Slashdot Mirror
The Bionic Office
hondo77 writes "Joel Spolsky has finally moved Fog Creek Software into their new digs. Read about what went into the design of "the ultimate software development environment" from your (my) cube and drool."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
yay? this is important news?
Is the green wall in that picture fugly or what?
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
My biggest pet peeve at the office is having almost no room between the table and wall to get a power plug through. I'm sometimes bashing the plug(or the ferrite core) behind the table so I can get it to the outlet or Ethernet port.
All cubicle tables should have a notch cut out for this purpose.
Now I see why they could not afford a 17" PB (or even a 12" PB). That's gotta suck programming around all day on a tangerine iBook.
I read the article. Hmm. Looks nice enough, but it's not front page of /. stuff. Frankly I'm unimpressed. What is jaw-dropping about it? Nothing. And before you mod me flamebait, try asking yourself what is so great, exciting or thought-provoking about the article.
graspee
Fog software, complete waste of money. Get Zope instead. It might take you a bit longer, but it will grow with you rater than against you like his city desk crap.
Looks like a great set-up, but you'd have to start your own company to have a set up like this. Who on earth would pay for such an office? Not that I'm bitching, my office at work is great, but jesus H. christ those offices look like Futureland on crack.
Or just drop acid. Cheaper long term. And the walls will also smile at you and occasionally dance.
1) Big window overlooking moutain range or lake
2) Ethernet jack built into wall
3) Large, multipart desk
4) Large, swiveling, high-backed chair
5) Carpet
6) Door that can be shut
7) Glass window to see who is knocking at the door
- Windows are good. I love windows to look out at - preferably something pretty.
- Too much neon. It would distract me.
But the other architecture is very interesting... whether it would be distracting is another thing.
As long as I have an office with a door, I'm pretty much happy. Just wish I had windows...
This space for rent.
so here's the Google Cache
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
- Office doors are helpful
- It's easier to read someone's screen when sitting beside them, than when shoulder-surfing
- Natural light is good
- Window view is nice
- Programmers like foosball and other dot-com era goodies
I must have missed the "bionic" part.
...you insensitive clod!
:( )
(P.S. That's not a joke.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Maybe I'm just an architecture queen. -- Joel Spolsky
Hmm.
The Six Million Dollar Bedroom!
"XXXX writes "YYYY has finally moved ZZZZ into their new digs. Read about what went into the design of "the ultimate software development environment" from your (my) cube and drool." What?! "new digs"? Sp34k g33k! ;)
It's so padded with carpetting even Jamie can't ear anything, and I keep bumping on furniture when I run over 60mph around the cubicles. Oscar told me it was all hype ...
-- Steve
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
One thing I've noticed, of which this article is a very good example, is how most everyone who hires software developers claims to be hiring (or at least looking for) the very best of the best.
'We have an elite team'.
'On a scale of one to ten, all our developers are at least a nine.'
'We hire only the top two percent.'
And of course in this article Joel kicks it up a notch by claiming to be after the 99.9th percentile. Makes you whether the industry is vastly deluded as to the actual abilities of those they hire...
I was wonderink why my bossky vas smilink ven I tell him in Soviet Russia I livink in cardboard boxes. I am lovink my new janitors closet/office!
Pixar's environment to this place.
f ri day.asp
http://www.sltrib.com/2003/May/05302003/friday/
But it's still nicer than my old cubicle. I'm pretty thankful that I work out of my apartment now.
Alex.
Where does bionic come in? I presumed bionic was an electronic or electromechanical supplement to an individual or being. Not an environment.
That said, these are pretty cool digs and I agree completely with this statement from the article: Hey, this is my job; this is where I spend my days; it's my time away from my friends and family. It better be nice.
I have a couple of windows I can look down on the city in the valley from my workstation. It's pretty nice to get natural light and to be able to focus on something farther away than the computer screen or the lab bench from time to time. Looking out over the valley, I've seen U2's flying up the valley, I saw the space shuttle on the back of its 747 take off from the airport on the other side of the valley and I've seen a cool tornado.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I have asked developers who worked for me to work those kinds of ridiculous hours before, and I've asked it of myself, mostly because I was forced to by forces outside of my control. These days I prefer to operate under the assumption that work should be scheduled around a 40-50 hour work week, and the office/working environment should be a nice and pleasant one, but it shouldn't supercede home, and you shouldn't have to eat dinner at work every day, spend all your free time with your co-workers, etc.
.... where's the table football, inflatable furniture and all the other dot-com era regalia?
