For many years I worked in a big tech company that had 2 and 3 person offices grouped into bays of 6 offices around a small common area where a secretary had a desk and files, printers and coffee machine were kept. The grouping usually corresponded to a "Section", the first level of the organizational structure, with a Section Head in one of the offices.

Yeah, old school, and it worked well, better than later work places with various cubicle themes and shared conference rooms that you had to compete for if you needed quiet or privacy.

That actually sounds kind of interesting, especially the not necessarily grouping same teams. What do you think of rotating every so often?

I think it's a bad idea. Stability is good.

Change is nice too. We've got an open office and we change desks 2 to 4 times a year. So far we're grouped only with other engineers, but even with a small team you get much more comfortable with the people you work in close proximity to.

Rotation is fine. It just goes on my nerves when management rotates people randomly to "improve collaboration". I am not aware that the VPs switch offices a few times a year.

I think if the team is small and synergy is good, then this could work well. Sometimes a bad apple in the bunch (aka The Talker) can really be a drag on productivity.

Slightly aside, I liked what Valve did, where they standardised on desks with wheels, and a single power and network hookup per desk. - Want to work next to someone, move your whole desk.

I was hoping that mid-range/business laptops would go in a similar direction with power-and-thunderbolt connectors, so you could have you monitors, network etc all through one connector, and just pick up your laptop and move to another desk.

It looks like we might be getting there with USB-C, but it seems much delayed to me.

I like having tchotchkes on my desk, and I hate packing with a passion.