I think that is a difference. I have never worked in that kind of environment.
When I was at a large defense contractor the work was broken down into such small chunks that each engineer was essentially off on their own working on their piece of the system. In fact, that was the way all engineering, not just software engineering, was done there. There might be a point where two or three people would need to discuss an approach, but that wasn't the majority of the time.
The company I just finished at works multiple small contracts simultaneously. Because of the small scope it was very common to be the only person working on the code for a particular project, though there was more collaboration than at my previous company.
The place I am going seems to be more like what you describe, so it will be interesting to see if my opinions of open office layouts change after that.
When I was at a large defense contractor the work was broken down into such small chunks that each engineer was essentially off on their own working on their piece of the system. In fact, that was the way all engineering, not just software engineering, was done there. There might be a point where two or three people would need to discuss an approach, but that wasn't the majority of the time.
The company I just finished at works multiple small contracts simultaneously. Because of the small scope it was very common to be the only person working on the code for a particular project, though there was more collaboration than at my previous company.
The place I am going seems to be more like what you describe, so it will be interesting to see if my opinions of open office layouts change after that.