My girlfriend worked for a 'beltway bandit' in Rockville Maryland for a while after college, exactly in the midst of the office parks described in this article. Everything about the environment of metro-DC suburban Maryland was absolutely repellent to me. Miles and miles of office parks, housing developments and strip malls, over and over and over.

I couldn't stand the idea of having a daily routine of sitting in 8 lanes of traffic, finding a spot in a sea of parked cars and spending the day in a faceless office building, surrounded by other faceless office buildings yet entirely isolated in a corporate campus. I definitely see the appeal of suburbs for certain lifestyles, but I think that a suburban home with a commute into an urban office would be very preferable to working in an office park.

The only redeeming feature of my girlfriend's office park workplace was that she, as a very junior employee, had a private office to herself. I've dealt with the frustration of a number of loud open offices at NYC tech companies, but I'd never give up a downtown office space explicitly for a private space in a giant soulless office building in the suburbs.