It's also a great contrast to the "open" workspaces that plague the industry today. In those, people don't have a space that feels like their own, someplace qui

It's also a great contrast to the "open" workspaces that plague the industry today. In those, people don't have a space that feels like their own, someplace quiet to go and think, etc. A fully open space is very oppressive. By granting explicit private spaces, everyone had somewhere to retreat. Meanwhile, all the "shared ownership" work of actual coding was done in public, in an open space - more open than "open" spaces, even, because no one had a personal space to invade for that work. Terrific design.