https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0...

This development environment looks interesting：why two shelves?

Also the place look like a cheap airline cabin. I thought all MSFT employees have their own offices back then. Maybe it's because that's the lab?

This is a build or test lab, not the offices of developers. I visited multiple times in the period mentioned for the picture, and saw multiple of these. The one I saw most often was the NT build lab. When I started there in the mid-2000s, these labs were still used, although the build labs were a little less densely packed thanks to remote tools.

This picture without context gave me QA or build lab type vibes, and the caption in the story confirmed that. They had to test on all kinds of configurations and hardware, so this makes sense- tbh I am surprised its this small. Remote tools didn't really exist in those days, and even if they did, they are unlikely to work if the OS is having issues. So you run a test, find an issue, and if its hard to reproduce you might just have to bring the dev into the lab to get on the box to understand what happened.

It looks very similar to a QA Lab at a place I worked at in the early 2000s. They essentially commandeered a larger conference room and there were just (cpu) boxes everywhere.

The caption says 1995, so this is most definitely one of the test labs. We used to have rows of shelves with PCs in various hardware configurations that were tested with daily builds.

Everyone did have their own offices in the early-mid 90s. By the late 90s we were sharing, depending on seniority (years in the company, not title, which was refreshing).