[genghisjahn]

My first programming job, I had a private office to myself. It was amazing. I close the door, I’m left alone. I leave it open, people stop and talk and I walk and talk to them if their door is open. Was incredible. Never had anything like it since.

[wrs]

Yep, this was the Microsoft Way for a long time. It is the best. I just visited their huge new campus and it's a bunch of open "pods" and "focus rooms". Blech.

They did retain the MS tradition of an incredibly confusing floor plan. We used to say the last interview question is "can you find your way back to the lobby?"

The best office layout I've had was Infinite Loop at Apple. Private offices with lots of little open discussion spaces -- exactly the opposite of today's open offices with lots of little private discussion spaces! Perhaps shows how the job of the people signing the checks for the office differs from the job of the people working in the office...

[embedding-shape]

That does sound kind of ideal, easy to signal when available, easy to turn off the rest of the world when needed, hopefully I'd get to experience that too someday :) Maybe we need companies to go back to this model? And also have long hallways, where people can bump into each other and (optionally) chime in on each other’s problems. We could call it Chime Labs.