was an outage gong. Any time we had an outage affecting the “Book It” flow and revenue stopped flowing that gong rang out. Hearing the gong meant engineers would abruptly leave meetings or lunch to come help fix the issue.
As we scaled and hit the limits of various systems we had periods where the gong rang out semi-regularly (a few times per month). These were hard times for engineers.
Soon, engineering started to push back on Product requests, took the time to re-architect and build better systems, and calm was achieved. Months went by without hearing the gong ring out, then years passed. People joined the company and got promoted, never having heard it ring. Until one day in 2018.
I was working near a pod of project managers, and I hear the gong. Like Pavlov’s dog, it triggers an immediate wave of anxiety in me: something is very wrong. But my blissfully unaware PM colleagues have no idea, it’s the first time they’ve ever heard the gong.
One lady looks up from her laptop and asks: “oooh, did the Food team make cookies?”
This is exactly the problem with open-plan offices: they always do really stupid stuff like this, putting mostly-quiet teams very close to very talkative and noisy teams, with no barrier between them. Then everyone wants to work from home where at least they won't be tormented by listening to the obnoxious sales guy yap on the phone all day and can have their pet keep them company.