Last week I moved into my new office in Building 17. In just over three years at Microsoft, this is my fourth office, not including the boiler room I shared with an MIT grad my first week on the job. (I never felt so hot and stupid at the same time.)

Agitation is part of the corporate life here in Redmond. Like when my grandpa used to pound on the ceiling just to hear the mice scurry about, Microsoft likes to jostle us around every year or so to keep us from getting complacent. I really shouldn’t make it sound like a Microsoft invention. For years, workplace agitation has been a much-discussed theory across the corporate industry. They did the same thing when I was at Novell.

Not that the Microsoft offices or buildings are that different from each other. Sure, some buildings are newer than others, but down at the worker bee level, every office is pretty much the same when it comes to furniture, décor, and cubic footage. In fact, when the winds of agitation begin to stir, there are really only two office factors that people seem to give a flying hoot about: windows and sharing.

Window offices are prized at Microsoft, where employees seem to have an inordinate love for the outdoors. At the slightest suggestion, they’ll take a walk, eat lunch, or even hold a meeting outside. I don’t know why, but I’d guess it has something to do with being in the Pacific Northwest where the weather is almost never uncomfortably hot or cold. In fact, it’s pretty nice most of the time, with just a spritz of rain to keep the reputation alive. As a result, the coveted window offices are awarded to employees based on their amount of time with the company. This works out well for me because I’m on the lower end of the totem pole and because I don’t like window offices.

Sour grapes, you say? Wrong, Aesop. You see, having dwelled in such offices in various past companies, I know the ups and downs of having windows. (Pun intended.) On the upside, you can see what the weather is like without leaving your desk. This is an advantage, to be sure, particularly if the company lunch room is across the street. But the big problem with a window is sun glare. You can’t just position your monitor anywhere you want because a direct hit from the sun wreaks havoc on your screen, causing you to develop a Mr. Magoo-like squint. Sure, you can close the blinds, but then what’s the point of having a window? Back in my double-windowed, west-oriented office in Tennessee, I’d end up saluting my monitor all afternoon just to keep the text readable. And as far as my noon trek to the lunch room goes, the advent of www.weather.com practically eliminates the window advantage altogether.

The other factor that people care a lot about is whether or not they have to share an office. Most people don’t want to. Not because they don’t like their officemate, but because it reminds them that things haven’t really changed that much for them since they were eleven years old and were forced to share a bedroom with their older brother who used to beat them up every night just in case they forgot who the bigger stronger Alpha male was and forced them to keep quiet about it by threatening to embarrass them by telling the whole school about that blonde girl in fifth period that they sort of had a crush on but never paid much attention…

Well, never mind about that.

As I was saying, almost across the board, people prefer a single-occupancy office for purely practical reasons. It provides a quiet environment for abstract thinking, it enables you to hold ad hoc meetings when all the conference rooms are full, and it lets you play endless hours of Halo without disturbing your fellow workers. Having your own office is like a first class seat on Delta: if you’ve never had one, you don’t know what you’re missing; but if you’ve been there, you’ll fight like a guttersnipe to keep from going back to coach.

My new office is perfect — free of windows and officemates. I already spend more work hours there than I ever did in the old place, and I even feel more productive. Much as I hate to admit it, I think the agitation is working.

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