Is the open office layout dead?

At some point the workplace will just end up an unlivable hellscape where people have to walk to work 20 miles from their triple bunked dorms, and then stand inches from each other for 16 hour double shifts wearing nothing but VR goggles and chord boards. The 12th floor walkup, non-temperature controlled "office" warehouse will smell like fear and sweaty humanity, the only "perk" will be the government mandated yearly flea and louse spray that will rain down from the ceiling and the monthly cleaning of the shared feeding tubes.

During enforced sleeping periods, employees will spend precious sleep time sending tap-code (error corrected of course) to each other the workings of a conspiracy wherein they'll demand 60cmx30cm standing desks, a 12" CRT monitor, 12 hour shifts and 1 day off of work a quarter and a decent burial instead of being shoved off into a nameless mass grave.

I call this book, Apathy Shrugged

In our case, everyone has an assigned desk in the open office which they can customize however they want, but we also have standing desks and private offices that people can use whenever they want, and those have the same docking station setup.

I guess if you need a really powerful desktop for some reason this wouldn't work, but I think a $2k laptop should be powerful enough for almost everyone. Certainly no one at my company (13 people) seems limited by their equipment.

And how much does it cost to have your entire engineering team audibly and visually distracted and annoyed 100% of the time?

Environmental factors that decrease engineer productivity may not show up on a balance sheet, but the cost is massive. Can you get an engineer an office for less than $40k/year? Then it's probably worth it. Seriously what is so hard about this?

I work in an open office right now and every day is like sitting in a high school cafeteria trying to get work done. I work at 1/3rd capacity all day, make up 1/3rd in unpaid overtime at home, and my employer is just eating the cost on the other 1/3rd. Making me work in an open office is costing them at least $70k/yr in just my productivity.

My work satisfaction is through the floor, I'm stressed and exhausted all the time and preparing to interview for other jobs. When I start interviewing and eventually move, then they'll also be eating the cost of having to recruit and train a replacement (probably another $50-100k).

For the life of me I cannot understand the degree to which large companies will take huge piles of cash and just piss them right down the drain without a single thought, and yet be so incredibly resistant to giving offices to engineers.

My current theory is that they don't want engineers to have offices because keeping engineers crowded together like livestock in stables serves as a visual indicator of the inherent superiority of their managers and executives.

Editing to add an additional note: My employer thinks I like open office plans, my employer thinks I'm working at 100% capacity and am one of the most productive engineers, and my coworkers think their talking doesn't annoy me.

There is nothing in this world for me to gain by admitting my loss in productivity, complaining about open offices, or being the reason my coworkers can't have fun talking to each other all day. Those options have only downsides.

So again, the costs don't show up on your balance sheet, and every person on your team could fucking hate this open office shit and work at half capacity, and you would never have any idea.

Does it suck and ruin my productivity and drain my work happiness? Yes.