HFWR
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Cubes are where the people who work for me work. Offices with windows are where people like me work. Corner offices with windows are where my bosses work.
We use offices as incentives. As in, "Hey Mikey, if you can produce 7% more TPS reports this year, we will move you from that cube near the shitter to the cube a little bit less near the shitter".
And then if he meets that goal, we might set another one like "Hey Mikey, if you can reduce errors in your TPS reports by 3% this year, we'll move you from that slightly-less-near-the-shitter cube you got rewarded with last year, to this waaay better (although equidistant from the shitter) cube that gets a faint whiff of natural light from my window laden office".
And then if he meets that goal, we might set another one like "Hey Mikey, if you can properly staple 100% of your TPS reports this year (staples in upper left, oriented no more than 10 degrees off the vertical alignment) we'll move you to a real live office. I mean, let's face it, it is still really close to the shitter, and there are no windows, but on the bright side, we will securely cover the sign on your door reading 'CUSTODIAN CLOSET' with a temporary sign (printed on 8.5x11 paper) with your name on it. You will have your name on an office door."
That's how the office space hierarchy works in some joints. With the caveat that the CEO or some other uppity up can always trump your middle management ways by taking your sweet less-near-the-shitter cubes and putting their own people in them, thereby displacing your own (hard working) people into some ethereal work-place displaced refugee status with not even a stinky cube to call their own.
In my 25 years at megaconglomocorp, I sat in hallways, conference rooms, closets, and cubes, and even had a highwall office with a door for a while, right before they laid me off the first time...
There was even talk for a while that techs didn't really need offices or computers...