That makes sense in a library. Usually studying is a single person activity.

However I am sure most software engineering / programming jobs require programming, as well as discussing the problem. That's a fairly essential part of the job, and you can't expect to do that in quiet.

To me the ideal solution would be a library at work. I worked in an academic institute that had one. We had 5 or 6 people in an office. Fine for normal work, but if I needed to concentrate and read up on something new, I would go to the library, and get the silence I required.

"Usually studying is a single person activity."

Really, what school did you go to? The main reason to go to the library to study was because there would be other people from your class studying there too. So lots of collaboration, working through problem sets together. Yet it managed to stay quiet.

At the school I attended, the quiet parts of the libraries were the parts where people were studying alone. The places in libraries where people studied together (small rooms for studying or larger open rooms with lessened sound restrictions) tended not to be quiet at all.

We had tutorial rooms for that sort of thing. We were expected to be quiet in the library.

This is a cultural thing, though. Since childhood, we are taught that you are absolutely always quiet in a library.

Open office plans tell a very different story (with the OP underscores--collaboration), so I suspect it would be a long, difficult transition to move from a noisy, collaborative space to a quiet place.

In a lot of cases, not even possible. Maybe it's different if you're at a web startup that pulls the "we don't have a phone number, email us for questions," but part of my job is fielding technical calls and providing design guidance for clients over the phone.

I sometimes feel bad about being on the phone with other people trying to work in here, but that's the nature of the open office. At least we have low partitions.