I have never worked in a 2-4 office and certainly not a 1-office, but I find about 10 in an office is manageable if they are all quiet non-phone-calling people.
I worked a place with 400 people in open plan close proximity, where your workspace doubles up as a corridor, and no meeting spaces, so it also doubles up as a meeting room for any teams meetings. It was impossible to concentrate. That drove me to some Howard Leight earplugs, beefy headphones with "the ocean machine set to 9". The impomptu meetings now sounded like a squeek, but it was still distracting.
I had to leave that job because of this and other negative effects of a cattle-like approach to handling software talent.
I worked a place with 400 people in open plan close proximity, where your workspace doubles up as a corridor, and no meeting spaces, so it also doubles up as a meeting room for any teams meetings. It was impossible to concentrate. That drove me to some Howard Leight earplugs, beefy headphones with "the ocean machine set to 9". The impomptu meetings now sounded like a squeek, but it was still distracting.
I had to leave that job because of this and other negative effects of a cattle-like approach to handling software talent.