* Fog Creek
* Stack Overflow
* (sometimes) Microsoft (private offices, supposedly going away)
* RedHat
Basically anywhere that passes the Joel Test. In my experience, that seems to be accurate - with more emphasis needed on a quiet, low interruption environment.
But it seems like so many Y Combinator companies don't embody these quality-first principles, and comments or posts espousing them even here on Hacker News seem to get consistently downvoted or quickly pushed out of the spotlight, or undercut by comments about how wanting an office is "whining" or hijacking the discussion into a debate about headphones vs. real estate costs vs. Agile teams, none of which are relevant.
I really wonder why Y Combinator, as a clear thought leader in the technology start-up space, doesn't vocally support private offices more, given Graham's own unequivocal endorsement of them in an essay about foundational ideas about software productivity and quality.
The same could be said about other topics beyond offices too.
I have wondered this, as well.
Although it's admittedly not entirely charitable, my best guess is that it's because, even to YC, appearances and "social proof" matter more than promoting engineering productivity.
Still, if startup success isn't actually predicated on the benefits that private offices would bring, then there's not much point in YC supporting them.
Sadly, I can't imagine there's anywhere near enough data. The best we'd likely find is cubes-versus-open.
Sure, company politics can interfere with this on occasion but it's rare. I read the question more as, "Which companies have the best philosophies regarding how engineering should be done?"
Could be a difference of course, but it's not clear.
Even concrete stuff like "offices going away" completely depends on your team.
There is an extremely thin line of commonality that you can pretty easily discern by reading blog posts and watching videos of the CEO and folks like Scott Guthrie; I find what I see in those communications to be genuine.
(disclosure: At Microsoft, and liking the culture)