"There would be no Internet connection to private workstations in offices... The real advantage is the removal of the Big Distraction from programmers." You should probably put timelocks on the doors as well. You don't want employees wandering outside the building looking at trees or anything while they take a break. I mean, seriously. I've noticed there's a strong correlation between environments which make these sorts of dumb decisions and suffer from crushing lack of imagination in what they do and environments that trust their staff to get on with the job. I have running all day what is basically a MUD. A MUD!! Oh my god, a MUD!! Better firewall THAT off. It just happens to be occupied by other similarly smart software people. It's fairly often that one of them has better knowledge of something and saves me a days work by me just running the idea past them and them suggesting the best solution. In addition, offsite people can monitor it and we save on random phonecalls... and it's all just so EVIL and non-"work" that it should be banned in favour of just mindless typing. Someone, I forget who, said the fastest way to get software written was to hire the brightest people you could and ask them to work as hard as possible. If you have to force people to work 8 hours, you'll get 8 hours if you're very lucky but don't count on them being their greatest 8 hours. I get distracted by interesting stuff on the web. I admit it. I'll also admit to working weekends. It's not /overtime/ it's just working when I suddenly understand a problem, or when I'm rested properly. Or just having a good think. I'll tell you what -- if you do that sort of thing, are you also going to let your employees timesheet the baths they have at home where they're mulling over your problems? After all, that's work isn't it? Shouldn't they get paid overtime for that? I didn't think so. There's a Dilbert cartoon about that - something like; "I've filled in the 8 hours of pointless meetings as 'work' and the quarter of an hour in the shower this morning designing a product as 'not work'..." Most of the software we've written here is the product of days off looking at trees, baths, chatting to other people on talkers... mulling things over with my other half... I mean, sure some of the typing gets done in the building. But don't start getting misled that "software engineering" is "typing".