How Much Do You Value Your Office Space?

reason asks: "I've heard that office space costs around $10,000 per employee, and sometimes much more. I have a great office: it's a nice size and I have a lovely view out the window. It's a good working environment, and I know I'm lucky. Still, if it came down to dollar terms, I'd be willing to share my office with a colleague or even move into a cubicle in exchange for a mere $5,000/year pay rise. Am I undervaluing what I have? If you have an office to yourself, how much would they have to pay you to make you willingly give it up? If you don't have an office, how much of a pay cut would you be prepared to take to get one?"

Comments

Google and Me

[komodo9]

Look at Google. They have very few offices, but instead many small rooms with 4-6 people in each. They say it enhances collaboration through discussion and brainstorming. If you're ever unsure about something, you can turn around and ask someone very quickly.

To me personally, office space doesn't mean much. I almost prefer to work with others around rather than being isolated in an office by myself.
--
United Bimmer - BMW Enthusiast Community

Re:Google and Me

[Azarael]

This is how my office works as well, and being able to have a quick discussion without leaving your desk is pretty handy. It is a pain though when you need to get rolling on something and have to fight through distractions.

Re:Google and Me

[AKAImBatman]

Look at Google. They have very few offices, but instead many small rooms with 4-6 people in each.

I will point out, however, that they are rooms. I imagine that background noise is minimal, and people are allowed to focus on their tasks. In comparison, I've worked in environments with tons of open cubicles. The background noise really interferes with trying to focus on what you're doing. You don't even notice it at first, but the moment you find a quiet space you suddenly notice the difference.

So in short, you need a conductive workspace, of which offices are only one type. :-)

Re:Google and Me

[pintomp3]

i think this is the most productive setup, unless you're rooming with someone you can't stand.

Re:Google and Me

[Tadrith]

The only problem with that is the problem I've had -- stupid people suddenly turn you into a walking question and answer machine.

Collaboration only works when everyone is willing to work. Otherwise you get people who are lazy, stupid, and would much rather ask you instead of figuring it out for themselves.

Re:Google and Me

[Flounder]

If a machine cost $50,000 but saved 500 square feet of space that may very well be cheaper in the long term than a $100,000 machine that saved none.

I'm American. I'll always go with the bigger and more expensive machine. Must mean it's better.

Re:Google and Me

[luvirini]

The most efficient arrangement I have found was a 2/room thing in couple of places I worked, we had a fairly large office partially divided by a screen. Worked very well when you had someone closeby to be a soundingboard and similar and yet there was no background noise or such when the door was closed. I think the google model has same benefits, though personally I would thing 6 people would likely be too much.

Re:Google and Me

[tverbeek]

I'm admittedly not a particularly social person, and I would have thought that having an office to myself would be ideal. And I'd freak out and run screaming from the room if forced to share space with other people. But that hasn't been the case.

At the place I worked for a dozen years ago, my boss and his boss decreed that it was time to "tear down the wall" between Programming and Tech Support, which meant not only taking down the almost-to-the-ceiling partion between the two groups, but turning the entire room into an open office area, with no vertical barrier taller than a seated person. And it worked great. So much so that, at my next job, when they started talking about reconfiguring the cubicles for the IT dept, without even being asked I went home and made up a similar design to serve as a first draft. That also worked out well. (Of course, it helped that in both instances, I managed to get myself a desk with a view outside... even if it was just a parking lot.)

The job I had after that paid better, and I got my own office with four walls, a ceiling, and a real wooden door. Heaven, right? Nope. Granted, there were factors other than the seating arrangements, but I hated it.

Now I'm in a job where I share an office (four walls and a door... that's always open) with a co-worker.* And it's actually kinda nice. One of us can intercept interruptions when the other is trying to get something done, getting help with something is as simple as stating a question aloud, and I don't need to worry about keeping abreast of what my coworker is doing because I'm right there when he does it. As long as I continue to get "alone time" - at home and on breaks - I'm fine. I gave up several thousand dollars a year and some benefits to take this job instead of the office-with-a-door job. It was worth it. Even without an outside window.

*Actually, the co-worker position is empty, and we're interviewing to fill it. Anyone with Mac experience interested in working for an art-and-design college in Grand Rapids MI is invited to contact me at "verbeet AT ferris DOT edu"

Re:Google and Me

[OrangeSpyderMan]

each time someone asked me a question out of stupidity I would take a sip

I couldn't possibly drink that much :-)

Re:Google and Me

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

After you move to the basement, if you could could go ahead and get a can of pesticide and take care
of the roach problem we've been having, that would be great.