I have my doubts about the private office == higher productivity stuff. Everyone at my company has a private office and the temptation to skive is phenomenal. Although fear of our CEO is a good counterbalance to that..........
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The only reason this article is newsworthy is because of Dot Bomb flashback syndrome. We'd all like to live in the magical world where employers spend tonnes on us because we're so damned valuable. The article seems to suggest it's cost effective to spend a lot of money to get the 99.9th percentile of coder, but is it really? Are you really just getting the 85% percentile of coder, but calling them the 99.9th percent to foster a sense of l33tness?
I mean it's a nice office and all, but this isn't really news. It's one guy who made a cool office.
Not much chance any of us will be getting cool offices any time soon.
---
I support spreading santorum
Without a sofa with a talking scale tucked inside, this might as well be the Amish Office of the Future.
Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice, shame on..Won't get fooled again!
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Well, we all know how good Philip Greenspun is at running a business.
The third option is to forget about the office and let people work out of their home ...
When you start your own company your first desk should be an old door propped up with a couple of old milk crates. You have more important things to spend your money on when you start up.
If more "dot coms" had understood that instead of burning their money on fancy digs, pool tables and Porsches a few more of them might still be around.
Oh yeah, and clear idea of how you're going to make a profit to earn fancy desks, chairs and cars wouldn't be a bad idea either.
KFG
Reading this article just made me wish I had my own cubicle. I'm supposed to be dreaming of having my own office, instead I dream of having my own workstation and my own cubicle, and wondering what it's like outside right now.
My previous employeers had great perks and working conditions, I didn't realize how good I had it, I left one for a better opportunity, that better opportunity went bankrupt, and now I'm here. Oh well, at least I have a job.
There is no dark side of the moon really, matter of fact it's all dark
I worked for a place with all these amenities plus the view was of the ocean. That's right...we were 6 feet from white sand and blue waves.
At first, the space was incredible, the free drinks, groovy toys, and high-powered colleagues were great. Everyone got along and the work being done was of the highest quality. Everything was humming along.
What the struggle became however was burnout. While it seems really groovy to have all kinds of cool things they were all just ways to keep us there rather than being at home with our families. Sure we would frag a little, have a beer, and hang out for an hour a day. We'd also end up leaving the office well after most of our families had gone to bed.
There's nothing about this article worthy of my praise. This is old hat and not as well thought out as it's made out to be--in the end this crew will be no more or less productive, happy, or able than all the other companies like mine that failed doing the same thing.
Of course we torture people, we need the information --Gen. Pinochet
One idea I really did like, though - power outlets (and plenty of 'em!) at desk level would be great, and a big improvement over rooting around under the desk.
We relocated to a spot in midtown last year (though, not with the budget Joel had, apparently), and let me tell you, this is even more amazing considering he did in NYC. Take any ordeal with real estate anywhere in the country and multiply it by a 1000... then you're only somewhere near the neighborhood of what it feels like to negotiate digs in the Big Apple. And don't get me started on the wiring jobs and the telecom lines in this city, cuz it's a freakin' mess. His NYC office space advice is here.
-n-
The monthly rent ... will run about $700 per employee... but if it means we can hire from the 99.9 percentile instead of the 99 percentile, it'll be worth it.
not claiming in to be in the 99th percentile, but I suspect those that are and have lived through the dot-bomb implosion are looking at job security, company stability, and good pay. (Things that a 3 year old start up moving out of some guys grandmother's house may not likely be able to provide)... so it may be a good strategy to distract with eye candy... in reality, thats all I see here.
Here's to finally giving Bush his exit strategy in November
In the spirit of showing off desks..
:)
here is My desk
Yes.. I have a fabulous view of the buildings in downtown New Orleans.. and sometimes if I look down I see random parades
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
you guys obviously didnt get it. bionic woman. six million dollar man. ha ha.
The best programming environment is one where you can be left alone to do what you do without idiots bothering you. Interuptions take a long time to recover from, even those for good reasons.
The best programing environment is one where for whatever reason I can zone out and STAY zoned out until I have accomplished something that is ready to be tested.
When I can put up a sign outside my door that says "Stay the Fuck out, unless the world is coming to an end", I will find a way to work for them, and I'll take care of the inside furnishings myself.
When that workplace is established, I might work for almost nothing but Pizza money.
8) Nordic secretary with huge melons
I've been swashdotted -- Elmer Fudd
"Your business success will depend on the extent to which programmers essentially live at your office. For this to be a common choice, your office had better be nicer than the average programmer's home."
