Colour me green with envy. I'm working in one of those fabled "cubical farms" mentioned in the post.
Half of the company has gone full open office, and the laggers (who didn't get redone before the last CEO suddenly quit) seem to not be changing. I could wander elsewhere in the building to work once in a while, but eventually people would start questioning where I am.. and I'd be missing out on my single monitor and ergonomic seating. I work for a modern company with 30 year outdated office structure... At least its feeling that way today. Yep, right there -- there's the envy!
A lot of people would be jealous of your cubicle setup, including me. If your company decides to update their '30 year outdated office structure', you'd most likely be stripped of your cubicle and have no real private space. I'd venture a guess that you'd curse yourself for taking your precious cube for granted.
You've got a point, I do like having a little personal space to drop my things, but I'm actually not sure what I'd like better. I'm not much of a nester. Yet an office... especially like the ones at SO would be pretty sweet.
This is the fist time I've worked in a cubicle. I rarely see sunlight, although I recently was moved about 5 feet closer to a window (with walls still in the way). I used to either work outside (in other occupations), or at varying locales. It's new to me to be tied to one place, bathing in fluorescent lighting.
Recently the company took offices away from people and moved them into cubicles, including management. The open office spaces have more private sections to tuck into for the day, they're just bookable.
Work at Stack here. We still provide private offices for developers when they're in one of our offices. A lot of the engineering team is remote too, which lets people have their own workspace as well.
Half of the company has gone full open office, and the laggers (who didn't get redone before the last CEO suddenly quit) seem to not be changing. I could wander elsewhere in the building to work once in a while, but eventually people would start questioning where I am.. and I'd be missing out on my single monitor and ergonomic seating. I work for a modern company with 30 year outdated office structure... At least its feeling that way today. Yep, right there -- there's the envy!