Re:Google and Me

[sysadmn]

Everyone talks about the increase in communications from shared space, but no one seems to factor in the productivity hit that comes from having to listen to other people's meetings on speakerphone, or time spent in a corner of the hallway making personal calls. I don't spend a lot of time on personal business, but there's times I need to call a doctor to get a prescription written or talk to a child's teacher. My coworkers don't need to hear that any more than I need to hear them discussing their divorce with their attorney. If you're designing a cube hell, for heaven's sake, add a few phone booths!

Re:Google and Me

[Thing 1]

I think the submitter's focus is slightly naive. My rate of pay should be orthogonal to my seating arrangement. Whereas, in fact, the two tend to be linked positively; when pay (especially along with title) goes up, so does the chance of having a door.

So asking "how much pay would you give up to have an office" isn't really paying attention to corporate culture; the submitter appears to be assuming that the two can be linked negatively (i.e., you can exchange pay for better office arrangement, which doesn't normally happen).

And anyway, they don't generally say, "Okay, now you have an office mate, what concessions would you like from us to compensate for your loss of privacy?" They generally say, "Okay, now you have an office mate."

Cost is way lower, differential cost is even less!

[whoever57]

Firstly, unless you worked for Webvan, or some other profligate doc com company, office space does not cost $10k per employee. Not even in the SF Bay area.

Secondly, you have to consider that the cost of your space is probably only half or less of the total: conference rooms, bathrooms, corridors, etc.: all must be considered, and while the corridors may have to larger if each employee has more space, the bathrooms and conference rooms and other shared areas don't.

So, the delta cost to a company for you to have a cube vs. an office: probably less than $2k per year. For $2k off my gross wages, I would opt for an individual office.

Maybe $10?

[Anonymous Coward]

I probably bought it for $15, but that was a few years ago, and it's not the newer edition "with flair" which means it's probably worth less. However, it's still a very funny movie and worth owning, whatever the cost.

Re:Maybe $10?

[Mr. Firewall]

They can have my Office Space when they unwrap my cold, dead fingers off of the DVD!!

BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Lots!

[B5_geek]

In my previous job my desk was against the wall in a warehouse. People walking up behind me all the time. Servers spread-out across 3 desks, Cat5 cables hanging down from the ceiling.

No heat in Winter (Hey this is Ontario it does get cold!)
No air in Summer (Hey this is Ontario it does get hot!)

The only way I could impove my situation; wait for somebody to get canned & steal their desk. By the time somebody noticed I had been there for a few months and 'entrenched'. =)

I'd almost forego a raise for the solitude

[Martin Blank]

Considering the distractions that I get (network operations center, so phones, various alarms, and a television tuned to one of several news stations), I'd love to get some time alone, even in a small place. I don't have a lot of paper around, so I don't need space. I just need quiet.

I'm not sure if I could put a value on it

[Neil Blender]

But shutting the door and thus muting the conversation about what is going on in the latest edition of American Idol is pretty damn valuable to me.

Being able to control the lighting is also very valuable.

Privacy too. I don't like people to hearing what I am saying unless I actually want them to overhear it regardless of what I am talking about.

Ohhh - closed door meetings - those have lots of value.

I think I'd need at least a 50% raise.

Re:I'm not sure if I could put a value on it

[jobugeek]

Amen to all of the things you stated. Just getting up and staring out the window for about 2-3 minutes helps me considerably. I can clear my head and then get back to work. Unfortunately, I can't open the windows(stupid office buildings). I am easily distracted by stuff that passes through my peripheral vision, so in the few jobs I've had in a cube, I was constantly looking up. I'm just not able to cope with it.

This is an interesting question

[ip_freely_2000]

Sadly, there is no one room I spend more time in than my office. I spend about 35% of my LIFE in that room.

Since I am alone in it, I have spent a couple thousand dollars in additional furnishing in it ( Lamps, artwork, stereo, TV, various knick-knacks ). I figure if I spend the time, I should make the investment to make it a comfortable room I want to be in.

