I think the styles are more similar than Ryan makes it out - both have control over their environments, but in different ways. At Zappos, they have standard half-height cubes and they control their environment by sticking things on the wall and hanging it from the ceiling. At 37signals, I recall that they designed that office - they had a deeper influence on their environment than Zappos. Same thing, but a different style, and each one very much demonstrates the company culture.
Okay, but if you are hired after the new offices were designed, you now have no input into the design and no "right" to customize the environment. I"m not a fan of the Zappos office (it would drive me bonkers) but I do think folks should have a right to express their personality in their work environment so that they can feel more at "home". 37signals doesn't just look clean, it looks severe, sterile and unwelcoming - I remember a lot of dot-com marketing firms having offices like that in New York (anyone else remember the shark tanks at KPE?)
As I look around my work space right now, it's reasonably "business-like" but it's also obvious there is a lot of WORK getting done - white boards covered in post-its and sketches, index cards with stories tacked to the wall, etc. Those artifacts allow our team to cooperate better, but they're also part of how we "own" the space and make it ours.
