I worked at several different Bell Labs locations. The location that had the office layout that was really conducive to productivity, had a large space for each project team.

The center of this space was a common area, used for conferences and meetings for the team, with a conference table, whiteboards, etc.

The perimeter of the large common area had small offices, each with desks, bookshelves, etc. for one or two people. These small offices had doors that could be closed to keep distracting noise out.

This arrangement gave us quiet, private or semi-private workspaces, with easy access to other members of the project team.

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Originally posted by V-Tail:
I worked at several different Bell Labs locations. The location that had the office layout that was really conducive to productivity, had a large space for each project team.

The center of this space was a common area, used for conferences and meetings for the team, with a conference table, whiteboards, etc.

The perimeter of the large common area had small offices, each with desks, bookshelves, etc. for one or two people. These small offices had doors that could be closed to keep distracting noise out.

This arrangement gave us quiet, private or semi-private workspaces, with easy access to other members of the project team.

Everywhere I worked as an Engineer had layouts that were conducive to productivity and quiet private workspaces and easy access to others in your team or others' teams as you can learn by cross pollinating also. But if you flicked a Bic lighter, it could be heard just about everywhere in the area.

After about a year of work from home during covid and 15+ years of good performance. I asked for and got permission to work remote forever. So we moved from CA to FL it’s been a year next week and no issues. My deal included being available to 5pm CA Time so 7pm my time. So that’s a hassle sometimes and since I’m salary and volume has been such that I’m working 60-80 hours a week anyway nobody care if I cut out early once in a while for kids events or out for dinner. I don’t HAVE to start till 10am my time but I find that if I start at 7 ish after kids are gone to school I can get 3+ solid uninterrupted hours of work before people are up. It’s also convenient to take medical or dental appointments any time as I can just email my team that I’m taking lunch and cut out for an hour or so for that. If clients ask where I am I tell them FL and some long time clients know. But most don’t know or care because my job is pretty much fully shuffling of paper. And I need everything in .pdf form. Very very few people want to meet face to face for their mortgage anyway.

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Originally posted by Flash-LB:

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Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
The worst part is many informal interactions have to become scheduled meetings. People cannot send a text or make a phone call anymore.

And a 1/2 hour meeting is useless and I remind people not to schedule them. By the time everyone is in the meeting, and you actually get anything done, you are past the 1/2 hour mark. If it isn't worthy of 1 hour slot, call, text or instant message.

A Manager I worked for years ago had a fix for that. If a meeting started at 10AM, he locked the door at 1 second after 10AM. Then the meeting started and all action items were assigned to people who hadn't been to the meeting on time and were outside the door.

It fixed the latecomers after one time.

That doesn't work as well virtually when meetings are line to line with no breaks between them. Simply programming Zoom to cut off 5 minutes before the hour to give people a break would make sense. The fact that supposed adults in senior management cannot figure out that meetings cannot be line to line without a 5 minute or so passing time is beyond me.