[nether]

My (non-tech) workplace has individual offices for the engineers. Every engineer, even fresh grads, gets an office with a door (though windows are reserved for the senior guys). It sounds like a privilege at first, but with our lack of email it's pretty isolating. We can always get up and walk to each other to talk one-on-one, but sometimes I miss the collegial feel of 3-4 people hashing things out while at their desks.

[smtddr]

> Every engineer, even fresh grads, gets an office with a door (though windows are reserved for the senior guys).

What?! An office of the size for 1 person, without a window? That sounds awful. Is it like a big closet with bright-lighting?[1] How many people on HN would like to work in the room pictured in the below link?:

http://jonnyh.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/kar-server-room-pa...

[greenyoda]

Not everyone has the same preferences. I'd definitely prefer a one-person office without a window to any open office space.

The room in your photo would look a lot better to me just by replacing the overhead fluorescent lighting with some incandescent lamps and putting some art on the walls.