alt Hacker NewsI had an office with a door multiple times in my (early) career. An open office door is a universe away from sitting in an open office. Even when everyone has their doors open, a true office setup allows for plenty of focus.
On top of that "closed"/"open" is a false dichotomy, since you can trivially change the state of your office. Have a hard problem that needs to be solved by the end of the day? You can close your door and have absolute focus. After that task is solved, you can just open that office again.
Real offices also entirely change the tradeoffs for remote/in office. A true office feels like your room. It's considered a private space. I knew people that would bring in their own lamps (and keep the florescent lights off), bring in rugs, hang art from the walls, have tea setups, a bookshelf filled with reference material etc.
I was being facetious while pointing out that Office Plans only have doors to the floors and conference rooms. Even the bathrooms lack doors now where they have designed it so you can't see inside from the hallway.
Early in my career, we had offices, with doors, that you could close. Earlier in my career we still were writing Flash ActionScript. I wasn't asking about what it was like back in the old days where offices had doors. I was being cheeky about the fact that someone decided they weren't effective at bringing the "pod" together like it's some sort of nursery for software or day care for adults.
It's been a strange ride.