The other thing this article does not mention is that with many open office floor plans, the amount of conference rooms was never enough to satisfy meeting demand. So even though I might have coworkers on my team with me in my same location that needed to meet with others in another location, we could never just grab a conference room at the last minute and all sit together there. Instead, we would all have to dial in from our desks (often back-to-back in the open office) and manage mute/unmute there to prevent echo.

I'm glad people are seeing how ridiculous this was.