(FORTUNE Magazine) – A big promotion usually comes with a few accouterments of status: a nice title, someone to open your mail, and, most important, that coveted window office. Not at Quantum. A step up the corporate ladder at the world's biggest supplier of disk drives for desktop computers means a move to a fluorescent-lit, sunless office with a spectacular view of your assistant's desk. It's the worker bees who get the views. They sit in open, low-walled, light-filled cubicles that ring the executive suites; managers are the nucleus, the masses the cell membrane.

The six two-story buildings on Quantum's corporate campus in Milpitas, Calif., are amoeba-shaped concrete wrapped in floor-to-ceiling windows. Supporting the high ceilings are exposed steel beams painted cinnamon and teal. Compensation specialist Holly Santilo sits in a cube flooded with sunlight. "I definitely think it's the best office," she brags. "I'd definitely give up office space for these windows."

Even CEO Michael Brown is denied Santilo's view of the well-manicured courtyard or, for that matter, of Quantum's on-site volleyball and basketball courts. "The philosophy's all about how to create open space, vs. closed-off corridors and offices," says Brown, whose office is an interior cell.

Quantum's founders (the company was born in 1980) worked hard to create an open, informal, and nonhierarchical environment that would foster creativity. Office architecture was one way to do it. Other strategies include no dress code, no reserved parking spaces, and standard-issue furniture: no mahogany desks, no Persian rugs to distinguish the big shots. To accommodate the laid-back staff, living-room-style arrangements of comfortable chairs and coffee tables called "bump zones" are placed near hallway intersections and around staircases to "promote serendipitous contact," says vice president of real estate Norm Claus.

No one asserts that Quantum's "high-energy space," as Claus dubs it, influences corporate performance, but the floor plan at least seems to make employees happy. And Quantum applies its spatial philosophy globally: Sites in Colorado, Massachusetts, Switzerland, and Ireland conform to the employee-friendly office guidelines of headquarters. "People are very focused on rank, so you want to minimize whatever distinctions would naturally occur," says Brown. Of course, he does have one perk that administrative assistants lack: He can close the door.

--Tyler Maroney