As software developers, we strive to improve our code, our tools, our work processes, and ourselves. But when was the last time you gave thought to your workspace?

Open-plan offices have a been our de-facto work space layout since forever, but they always felt wrong to me. I set out to explore, read research, interviewed dozens of companies and found out the open-plan office really is killing us all.

This talk has been in the making for the better part of a decade. It will be a whirl-wind tour of open-plan’s history, why it’s so ubiquitous, the research made into it, and offer ways to either change it or, if you can’t, make the best of it.