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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."
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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.
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.
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.
Yeah, I wonder about that myself. I've heard that "10x as productive" programmer idea before, and while I've definately seen a continuum of good developers and awful developers, I've never met THAT guy. Or gal. And I wonder if that person does exist, finding an ubercoder like that who can also deal with people and the real world...they must be even more rare, a real lottery win.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
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
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