I'd be hard pressed to give it up for more salary. Would I sell it for a cube? Sure -- but then I'd look for a new job.

value of work

[usrusr]

> Still, if it came down to dollar terms, I'd be willing
> to share my office with a colleague or even move into a
> cubicle in exchange for a mere $5,000/year pay rise

But will your efficiency be the same in a cubicle? If you put that into the calculation as well your pay rise could easily be much smaller, probably even negative for some tasks.

Which brings us to the most important point: some kinds of work benefit more from a nice seperate office, some less, some even benefit from a shared room.

And don't underestimate the incentive factor, a wage rise might be more attractive for the individual employee than getting a separate office, but his coworkers won't take much notice of that. Promoting someone to a better office on the other hand can provide a much greater "i can accomplish that too" motivation boost for his coworkers.

Depends on the office...

[i.r.id10t]

In the past 8 years at my employer, I've been in 6 office spaces, some shared, some semi-private, and one wiht a closing door. I don't consider office space as part of my salary, but I do consider the choice of office space (within relative reason) to be worth "something", if not money. Same with office furnature, network jacks, and good power supply.

First was a small kitchen area, shared with 3 other people at different points of the day, with some overlap occasionally of all 4 of us plus an extra person or two. We managed, and as a group we all got along together well - we're all still together, same department, only losses have been due to a death and a retirement. Next had a private office, 3 network jacks, 2 different circuits, it was nice. Then moved to a slightly smaller office, turning down a window office because it was on the south side of the building, not shaded, and my desk was just a tad too big for it. Moved to a shared lab area with 1 other person for a while for renovations, then back. Just moved to a shared area with really high cubicle walls, but now I have a north side window to one side of me and a fishtank to the other.

So I guess it really depends on what you consider to be a good office, or a better one than you have now.

Per Square Foot

[CokeJunky]

I have found that nice office space is good, but if the company is more concerned about appearances than their employees, that is not so good.

In the long distance past, I found out that the office space for a company I was working at cost 40$ (Canadian) per square foot per month. Now that doesn't include anything other than the rental itself... not power, plumbing, etc. So, I did the math... I was using up an area of 8ft by 6 foot, so 48 square feet. Round it off if you include use of common areas, so make that 50 ft^2. At that price, they were paying 2000 $/month for the space I occupied. Funny thing is that happened to be what I was earning at the time. So when they offered me a 100 square foot office, (raises had occured -- I was up to 3k/month by then) I started looking for a new job. I for one think that an employee should be worth at least as much per month as the floor under their feet. I felt the company was more concerned about appearances and having a fancy address than it was concerned about having employees who could afford clothes to match the office.

For reference, 40$/sq foot/month is for AAA office space... Just about any other building in the city would go for 12-20/month.

Don't get me wrong, I like having a nice office as much as anyone, but not when the company is paying a premium for the address and can't afford to pay a better wage. Maybe it's just ego, but I would like to think that good employees should be worth more to a company than an expensive address. The expensive address may add prestige to the company and bring business, but happy employees who are well paid tend to work harder, produce better quality work, and are less likely to leave the company for greener fields in the middle of a project.

Re:Per Square Foot

[pclminion]

Let me get this straight. They gave you a raise, and offered a bigger office, so you... quit?

Re:Per Square Foot

[cameldrv]

Hate to break it to you, but office rents are almost always quoted in dollars per square foot per year, not per month. $40, even in Canadian dollars would be an astronomical price for space. They were probably spending about 8% of your salary on space, not 100%.

Better to keep the flow going...

[mikael]

If you have an office to yourself, how much would they have to pay you to make you willingly give it up? If you don't have an office, how much of a pay cut would you be prepared to take to get one?"


If I had my own office, I wouldn't give it up for anything. Being able to work somewhere with the benefit of natural daylight and without distraction is something I would not give up. Having the ability to open the window and get natural air is an added bonus.

My reasoning is this: By being able to work without distraction I can focus on producing quality work in a short amount of time, and increase my value to the employer, which would increase my
chances of getting better pay rises. Having natural air also helps achieve this goal (as opposed to having a desk right next to an industrial laser printer which as in constant use).

There was also a previous discussion where Microsoft observed that every 5 minute distraction caused their developers spend 25 minutes in order to get the flow going again).

