Re: I'd have to disagree...
In conjunction with open plans and hot desking, you see lots more people with big noise cancelling headphones. The only time that sort of thing ever worked for me was at an aerospace company that had very poor communications and management was on the other side of the country. The only way I knew that priorities changed (twice a week) and I needed to go back to a project that was back-burnered the week before was hearing somebody talking about it. I could have worked at home 4 days a week most of the time and showed up on Mondays for the engineering meeting and when we were testing engines and rockets.
Some people benefit from physically going someplace else for work. That's fine, but long gone are the days when companies needed to have everybody in one high rise building downtown to facilitate communications. Nobody gets up from their desk, badges out, goes up three floors, badges in and sits in the anteroom to see somebody in HR about a day off. They IM/DM, call, send an email, etc. HR can be anywhere in the world and with a good connection to the net, be able to do their job (whatever that is) just like they were in the same building.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