What crap! The best office I've ever had is the one I have now - a home office. Any employer that sucks the marrow out of their staff by having them work 90 hours a week will only burn their staff out.
Maybe I won't create the greatest apps overnight, but next week is just fine. Plus I have a healthy relationship with my 2 year old son, a beautiful wife, and another child on the way. I love programming, and having worked with computers for over 20 years. Because I take care of my health and mind, I'll still be here 20 years from now while slave drivers like Joel Spolsky have moved on to greener pastures with other anti-human ideals.
The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
hmm, i think i used to be your co-worker...
is slashdot now joining the rest of the media with the abundance of homosexuals in the spotlight?
guess geeks are gay too.
- Front door. How do people get in? Not very productive.
- Bathroom. Seriously, not one commode in any of those photos. Less of a problem if there's no coffee machine, I guess.
- Air. I didn't see any air molecules in the photographs, either. Coding without breathing is hard! (Although sometimes necessary; see pair programming.)
</smartass>If you don't have the crocs, the people just lollygag down in the pit, moaning and yelling for help.
It's animal and environmentally friendly. The croc droppings can be used to fertilize your organic garden. And as they age: shoes.
But hell, at least our offices come pre-equipped with plywood shelves on the wall. That makes it all worth it. No really. I can't wait.
In some environments there are a great deal of distractions, from the coffee machine to co-workers that just want to stop by and chat, things that hurt the progress of software development. Some distractions are okay - its good to be able to get up and walk around - but it'd be nice simply to have a door that I can close on distractions and co-workers so I can get to work; I could careless about fancy displays, etc.
Isn't he that gay programmer guy?
Won't the true US high tech office of the future consist of a project manager's desk and a VoIP video phone that connects to the development team in India?
I mean the very near future.
A bit further down the roard the development team will be in Romania.
My very first Microsoft office was outside with a view. For a year, I had people telling me how "lucky" I was. I assumed I got it because I was/am good. I got a corner in 5 years. It was very sweet. I will not work for anyone who wants to put me in a cube, even to consult, as I think they are brain-killers. I'll insist on using my home office, because if I cant have a door, you cant have my work.
telling the moderators what to do...
that's a paddling.
(Seriously, I'm getting more annoyed with the "MOD PARENT DOWN" crap than the redundant crap they are telling the mods to mod down.)
Mods, you just follow your heart. Don't let anyone slow you down. Stick to your guns. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
I better go away now before all my precious karma is burnt away.
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Hmm. Seems some folks haven't learned the lessons of Dot Com Bust Past. I estimate he'll be out of business in 2.5 years.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Someday they'll realise that if we just want to goof off, we can do that just as well at the office; working from home I'm usually at my desk from 8:30 am to 7 pm, and many days from 10 pm to midnight. (With a few breaks for coffee, lunch, errands, etc., of course.)
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Having participated in several office renovations and build-outs over the past few years, I found this article quite interesting.
I was particularly impressed by the archtectural solution of angling the offices (requires wasting some space) to effectively get windows on two different walls in every office.
The "cable trough" along the back of the desks is a deceptively simple idea, but one that seldom gets implemented. We put something similar down the center of our conference tables, which made supporting laptop-laden meetings infinitely easier. It's unclear from the photo if there are cutouts to also allow cables to run under the desk. If not, that's the one important modification I'd add, as it is often neccessary to place an electric or electronic device on the floor.
The other thing that was of particular interest was his comments about using straight desktops in order to make it easier for people to collaborate. I've definately noticed the 'squeezing around the corner monitor' problem, but hadn't thought of encouraging a different monitor/desk configuration to address it.
Still, it's always nice to see people/companies actually thinking about their architecture, and fitting technology comfortably into it, when they get the chance.
He is bound to end up with at least one of those no shoes, pizza-skittles burping, mosquito-attracting types, who's last shower was a hour before the interview.
You gotta have the honkin' air conditioning unit to tame that stench, the kind with the HEPA, charcoal and whatever else you can use to keep breathable air for the rest of the staff, right?
thats damn near bigger than my apartment.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Joel is probably one of the only people that can attract the top 0.1%.
Reasons:
1) high visibility with his blog & columns in various magazines
2) Downtown NY & salaries to match
3) Office with a door
4) Boss is a programmer, not an MBA
5) smart coworkers
6) 6 weeks vacation
7) lots of other stuff, read his site
I might be wrong about that 6 weeks vacation thing, the only reference I found on his site was when he was talking about hiring European developers.
