I remember reading an article long time ago, written by an engineer in India. He became famous in India(or at least in my city, Pune, where he lived) for revers

I remember reading an article long time ago, written by an engineer in India. He became famous in India(or at least in my city, Pune, where he lived) for reverse engineering Windows NT. He along with his friends later on wrote the book "Undocumented Windows NT". He was promptly hired by Microsoft, and moved to the US. He later wrote an article on his experience working for Microsoft. One thing I vividly remember from that article was his experience the very first day at work. He observed that every engineer had a separate room. He was not used to this luxury. He was awed. During the day, he had a question on some aspect of the project he was assigned, and he immediately went to the next room where one of his colleagues was working. His colleague instead frowned and asked him to first send a meeting request, and then he will alot him a time. This surprised the new employee. He was not used to this way of "team work". He went back and sent a formal request and later there was a meeting to resolve the project issue. Afterwards, he enquired why engineers were kept separate in their own rooms? And why does one have to be so formal in requesting a meeting even to discuss project issues? It takes lot of time to resolve issues. Why this inefficiency? And the reply he got was, engineers when they are working, they get into a zone. It is very difficult to get into a zone, but very easy to get out of it even with a slightest distraction or interruption. Hence Microsoft provides separate rooms for engineers and meetings are available only when the engineer is free.