The lofty building Jordan Hamad moved his tech-advisory firm into four years ago had the trappings of a startup idyll: open floor plan, polished concrete floors, custom-built communal tables.

Soon, the 33-year-old founder of Chairseven says he craved something else: walls and a door.

The floors, it turned out, damped none of the sound. Instead of constantly trading ideas, he and his team often wore noise-canceling headphones to block out the din. For private meetings or calls, he would sequester himself in the noisy printer room or at home. “It was, ‘Yay, we have this great space, but I can’t really use it,’” he said.

Now as he moves the company from Portland, Ore., to New York, Mr. Hamad has joined a cadre of bosses chucking the egalitarianism of working alongside their employees for the old-fashioned private office. Their open-office revolt, they say, is less about reclaiming the corner office than about needing a quiet place to think.

“People will say it’s so cool to have the CEO right next to you, but at the end of the day your team sometimes needs their space and you need yours,” says Mr. Hamad, who currently leases a private office for himself and co-working space for other staff. Other senior team members will soon get private office space, too, he says.