I can imagine a case where a desk will be allocated only at last minute because of some logistics issues, but this is not normal. Onboarding team must guarantee that all necessary resources are available to the employee from their first day of work, otherwise this will be inefficient use of budget. This is important because even if some onboarding events happen across multiple days, some time must be offered on the first day to the new starter to accommodate, process all the information and make themselves comfortable. Until new starters have some private space where they can work and keep their belongings, those people will feel alien to the company.

Logistical issues happen all the time. We have to distinguish huge corporation from startup and the in-betweens I'd say as well. About a dozen developers onboarding at the same time (as in the post) also means that it wasn't 'some last minute unexpected hire'.

I've been at companies large and small. One time for example I had to sit on a different floor from my team because they did not have space on that floor. This was a huge downtown office tower owned by the company. They had even put in the request for a desk in time for one to be ready and all that. But there just wasn't space and they had to play tetris on the floor plans and move entire teams around floors to make space for me (and some other new guys that didn't sit with the team either but at least on the same floor. This was explained to me right away though and honestly while not great, it was totally fine in that sense. I just sat in a meeting room or in the coffee area or next to someone else at their desk (yes the desks were large enough for that, no all offices are WeWork sized) for some time (basically ignoring my assigned desk) until this resolved.

> How many teams have free desks around waiting for unexpected developers to show up?

It’s not like desk moves happen very often. Unless there’s an intern about to leave, there’s always some free desks on teams that are hiring. At least at every company I’ve worked.

And the author sat down at an open desk. But it wasn't the desk the author was assigned. And then they insisted they weren't going to move and insisted on getting the desk assignment changed.

Someone else in the comments linked to a follow-up article. They did forget to assign her a desk:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30739156

> How many teams have free desks around waiting for unexpected developers to show up?

If I’m hiring a new person I generally have desk space available before they show up. Even if that involves fitting 7 people in the space for 6.