Note to managers: 6 weeks vacation is an absolute kicker of an incentive. It's cheap too. If you can't keep a company going without "key personnel", you've got bigger problems, and I don't want to work there.
Bryan
Too bad they've got those overhyped Aeron chairs. Give me a moderately hyped Steelcase Leap chair and I'd be comfortable.
Choiski
and I can tell you that 99% of the stuff done here won't make it in my world. Desks? $129 office depot jobs or folding tables from costco. Pastel paints on the wall? Not on your life. Whatever is there is staying. I'm more interested in *gasp* money and having some to reinvest in the business. We haven't finalized the move yet, still negotiating, but before I talked to the landlord we had a short staff meeting. Most people agreed that they'd rather keep the $$ in the bank as a cushion against shitty times (like now) and stay in business. Kudos to these guys if they can afford it but me? I'll shove those bucks into the bank and keep 'em there.
I'm sure it does, but just wait until they discover you didn't remove the brown M&M's and smash the office up.
...we'll be able to buy all this stuff on E-Bay in a year!
Further confusing the analysis is the fact that Fog Creek does VB, the most hated language on /. Therefore, does that mean that Joel is drawing his super-elite developers from the pool at the bottom-of-the-barrel 88% ??
God, I'm confused....
"That naive cube! How long must I suffer this!" --Sheldon J. Plankton
But it's not that expensive. He write that the price per developer is 700$/Month. I don't know the price of a typical offices, but even if a normal offices only cost half that much, I think that the 350$/Month per developer is a good deal, which will pay back.
Essentially, since it's Joel's company, /he/ will pay for it. Is it worth it? To him, apparently, it is.
By the way, I also have to disagree about the crack crack. LSD maybe.
i've got to agree here... these days, if looking for a job, cool offices is about 12th on my list of importance. i might even find cool offices to be a source of concern.
let the healing begin!
m.
geesh, this totally reminds of the bad old days when you spend like $500K on "buildout" of an office and make everything all pretty and nice for your prim donna software engineers.
really neat, but not appropriate for the current times.
How 'bout giving me the $700/month/developer for office space and letting me work from home? (Yes, I know, true Extreme Programming requires 2 people in the same place. But although I already follow most of the tenets of XP, and I do strongly beleive in peer review, I'm not convinced that having somebody look over my shoulder while I'm typing increases productivity. Quite the opposite, it slows me down and increases my error rate, as I can only focus on one thing at a time - either the code or the other person in the cubicle.)
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
We can redecorate it, we have the technology...
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The only thing you need to make your office better are hot babes. Hopefully scantily clad.
Is it really that established that programmers work best alone, undistrubed ??
I like pair programming. And it would also appear to be encouraged in Joels environment.
My worry is that it won't happen.
Asking for someone to stop whatever they are doing to spar with you can be a big enough barrier if you sit right next to the guy.
If you have to go knock on his door first, I am pretty sure that sparring sessions will drop to zero.
I'd say sitting in groups of 4-8 people in a larger office would be a more efficient setup.
And of course. Nobody should have to work in a room without a window. I don't think you are even allowed to place workers in windowless rooms in most (if not all) of europe.
They will think you are so nuts that if you are any good, they will put you in an office to hide you from others. If not, they will can you, and you will be motivated to find someplace else to work.
that's where most of the 99.9%ers i've had the pleasure of knowing preferred to spend their time.
that's the kind of place where office ambience means that the whirl of fans is so loud that you sometimes have to shout. with so much white noise eminating from everywhere, you could listen to your music without headphones and not bother the guy on the other side of the racks...
yeah, i can't see a 99.9%er giving two bits about windows... (pun intended?)
m.
So who's got a good environment, and actually hires?
i love the idea of putting an old door on milk crates (or old file cabinets), but where does one find an old door? Without an old (flat) door, nobody's saving any money. is there a hidden wellspring of old, flat doors?
-it's a prison-
I suspect that $700 per person is on the high side for software developers throughout the world, but if it means we can hire from the 99.9 percentile instead of the 99 percentile, it'll be worth it.
It might help if they moved to a real operating system...
(yes, I just had to say it).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Am I the only one that saw those pictures and instantly thought of the dot-bomb days? That office is expensive as hell. Where's that money coming from? VC's? A deep-pocketed mommy and daddy? Overpriced software? Hiring lots and lots of overseas programmers? I've worked in many places, even during the dot-bomb days, and I've never seen offices that nice. Hell, rent alone is ridiculous.
