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Building a Better Office
xjrfx asks: "I'm in charge of setting up a new office for my company. I want to make the place as worker friendly as possible, comfortable enough that long hours don't seem like banishment to a beige hell. I was hoping to get some input from Slashdot regarding past office experiences, good and bad. What amenities/factors cause you to love or hate your office? If you could create your perfect office how would it work?"
"Did you feel schizoid in open offices or claustrophobic in cube farms? Were you ever forced to be in an office when you would have been more productive on the road, or conversely have you ever had to leave the office to focus on the task at hand? What's more important; a foosball table or a fancy furniture system? Do you want the same desk space for your duration of your employment or do you want to move around depending on your projects?
Our office will be 40-45 people (15 engineers, 7 creative types, 15 biz dev/sales, and some support staff and part-timers as well), but I'm open to opinions from people from much larger or smaller offices."
Our office will be 40-45 people (15 engineers, 7 creative types, 15 biz dev/sales, and some support staff and part-timers as well), but I'm open to opinions from people from much larger or smaller offices."
If you could create your perfect office how would it work?
I'm a fan of Joel Spolsky's writings (see Joel on Software), so I was fascinated to read about the office space he has designed at his company, Fog Creek Software.
I like what he's built here because the emphasis is not just on catering to developers, but providing an atmosphere where great coding can thrive.
Sigs cause cancer.
by demarco and lister.
Any suggestions I would give are probably covered there.
I'll create an amusing sig when I have something meaningful to post.
You want to get better productivity, let people work from home. It works great when you have the right people (people usually work more from home then when at an office IMHO).
Two words: air conditioners!
There are two huge and incredibly noisy air conditioners in my office (for the adjacent rooms). There are no windows because it's a basement office.
Never let yourself get stuck with the basement office.
GET THEM INSIDE THE VAULT!
I heard light green is very calming, use some of the color studys to choose the right ones.
I once toured a nify building in Melbourne Florida owned by Encso. Each floor had a ring of offices around the outside and a communal lab in the center. Everyone had plenty of windows and they a shared area to work together in.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
At a previous job, there used to be a nearby diner that was rarely busy in the afternoon. I used to regularly go over there and drink ice tea for a couple hours while reading computer manuals.
At my current job, there really is nowhere suitable to go. The local public library is only half a block away, but it is only open a few hours a week and really doesn't have any good place to sit down and concentrate without interruption.
What I would really like is a reading room/library with comfortable chairs, good lights, both desks and coffee-type tables, no telephones, no computers, and good insulation to keep outside sounds out.
About the closest thing we have to that is a hot tub. It is comfortable, the lights are okay, and there are no telephones are computers in htere, but there are no desks or tables so if what you are reading slips, it gets soaking wet.
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1. Quiet, developers need lots of concentration
2. No time-clocks, hire responsible people, they will put in more time when needed
3. Telecommute, except for project meetings, brainstorming sessions
4. Do not mention "long hours" - that means you are:
a. Disorganized
b. Underbudget/understaffed
c. Going to "over work"/"burn" people fast
IMHO long hours are the result of somebody fucking up either with irrelistic deadlines or bad specifications or design.
5. Breaks - the development process sometimes requires you to take a break to think things over.
Aside from that, yeah, flat panel displays, fast cpus, lots of memory, fast internet access.
Pretty much everyone I work with has a whiteboard in their cube. Great for one-on-ones with someone; nothing like saying "Here, let me draw it for you."
Needless to say, we have big old whiteboards in our conference rooms as well.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
I agree about the computer thing. I personally hate over zealous admins that lock the hell out of everything. I mean, sure, there's a place for it. But often times it simply pisses people off because they feel as though they aren't trusted and it makes them dislike their work enviornment just a litle less.
Most people won't fill their machines with bullshit. And the ones that do are pretty easy to detect, and those are the ones you can lock down.
And I agree with one of the parent posts - you should have a fast internet connection. People love fast internet connections, and it just makes everything move a little bit smoother all around.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
...bed or comfortable armchair is a must!
- private offices for everybody, with a window hopefully overlooking something green (it'd be also nice to have plants in the offices if at all possible)
- air conditioning individually adjustable in every office
- good soundproofing between offices so that it's possible to play music (at moderate levels) without disturbing others. Extra soundproofing can be made available off the worker's 'workspace budget' if needed
- individual customizations for workers' PCs, some people can't work (pain free) without specific keyboards, or prefer specific mice, whatever: a $50 investment for years of productivity is worth it (again, from the 'workspace budget')
- individual customizations for workers' offices, people come in different heights, shapes and sizes and while chair A might be perfect for a worker, it might be a torture device for others. Aeron for everybody is a waste, plenty of cheaper chairs that work just as well. Same goes for desks, some people like them tall, some people short: ergonomics is the name of the game. (again, from the 'workspace budget')
- high quality heavy window shades/drapes/... nothing worse than trying to code with massive sun glare on your monitor.
