Depends what you do, I suppose. The reason most devs have large or multiple monitors is so they can keep a lot of things open at once, and reduce the amount of window switching they need to do to improve focus. When you leave that setup and drop down to a small 13-14" monitor you lose most of the advantages there.
I find about half of my time needs to be spent with as few distractions as possible, and the other half I can be open to interruption. I categorically don't get as much done when in a coffee shop or breakout table when needing to concentrate, though still more than working in a distracting environment.
Having to keep 10 disperate systems and their interfaces in your head requires concentration, I don't care who you are. Its like doing a very difficult math problem, or painting, or drawing, or any other number of things. When it takes half an hour to build context for a problem and another half hour after that to get anything meaningful done, 3 attention grabbing distractions a day can mean a zero productivity day.
I'm in an open office now, but work at home 2-3 times a week because the job requires concentration. If they required me to be in the office all days I would have to quit because my productivity would go down and I wouldn't be able to hit ship dates.
I find about half of my time needs to be spent with as few distractions as possible, and the other half I can be open to interruption. I categorically don't get as much done when in a coffee shop or breakout table when needing to concentrate, though still more than working in a distracting environment.
Having to keep 10 disperate systems and their interfaces in your head requires concentration, I don't care who you are. Its like doing a very difficult math problem, or painting, or drawing, or any other number of things. When it takes half an hour to build context for a problem and another half hour after that to get anything meaningful done, 3 attention grabbing distractions a day can mean a zero productivity day.
I'm in an open office now, but work at home 2-3 times a week because the job requires concentration. If they required me to be in the office all days I would have to quit because my productivity would go down and I wouldn't be able to hit ship dates.