Go to Joels article on Guerrilla Hiring and click the link (in the article) that says "unwashed masses". No wait, if you are reading this, you have already been to the site he links to.
Yeah, those stupid slashd... Uh, wait a second.
Damn!
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
...which is why we can afford to pay you less.
gotta have support for WebDAV if you wanna create a HTML editor of the future.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
From Joel's Guerilla Guide to Interviewing:
Some signs of a good programmer: good programmers have a habit of writing their { and then skipping down to the bottom of the page and writing their }s right away, then filling in the blank later.
Sounds great, Joel! <smile, nod amiably, back slowly toward door>
They also tend to have some kind of a variable naming convention, primitive though it may be... Good programmers tend to use really short variable names for loop indices. If they name their loop index CurrentPagePositionLoopCounter it is (a) sure sign that they have not written a lot of code in their life.
Or that they just like long variable names. The most annoying programmers to work with (and the ones I'd be least likely to hire) are the ones who use names like "i1", "i11", "ii1", "iii1", "a2", "b" for everything.
For example, if you ask them to reverse a linked list, good candidates will always make a little drawing on the side and draw all the pointers and where they go. They have to. It is humanly impossible to write code to reverse a linked list without drawing little boxes with arrows between them. Bad programmers will start writing code right away.
Okey-dokey, then.
Occasionally, you will see a C programmer write something like if (0==strlen(x)), putting the constant on the left hand side of the == . This is a really good sign. It means that they were stung once too many times by confusing = and == and have forced themselves to learn a new habit to avoid that trap.
There are good interviews, bad interviews, and then there are a few things you can do to get me to call security to escort you out of the building:
1) Start a fire for no obvious reason.
2) Make fun of all the old-school Duran Duran songs in my phat MP3 collection.
3) Call strlen() to see if a string is empty.
From what I can tell, what Joel considers the "99.9th percentile" is actually a level of competence I'd expect from a bright high-school kid who skipped some, but not all, of his introductory computer-science class. It's not exactly hard to hire people at this level; most of them are, or should be, brushing up on their Hindu grammar to help them train their replacements.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
before, during and after the .com bomb.
Pics
Yep, I've worked in places where I just wanted to go home again. Wasn't the fault of the building though. The Cubes were nice enough, and worked. Not as nice as the artical, but good enough. Management was sending signals that my job was doomed, and that didn't motivate me to salvage it. Sure enough, the entire plant was shut down and everyone let go the day the last version was released. If I had known what to think I would have realized that after version 2.1 there was no development, and no plans for development was ever approved. Instead I just saw promises of a roadmap coming soon that were broken. At least everyone saw that broken promise
Did I mention the office I didn't like working in was built on a swamp, and sunk just a little every year, sometimes flooded out, and the plumbing was going bad? It was physically bad place to work, and everyone wanted to move elsewhere. However the physical parts of the building never detracted from my wanting to work there in the pre 2.0 days there there was plenty of interesting work.
I'd say mod ya up but..........Well how about good point I hope more people read it
Error 666 - Satanic SCO code found in your Linux kernel.
I was out of programing for a while, and to pay the bills I went into construction. I had a beatiful office then: outside with fresh air. I got to play with toys all day. (saws and nailers mostly, but once in a while I could attempt to get the 4 wheel drive forklift stuck) I hated it. Oh, I like working with my hands and building things, but I don't like doing it all day. I several times found myself standing on a 2x4 20 feet in the air and wishing I was anywhere else, (preferably the ground) while the other guy ran across the other wall and then teased me for not being at the other end already. I had to listen to the radio station the foreman picked. Then I finially got home after working 10 hours, and was dead tired. Even when I had a moment free, I couldn't pick up my mandolin because my body hurt too much.
I'm now back in programing, and I love it. I get paid to read code all day. I sit inside an office (with a window that I never look out of) that is air conditioned. I write code! They pay me to write code! Once in a while I have to test my code, and that isn't nearly as much fun, but my job is writing code. I work less hours. I can choose my radio station, or bring my own CDs, or work in silence, my choice. When I get home I can play mandolin without pain.
To each his own. I've tried your plan. The work was different, but I didn't like it.
Ah, but then you can only work one or two days a week, or it would start getting very expensive.
"Verbing weirds language." -- Calvin
That's going to result in an 'interesting' code base...
Speak for yourself about not getting a cool office. I work from home and have spent a great amount of time tuning my office space to a great place to spend time making a living. Someone develops a nice office with some very inventive architectural ideas (I'm particularly fond of the window to the next office's window idea), and you write it off as useless due to it having no direct use to you.
