Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChrisMarshallNY | Hacker News Reader

I remember when Microsoft had the "every engineer gets a private office" policy.

The offices were often these dark, depressing, holes, but many folks liked them.

I believe they have gone open plan, and I'm not sure how that's being received.

I know that Intel had a cubicle culture, and even the CEO had a cubicle. Not sure if they still do.

Japan has the open plan offices from hell. Huge rooms, with rows of desks, and the manager's desk, crammed at the end of the row.

Even Vice-Presidents, with billion-dollar (hundred-billion-Yen) budgets, would have a small, "schoolteacher"-style desk, in the corner of the room.

The offices that I liked the most, were in Germany. They would have a couple of engineers in each office, with big windows. Someone told me that there is a law, in Germany, that requires windows in offices.

View on HN

I had an office when I was at Microsoft. It wasn't dark or depressing. It was very nice. Throughout the entire Redmond campus, can't say I ever saw an office that was dark or depressing. But with that said, I found the offices made communicating and collaborating harder. This was in the mid 2000s though. Nowadays I think offices like this would effectively be similar to everyone working from home but with the added option of knocking on doors or meeting in a conference room. So in today's world, private offices like I had are probably the best option.

Thanks for that. I remember visiting the Redmond campus, back when you guys did the "Longhorn" dog-and-pony show.

I remember these narrow corridors, deep inside single- or two-story buildings, and small (like 8' X 8') offices, that were, nonetheless, surprisingly comfortable.

The campus is large, and I certainly didn't see all of it. It's possible some of the older buildings weren't designed as well? The buildings I frequented had wide hallways, large windows and a decent amount of natural light (as much as you can get in Washington anyway :))

It was a long time ago. If you remember, "Longhorn" became Vista.

That was an ... interesting ... visit.

> The offices were often these dark, depressing, holes

So, nice and free of distractions?

Exactly. A lot of folks would think of them as "depressing," but us geeks don't really mind the only light being our screens, that much.

I had one of these "programming holes" at a previous job at it was fantastically productive. A few times a day I'd join my coworkers on their smoke breaks outside to get some air an d sunlight.

Our company just went open plan/ cubicle hot swap: italian law on windows that must be had.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com