- incandescent lighting in all offices, makes the environment so much nicer to be in than fluorescent.
- 'common' room(s) with 3-4 workstations for when people prefer to hash things collaboratively (vnc or something similar to be used to access each worker's individual PC)
- at least 1 small meeting room (small = 4 seats) for every 8 workers, at least 1 medium (8-12 seats) for every 16 workers or so, and at least 1 large (fits everybody), if you don't plan to have many 'all hands' meetings just make it off the cafeteria/common area as not to waste space
- completely enclosed and secured network room ('room within the room') there should be no need for anybody to go in there besides your IT staff, but it's nice to have it in a semi-visible place (with transparent windows) as people like to see shiny blinky lights
- a sizeable cafeteria/common area with some couches, a TV, a foosball or pool table, a kitchen, fridges, microwaves etc. a TV sometimes is free teambuilding (esp. nowadays with the Euro soccer cup going on)
- a good admin/facilities person who is on the ball and keeps supplies coming in on time and things running smoothly in general.
these are just off the top of my head: it's amazing that so many bosses don't realize just how much more productive and efficient their workers could be if they just were put in the 'right' surroundings... hats of to MS in this case for their 'one worker - one office' policy (as far as I know).
-- the cake is a lie
Fluorescent lights gets a bad rap. Flourescent lights are available at various different color temperatures and are also available full-spectrum versions. (Just google for full spectrum fluorescent for many more choices).
Because of their low heat output and low power usage, they are actually preferred by some lighting professionals for photo and video work (in the full-spectrum versions, of course).
This is the way to go if you have the budget. Using a professional for the office is just like using a professional coder for software. That person will have the skills to do it right. They'll think of things you won't. This is especially true the larger the office. Design Perspectives has done a couple of offices for us and their results were much better than ours and actually the cost was less considering the amount time it took us.
That's about all I can think of off the top of my head. My current place of work provides none of those things and I really hate them for that.
This is entirely different. It's like comparing trained, professional car drivers to everyone else. If you get in a car with Mario Andretti, you can feel fairly sure that you'll get to your destination as safely as possible. If you get in a car with Joe Random, however, who only has a driver's license (which, in the USA, doesn't require any type of competence test at all), he may be a good driver, or he may be a complete nut.
Dog owners are the same way. Some dog owners aren't a problem at all; they take good care of their animals, train them to not bark at all hours, etc. Unfortunately, not all dog owners are like this (probably not even a majority). Just like we allow any moron to drive a vehicle, we also allow any moron to own an animal, and this gives us people like my neighbors, who have dogs that stay outside all the time, bark incessantly at all hours, crap all over the yard (which is only dirt) which means I have to smell dog crap any time I go in my back yard, and try to jump over the wall and attack me.
Tell you what, you can bring your dog to work after you bring proof that it's had years of training as a blind-assistance dog so that your coworkers don't have to worry about it barking, crapping on the carpet, attacking people, etc.
Assistance animals are by law allowed into work areas.
Assistance animals are, as a general rule, much better than the average human in a group as far as temperament is concerned. Assistance animals are carefully selected and specially trained and have the paperwork to prove it. This certification process is to protect the owner of course, but it also gives most people a high level of confidence that this dog is completely even tempered. Even if you say have trained your dog there is no way to know that your dog is well trained (replace you with every other idiot that wants to bring their dog to work). I don't think that the assistance animal law is any precedent for a general dog policy. The only guaranteed thing in common between Fido and an Assistance dog is that they are the same biological species, nothing more.
White noise is a weird thing that's actually become necessary. Some people use music (which I hate), some just have a nice baratone ventilation system. Low enough to be subconscious, amplified enough to drown out the random sounds of papers shuffling and coccyx breaking.
"Happy Lights" are highly overpriced compact fluorescent full spectrum lighting with good ballasts. You could save yourself a ton of money going with a DIY approach. There's plenty of full spectrum bulbs out there for standard fixtures, particularly in aquarium and plant circles (for plant and coral growth). Hell, you could probably buy a fully commercial aquarium lighting system for less than Happy Lights and end up with pretty much the same thing.