Whereas those who get ideas to incorporate into their own ambitions will enjoy this news, you narrowly percieve this as "Dot Bomb flashback syndrome".
Living in the past is for suckas!
I've twice been responsible for creating small offices of the caliber of Joel's vision -- it is hard, and the compromises are never obvious until you've lived in it a year.
;-)
The biggest design program is the "closed door" problem. Ever programmer needs it to concentrate, but it makes making the place more pleasant far more difficult.
My biggest simple advice is a weird one -- install a washer/dryer someplace where it will not disturb people. Even though we worked hard to keep a 40-45 hour work week, it was still the most used 'perk' of our office
Some easy tips:
* There are some really nice drawer sized dishwashers (ours is from Fisher/Payel) -- it is perfect for the small office where it is hard to make everyone responsible for cleaning up the office kitchen. The small drawer size means that you can wash with fewer items, more people take responsibility as it is easy.
* Windows that open -- you may not want to very often in some climates, but it really makes a difference.
* Ventilation -- consider two systems -- one for your HVAC, a second that is nothing but circulation with a little intake some exhaust. I forgot the number, but I think they recommend 10% fresh air an hour as a good compromise for efficiency and good indoor air quality.
* Avoid composite materials -- they outgas for months. We decided not to glue the carpet, it worked fine.
* Design desks for two trash cans -- there is never enough room for recycling and trash if you don't, and people knock them over.
* Steel white walls are nice for each office and common areas, great for writing but also using magnets to hold stuff up. We had over 5 linear feet of white walls per person in the office! To save money, you can get porcelain over steel material for restaurant fridgerators cheaper then from office supply places.
* There is never enough storage space. We designed our storage space around the standard banker-box sized boxes, which made storage much easier. We also crammed storage everywhere, under stairs, over low-ceilinged spaces, etc.
* Consider not totally finishing out ceilings -- acoustic tile and other approaches really don't absorb enough sound. Instead, have spaces where the rafters show, mixed with some normal ceilings. This causes sound to baffle, both into the open spaces of the rafters, and from there into/above the fixed ceilings. Much more effective for deadening sound.
-- Herder of Cats
My very first Microsoft office was outside with a view.
I think having your office outside is a little extreme, even if the view is better. What if it rains? Did they at least give you a tent or something?
Geez, where am I gonna hide my secret food stash and my tissues and my caffeinated mints and my antacid and my can of Whoop Ass (no wait, that goes on TOP of the desk as a warning) and my extra candy and my hand lotion and my pens and pencils and comb and hairspray and chapstick and cold medicine and headache remedies and scotch (no, nm, didn't say that) and purse and pda cables and sewing kit and book....?
But it's not that expensive. He write that the price per developer is 700$/Month.
According to Joel the $700 figure is for a fully staffed office. Since Joel coyly avoids more detail, we can only guess what his current cost is. FogCreek is a young company. Assuming that their new offices are 50% full (which I don't get the impression they are), that rent-per-head figure is more like $1400/month at the moment. And who knows how long it'll be before their business justifies hiring more people to fill up those empty offices.
Well, if the snazzy digs don't motivate them, then their bills will -- or at least it'll motivate the person who has to pay the rent, i.e. Joel, to crack the whip harder! :-)
Right, because when you have potential clients/customers in your office to pitch to them, you don't really want them to be impressed by your company. Granted, this does vary based on the company, but appearances DO mean something when you're starting out.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
This is certainly correct (although, as you note, this can vary considerably by the company).
That's why the receptionist ( who you could probably live without for a while ) gets the best desk first. Not the Owner/CEO.
In the case of Salon, to take an example, their offices needn't look any better than average small town newspaper's, because it's their webpage that determines the public's perception of "what they look like."
They could be serving those pages from somebody's garage for all anyone cares, including their customers.
KFG
I'd hate to be anywhere near that closet when the power goes out. My single APC UPS is intolerable enough.
Non-central locations in a city are great, because there's all sorts of interesting spaces (not just office buildings), and there's stuff around. I don't want to work in a strip mall, or an industrial park, or a highrise. They are all examples of overly partitioned spaces, spaces that are serve a specific function then become wastelands on a daily cycle. I like being by restaurants that are open for lunch and dinner, I like seeing mothers with strollers go by, I like knowing that it's 3:00 because I see all the kids walking back from school. My only disapointment is that few offices have front porches.