Offices

[Jozer99]

Don't under estimate office space. I interned at the same company my mother works at last summer. For the first two weeks I got a corner office (nicer than my mom's office, THAT pissed her off), and it was great. Then they finally processed me and I moved into a little teeny cubicle. I was SOOO much more producive in the office, becuase I didn't have the destraction of listening in on the various conversations of people in my cubical block, and people didn't tend to just walk right into my office unless they had a reason (good to know I'm feared ;) but they would barge right into the cubical and give me other stuff to do.

Offices may cost less

[hakan2000]

I actually think offices cost less in the long term. I was in an office for half of my career, and in a cube for the other half. My office was at least 25% smaller than my cube, but since it is an office, it doesn't really feel small, it actually feels more comfortable. So with careful planning, I think you can pack more offices (without windows of course) than cubes given the same square footage. Also, I'm pretty sure that a company will save a lot of employee-work-hours ( = dollars! ) just due to the fact that there's more noise isolation and less distractions. Some people say cubes encourage 'brainstorming' or 'collaboration', which I think is total bs. You can always go to someone else's office, take a few of colleagues with you, shut the door, and collaborate all you want without distracting anybody. Finally, you can deny it all you want but everyone takes care of personal business at work. A simple phone call to your doctor which would take a few minutes of your time from your office becomes a 'task': find an empty conference room, (maybe you need to reserve it too), go to the conference room, etc etc, effectively costing more for your company.

Re:Cost is way lower, differential cost is even le

[whoever57]

Most relevantly, maintaining a physical presence costs a company between $5 and $10 an hour. As a full-timer, that comes out to at least $10k per year.

Some quick calculations based on the office where I presently work and the last place I worked, including things like HVAC, insurance and cleaning, show a figure of $5k/year per employee to be quite generous.

I did not include the cost of buying or leasing furniture, PCs, etc.

This report has details of rental rates in San Jose: $23 - $30 per square foot. At less than 200 square feet per employee (10 x 10 office plus shared space), that comes out to less than $6k. There are plenty of less expensive places in the Bay Area (although San Francisco is more expensive).

Re:Cost is way lower, differential cost is even le

[jonwil]

Given the obvious cost savings, why do employers hate telecommuniting so much? Some employers seem to say that telecommuting is ok but not telecommuting 100% of the time which defeats most of the cost savings since having someone come in 3 days and work from home 2 days is probobly MORE expensive than having them come in to work for 5 days a week. On the other hand, having someone work from home 5 days a week is significantly cheaper than having them work in the office 5 days a week (since they dont even need a desk, office or cube)

Actual office space costs from a business owner.

[SlashChick]

I own a small business that calls downtown San Jose its home. We lease office space that is about 1300 square feet and split it with another small company. Rent is $1.26 a square foot (but the landlord is now offering the office space above us for $1.15...bastard!) :(

We have 4 people in the office currently, plus a nice-sized workbench space to build servers and a conference table area. We could easily fit 5 people in the same space.

Rent, plus electricity, water cooler, phone, and 6Mbit DSL connection, costs around $1300 a month. $1300 divided by 5 people is $260/month per person. That, on a yearly basis, is $3120 per employee.

Yes, I suppose we could all work from home and save the money, but productivity would be dramatically decreased. For one thing, we do a lot of datacenter work, and we need quick and easy access to the datacenter during business hours (and space to build servers!) Plus, I like the "office environment" where we can easily chat with each other. A lot of ideas come out just from us talking. Plus, there is a comfy couch where anyone in the company can crash out or just sit and think, and some snacky things to chew on while pondering problems. These are fun amenities that I couldn't justify the cost for as easily if they were at my house. ;)

Also worth mentioning is the comfort our customers derive from us having an office. It's a lot easier to sell customers on our dedicated servers and colocation services if they know they can come knock on the door whenever they have a problem. For whatever reason, the "everyone works at home" thing is not considered a professional way to run a small business, and having an office is seen as a must-have for customers to take us seriously.

Re:Cost is way lower, differential cost is even le

[wtansill]

Given the obvious cost savings, why do employers hate telecommuniting so much?

There are a number of reasons, some good, some bad:

• Some managers can't get their heads around the notion that professionals are paid to "produce", not "populate". If they can't see you, you must not be working.
• Offices are already set up to provide meeting rooms and such for anything from a productive brainstorming session to a mundane "status" meeting. Trying to cope with conference calls with or without a video conference feed just adds more expense and delay to the equation.
• Politically, it's bad if you're not in the office for extended periods of time. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that. There have been studies (which of course I can't find at present) that demonstrate that a lack of "face time" lowers an employee's odds of getting recognition for achievements and/or promotions for same.

