Ahh, I can remember the offices of a few of my own professors. Always fascinating places to visit, once I got over the innate fear reaction. I used to love my mother's too. Visiting other offices, there's lots to see, especially books on
shelves. Nowadays I look to see what's on the shelves that *isn't*
directly related to their field. Professors being who and what they are, it's actually disappointingly rare to see much along those lines, but I look anyway. I also like to see how people lay
things out, to see if I can scoop any ideas for my own disaster. Unfortunately, few people have the sort of work I do, so that's difficult.
In my current job, I see a great many offices of faculty members, but more importantly, I have my own. Many of my friends are in industry and have, at best, cubes of their very own. Some people I know on campus have offices, but have to vacate them periodically. At my last job, I started in a real office, then got moved to a desk in a corner of cubeland, then I got my own cube walls, then my cube got doubled up, then I lost a bit more space - eventually winding up in a 5'x5' square with shelving higher than I could reach and a pair of CRTs gobbling up most of the desk space. I won't say that's *the* reason I ditched, but it sure didn't hurt either.
A good-sized office is a nice thing to have, and is one of the things I appreciate about my current job. If I changed jobs, I suspect it would be something I'd miss a lot.