A lot of the stuff in that office also isn't about the programmers, it's about visitors. You can make functional, attractive, pleasant spaces without spending a ton of money. But they won't impress outsiders with your prosperity and modernity.
Let me tell you what's going to happen. All that fancy cable-routing, pseudo-ergonomic office furniture is not gonna wear well, 'cause it's designed by idiots. It looks so cool in the catalog, but after a year or two the parts freeze in place (maybe you're supposed to oil them every month or something), and they stop being ergnomic and routing.
Windows. Yeah, I love a window office. Natural light cheers me up. But most geeks seem to have glare issues, which they deal with by minimizing background light. So our fancy everybody-gets-a-private-window building had 3/4 of its blinds closed at any given time.
And what do we do with the other people that help a software firm make money? Yeah, developers are key, but so are QA people, integrators, tech writers, sales people, marketeers, and of course the customer service people. But we can't afford to give all those bozos fancy private offices, so we'll just put them in cubes. Yeah, that's really great for promoting friendship and communication between the developer-gods and lesser mortals.
Actually Spolsky avoided one mistake our own deity made -- he didn't put the developer-gods on a different floor, behind a separate set of keycard doors. (Of course if his company had more than two products...) Then again, sitting in one's cube, watching the "key" employes hang out behind their translucent walls, watching the plasma TV and doing other geek stuff, might be even more detrimental to morale.
Here's the nasty thing about us geeks: give us a little money or power, and we turn into the stupidist, most arrogant assholes!
I think trying to design office space like that is self-defeating. Some of the most exciting science and engineering has happened in basements, shacks, Soviet-style office buildings, etc. Those places work not because some architect came in and set them up according to some fancy ideas, but because the people working in them adapted them to their work. Fancy furniture and construction is more of an obstacle to that than an aid, since they make occupant-driven changes much harder. If the place looks like a dump to begin with, you won't mind putting stuff where it is most useful, rather than where it looks best.
I was one of those "elite" programmers that got hired to an "elite" company, and it was great at first. They had all the frills and benefits. Company trips to Las Vegas, kitchens with free food that didn't quit, games, toys, paintball, etc. Laptops and cell phones for everybody, and an office view looking out over the hills.
It didn't work, and let me tell you why. The work sucked. We weren't just encouraged to work 16 hours a day, we were expected to. We were forced to use crappy build tools, a crappy home-brew revision control system, a crappy OS (Windows), and worst of all, I was stuck programming a GUI client in Java (GOOD LORD!).
The office frills are certainly a good thing, but it pales in comparison to the effect the work itself has on you. Is it fun, interesting work? Are you treated like a contributor of ideas, or are you just treated like an "implementation monkey"? Do you believe in the product of your efforts? Is this the kind of thing you want to do the rest of your life? Are you learning important skills? Is your career actually progressing, or do you feel hogtied?
All of these questions need to be answered positively by an employee before you can start to think about keeping him/her around. If you can have toys and pretty offices on top of that, then fine. Just make sure your employees are happy with their work and their future, and they'll stick with you always. Treat them like cattle, and they'll perform poorly and leave you as soon as they get a better offer. Most software engineers would be happy working in a dank cellar if the work was still fun and challenging.
...just my 2 gil.
Time after time after time this sad story happens to great companies. How could Joel possibly justify the amount of money he has spent on this office - what an arrogant wanker. Joel isn't going to suffer - its the workers who are going to be sacked when the cash flow runs dry. Sorry but this guy is a prick and I'll never goto his web site again.
In fact the last startup I was with cut their office rent by half by moving into a space that was better than twice as large.
In reality a 20x22 space isn't that large - I've got a little larger than that where I am at, no window though, but who wants the glare on the monitor anyway
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
His point wasn't about getting luxury items; it was that this setup is an investment that will result in increased programmer productivity and therefore profit. He may or may not be correct, but I don't think that it's the same as the dot com idiocy.
According to 'Parkinson's Law' by C. Northcote Parkinson, in chapter 6 'plans and plants', this marks the start of the decline of the company, lets hope it's a counter example.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
I've had to do business with Amazon.com numerous times throughout the years. On my first trip, they almost literally had the door on creates. After a couple building moves to their current one, they had moved up in the world. They now have doors with wodden legs attached to them by the in-house maintenance crew.
If it is good enough for Amazon, it is good enough for any new company.
I've talked to Jeff Bezos about it too. And just like software, you start off simple and want to be adverse to moving up to anything more complex.
One of the first rules to building wealth, and one that all self-made millionaires know, is that you become stingy with your money. You save where you can and don't overspend. The same is true for a company starting out.
