Yes -- the secret is to maintain a perpetual shortage of conference rooms, which forces teams to use any and all available free space to meet, and ensures that impromptu gatherings take place in the cool shared spaces rather than a boring old conference room.

And if you're visiting from another building (a common occurrence) it's very very frowned upon to camp out in a conference room, so you head over to the cafe or you sit back in a giant "e" in the hallway and you open up your laptop and you get to work.

The answer is yes. There are lots of non code related things that are done from work pods: reading a design doc, joining a video conference, planning work travel, performance reviews, and so forth (uh ... reading HN on a break). The common spaces are a nice change of scenery. I've worked at places before where I have had 4-5x the amount of office space. Our desk areas are comparatively small, and we are packed close in most instances. As much as I love my standing desk with dual monitors, it's sometimes a good idea to move around to not get cabin fever.

I am, however, skeptical of the people who bring their laptops to work out of massage chairs. I like massage chairs, but they are way too distracting.

I don't work at Google, but I've found that working from a different location in the office for some time helps me refocus during the day. So I sometimes just take my laptop, ssh to my desktop and go find a table/couch somewhere.

Also, multiple monitors are useful, but there are some programming tasks (like implementing an algorithm and writing some unit tests) where a laptop is fine.

He prob. means specifically the pods.

Different strokes. I rarely even plug into my external screen and keyboard and end up sitting using only my MBA and using the monitor as a wall.

The red 'e' is in the lobby, so that's more for visitors. As for the other pods - sure, it's refreshing to be able to move around.

Sure. Is that what they always do? I just sincerely want to know how they usually work there.

It depends on your taste. I know engineers who write all their code on a laptop stationed in various comfy chairs throughout the building. I know other engineers (including myself) who never use their laptop except for emergencies. (I've always wanted to be able to program on the couch, but I just can't get comfortable.)

The idea is: you can choose. (If you want a couch at your desk, nobody is stopping you. And electronically-controlled height-adjustable desks are standard equipment, so if you want to work at your desk but alternate between standing and sit, you can. It's wonderful.)

Yeah, I dunno. Doesn't seem like a place where most people would sit down to concentrate at crunch hour. But I definitely don't need my dual big screens all the time. I think it's kinda terrible, these offices with people hunched down at their private workstations all the time, only getting up for meetings and lunch. I've had a lot of great experiences with sitting on a sofa with my tablet reading or planning something. Sometimes just because it's led to great conversations with the soft-skilled people.