When working as CTO of an eBay company I had to fight to remove all phones from developers, it didn't make any sense they had a phone, but policy was back then, everyone needs to have a phone (sure this changed).
I fought that fight at Esri. first office (we were a remote r&d center) we simply put all of the phones in a box and put the box into the locked server room.
when the second office was being built out, and Esri's CTO visited along with some IT staff, we noted that we wanted as wireless of an office as possible. IT asked, "but how will we connect all of the phones?" my answer was, "no phones." they looked at the CTO, who said, "you heard him, no phones" and the precedent was set in stone.
> IT asked, "but how will we connect all of the phones?" my answer was, "no phones."
We've come so far in time, that I didn't connect that as a desk-phone reference & instead was still wondering how wireless wasn't related to "phone".
Also, about a decade ago my job had a "no phones" rule, which was that our mobile phones would be shoved into a lockbox when entering the R&D area.
The "no desk-phone" policy is almost universal recently, mostly because nobody can "step away" to talk something confidential and instead end up polluting the entire open office area with ringtones & otherwise irrelevant gossip fodder.
> our mobile phones would be shoved into a lockbox when entering the R&D area
our main focus was location on mobile devices, so having a lockbox, while nice for noise, would have defeated our whole purpose. I like the idea though!
I guess you weren't doing anything relating to sensitive government work. In those situations you do want a desk phone. In those cases you're not taking your smartphone into the work area...