Anybody that you are trying to get funding from will immediately recognize the meager spending as a good thing. Any clients you are hoping to build a partnership with will also think better of your venture knowing that you are in it for the long haul and not just for burning money over the next 5-10 years.
If you must, you have one nice, but not expensive, meeting room. And the receptionist always gets the best of everything. Everybody else can make do until steady cash is pooring through.
This productivity argument that Joel makes costs him cash that most likely could be spent better in the beginning, especially since things never go how you imagined them when starting out.
I've had a hand in starting too companies now. Sadly, both eventually closed up. However, I'll be trying a third shot as soon as I can get funding together.
If you buy an entire book of acid tabs, you can get them for literally pennies a hit.
Anyone that is interested in "knowledge workers" and work environments should read "Peopleware" by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister:
9 32 633439/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
AFAIK, there's no VC money behind Fog Creek. They do consulting work to allow them to develop shrink-wrap applications. Also, it's not a new company - they've just moved offices.
They've been profitable (see last para) for some time, so the answer is that they can probably quite easily afford it as a natural part of the business growth.
...he thought. That means he did it twice. At least.
Chuck Norris: Socialism == a thousand years of darkness.
I fail to see how sofas and a big telly are going to improve productivity. Decrease productivity when all the programmers hang around to watch TV when they should be working, yes.
And who the hell wants to hang out at the office!!!!??? Have these people no lives? There's something seriously wrong with anyone who doesn't get the fuck away from their workplace ASAP when their working day is done!
"Information wants to be paid"
In one of Steve McConnell's books there's mention of research into developer productivity - the long & short of it is that offices with doors that close and enough space for 2 or more people to chat around a table appears to have a direct influence on programmer producitivity. Peopleware by Demarco & Lister contains a few chapters on the subject too; I seem to recall sample office layouts from some IBM hangar which was cited as a good example of office space for software developers.
I like the photos Joel posted, except for the fact there doesn't appear to be space for whiteboards and book cases.
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
But I have never worked in a place (or had a CS class for that matter) where the skill of the programmers didn't look like a bell curve or where the difference between the top and the bottom wasn't at least an order of magnitude. The low end of the curve is people that are utterly useless, and probably steal productivity by wasting more skilled people's time. The top end are so amazingly productive that they can do things in a day that other programmers would never have even conceived.
I think there is a reason for this bell curve though. If you have too many on the low end, you go out of business. If you have too many on the high end, they fight with each other and some of them leave, or just don't produce to they're true capacity.
What's wrong with calling strlen() to see if a string's empty?
You gotta have the honkin' air conditioning unit to tame that stench, the kind with the HEPA, charcoal and whatever else you can use to keep breathable air for the rest of the staff, right?
So THAT'S where the 'bionic' part comes in.
Don't most modern processors have a hard-wired operation that returns the first byte past an index that matches a value? Even if not, this strikes me as such a simple optimization (an inline function with a constant argument!) that any optimizing compiler that couldn't spot it would have to be considered crap.
(Such a compiler would also issue a warning for another of Joel's pet mistakes: an assignment statement inside a boolean expression. Although I've never understood why programmers who are that nitpicky can't simply spot an "=" where a "==" should be.)
Then again, I suppose people who are still programming in C would have a prejudice for manual optimization. Trust in abstraction is for C++ programers.
Then again again: A long time ago, I was working with some people who were porting Unix (system 5 with some BSD features) to the 68010. One of them mentioned being suprised by the code generated by their fancy optimizing C compiler. But when he examined the code very closely, he said to himself, "Yes, that's what I meant to do, only better!"
On the same theme: when I was trying to become a programmer (I know the tech, but I don't have the right kind of brain for software development) I was indoctrinated to not worry about saving cycles unless I was coding a tight loop. Otherwise you risk creating brittle, bug-prone, hard-to-maintain code without any real benefit.
But hey, what do I know?
GA! Jobs wanted one bathroom for everybody, in order to promote casual interactions. Yeah, everybody loves talking shop while they're defecating!
I think that his point is, and I don't really know if it's valid, is that if your employees enjoy being in their work environment they'll be happier, and more productive. At least in part I would think this is true.
"Windows Me offers tremendous reliability and stability improvements..." -- Paul Thurott
I second the working out of town call there.
:P
I think my current office has the best of both worlds - it's in a mixed use area, but is *right* on the fringe of the city centre (ours is the last road before the blocks of offices above shops), which makes it convineant for those "hey, it's payday!" moments