Not the software development teams in Redmond, at least as of 2007, though some of the support and administrative services certainly were. The goal was to give all dev team members their own private office. Interns and the more junior people (in terms of number of years at MSFT) are "doubled up" if there are insufficient spaces, but it is generally considered a bad thing and something management tries to minimize.
As of 2010 this is true AFAIK -- and it would be difficult to change seeing as many of the buildings are designed to maximize office space and lack the open spaces needed for cubicle farms.
It depends on what team you're on. Most (all?) of the older buildings in Redmond are private offices (and sometimes people are doubled up depending on space). I've seen cubicles in some of the newer buildings where Xbox/Zune people work.
It's lame to complain about being downvoted, but I'm genuinely curious why this was downvoted - it seems like it's nothing that I'd expect to be divisive, it's just blandly factual.
Yes it is. There might be some devs in cubicles somewhere, but I don't know any of them. Everyone I know at Microsoft has an office (including myself).
I have seen a building with some cubicles, but I don't know who uses those.
Cubes (a.k.a. "Collaberative Work Environments" a.k.a. "Workplace Advantage") are becoming more common.
In one case that I know far too much about they can get 150 people onto a floor that previously held 100 (at which point they are at the code limit for the width of the stairwells, which is in part determined by the number of people expected to use it for emergency egress)
I've been in non-office work environments 3 times in 10 years at MS, thankfully back in my own office now...
I haven't hard anyone talking about that, but with 92K employees, I obviously don't talk to everyone. I wonder what percentage of FTEs are actually in a cube or office sharing situation, though.
