[sanderjd]

I really don't understand why you hardly ever see 4 to 6 person glass-walled offices with doors around an open collaborative area with comfy seats and coffee tables. That seems like a great and still fairly cost-effective setup.

[jdcarter]

I worked at General Magic, one of the mid-90's "super startups" in silicon valley, and this is very close to how our workspace was structured. While we had cubes, they mostly had high walls except for where the opened to a common space. The common spaces had couches and whiteboards, perfect for collaboration. But when you just needed to focus and write code, there was enough quiet and privacy for that, too.

[mmagin]

I've experienced a fair amount of "offices are for director-level and above only".

In fact, what really gets on my nerves is that we used to have our support people sitting three-to-an-office, and now they sit in a cube farm. It was much better isolating them with people of a similar function (both so that they aren't disturbing other people being on the phone all day, and so that there is less risk of some idiot saying something loudly that it would be impolitic for a customer to hear.)

[dmur]

Sounds like the setup at WeWork offices. Granted, it's a co-working space instead of a single company's office, but I found it to be a good mix when my company worked out of WeWork Golden Gate last year.