7. Small team of programmers, sharing an office with the boss and his secretary / saleswoman, several people smoking, and the office radio running music you do not really care for. And a wall mounted webcam pointed at the programmers "so the cleaning woman does not nick stuff".

But at least the billiard table was great.

And you never addressed this? First, by politeness. If that doesn't work, by triangulation. (Talk to your boss and have him get it straightened out.) If that didn't work, defenestration.

We tried but at that point in time the company had been taken over by salesmen. They ruled with a swagger, parking large BMWs in the disabled parking bays, spending a weeks wage on lunch, making promises we couldn't keep and barking orders at experienced coders.

It was straight out of the IT crowd (only much darker).

(In fact around the same time we witnessed an actual scene from the IT crowd: the CEO gave a speech at the launch dinner for of our revolutionary new product (3 years in the making) where he lavished praise on every department apart from the dev team who planned and built it. We looked at each other dumbstruck waiting for him to thank the cleaners next…)

You are an optimist. The most probable result is sales people shaking their heads at the programming curmudgeons.

One real story. The head of PR guy has a very strong voice. We were lucky that he doesn't talk in the phone too often, because he took me out of the zone, almost out of the office every time.

Then he was moved and placed in the sales people row, farther from programmers. Now he complains that he can't concentrate because their chatter.

Do you really think that this guy was just a little bit aware of the effect of his conversations? I really doubt it.