"I'm not sure how applicable this is to 37signals, but in general I think it is a good idea to separate people who are on the phone all day (sales, customer ser

"I'm not sure how applicable this is to 37signals, but in general I think it is a good idea to separate people who are on the phone all day (sales, customer service) from people who aren't (engineers). We worked fine with 15 people in an open plan, but as soon as we threw in 1 guy on the phone all day it made the open plan annoying at times." We agree which is why we have the big empty room top left that will be used if/when we offer customer service/support via phone. It's isolated from the rest of the space. Right now we only provide support via email so we don't have phones ringing. When someone does need to use the phone they can use a sound-isolated phone booth room.