My first introduction to an open office layout was when I was 26 working in the Bay Area. For me, it was awful. I was surrounded by people who weren't working on anything I was working on and had no connection to what I was doing. It felt like everyone was watching everything I did, and I could never get any work done. To top it off, part way through my time there, they brought in a customer support team and placed them right next to me. They then started to put a counter of the number of customers who were subscribed to our service and would start cheering when it hit arbitrary numbers; the CEO would come in from time to time, sometimes completely unannounced to us... The people were nice, and the product was decent, but the distractions were very hard to get any work done.
I eventually moved on and now have a cubical. I find myself able to be much more productive than ever before. Part of it is because I don't feel like someone is staring at my back and checking my monitor all the time. Another part is that it is vastly quieter than the previous work place despite having literally 100x what the last place had (from startup to Fortune 100 company). If I want to communicate or collaborate with others, I can hit them up at their cubes, and there can be little group discussions in the hallways between cubes without being major distractions to others. I don't get the insane ear fatigue I'd get with headphones in 6+ hours a day like before, too. Needless to say, based on my experiences, I personally prefer cubes to an OO layout.
I eventually moved on and now have a cubical. I find myself able to be much more productive than ever before. Part of it is because I don't feel like someone is staring at my back and checking my monitor all the time. Another part is that it is vastly quieter than the previous work place despite having literally 100x what the last place had (from startup to Fortune 100 company). If I want to communicate or collaborate with others, I can hit them up at their cubes, and there can be little group discussions in the hallways between cubes without being major distractions to others. I don't get the insane ear fatigue I'd get with headphones in 6+ hours a day like before, too. Needless to say, based on my experiences, I personally prefer cubes to an OO layout.