Something else to consider -- if you work from home, you are always at the office, and can be called upon at any hour to log in to the corporate network (on call -- yes, I know...). We had a problem with this 100 or so years ago with people doing "piecework" from their homes. There are laws against this for a reason. Lets not be quite so eager to give up our personal space...

Re:Don't forget the "More Important" factor

[Usquebaugh]

Really,

my take would be they'd rather share a small office together than be stuck with you.

some links

[BillAtHRST]

Here's a link to one of the seminal studies: http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/171/ibmsj17 01C.pdf You can also check out "Peopleware" by DeMarco and Lister. Offices are good -- if you want/need interaction, you can always invite people in, but it's hard to invite people out of a shared space. The worst "office" environments I've ever been in:
- at one engagement (I was on-staff at a consulting co. for a big client), I actually shared a DESK (not an office), with another programmer. Seriously -- one desk, two PC's, two chairs. Can you guess how productive either of us were?
- Another time, the co. I was consulting for (independent this time) had just finished remodeling their offices, and of course as soon as that was done, they had run out of space. So, they moved all the "consultants" (read, those who actually did real work) into desks strung out along a hallway. Every other person who walked by ended up kicking the back of my chair (not on purpose, at least I dont think so), but it made for a very frustrating experience. Productivity was even less than the "one desk, two people" scenario described above -- after getting jostled a few times, it was necessary to go for a walk outside to vent some steam.

Re:Cost is way lower, differential cost is even le

[eric76]

cost of your space is probably only half or less of the total: conference rooms, bathrooms, corridors,

My office used to be a conference room.

We never had much in the way of conferences so I moved into it.

Re:Actual office space costs from a business owner

[tomhudson]

Plus, there is a comfy couch where anyone in the company can crash out or just sit and think, and some snacky things to chew on while pondering problems. These are fun amenities that I couldn't justify the cost for as easily if they were at my house. ;)

You can't justify a couch and some munchies for your house? Gee, and here I thought I was cheap!

Re:Office Space

[Wolfrider]

Yah, seriously what is WITH these article submitters lately? First there was the guy that had a dream job and wanted to know if he should quit to work at some startup with a pay cut - and now THIS crap.

EARTH TO "REASON": You've " made it " and have ARRIVED at where most of us would LIKE TO BE!! Why in the world would you give up a private office for a lousy extra five grand, you MORON!?

$20k/year for me

[Surt]

I've worked in a private office, a not so private office, shared an office, and worked in an open floor plan.

The best option i've seen is where we had some communal computers with a standard setup that anyone (and groups) could sit down and work at, plus offices for when we needed to work privately. That was fantastic for productivity (having the offices didn't isolate us), yet also was pleasant because we could retreat to the offices to take phone calls, or to work solo when that was more effective. That's the model every development company ought to have in my opinion.

That's hard to come by though. When deciding between having to work surrounded by people with no privacy, vs having an office with privacy, vs having an office with a view, I value it at $10k/year for each step. I'm currently working in the open floor plan with no view, but I took the job because they offered me $20k more than I was making before plus bonus opportunities that may be worth even more. I've also taken a $10k paycut to go from an internal office to an office with a beautiful view (similar work). Totally worth it. That daily pleasantness did so much for my stress level, helping to improve my health, it was great. I'm actually slightly regretting taking the 20k step up right now given the stress of the environment I'm in now, but hopefully the extra money will let me have kids, and that's important enough for me to make the trade off, at least for a while.

Anyway, all in all I'd strongly urge you to consider just how much value your personal space has for you. Consider: how much extra would you pay in rent not to have to deal with a roommate?

My cubicle

[FullCircle]

is a hexagon made of dry erase board.

All the hexagons are attached in a sort of hive configuration.

Would I give it up?

Hell no.

Re:Office Space

[alxkit]

hey now, how can you call him a moran when you don't know what is going on in his life? Money talks foo. Extra 5K a year can buy a boat load of mac and cheese or at least a good meal now and then. and if reason has kids - a few presents so the shorties are happy. so please, have a cup of reality and grow up.

Re:Cost is way lower, differential cost is even le

[benzapp]

Umm, my office is 250 square feet and our rent is approximately $45.00 per square foot for a prime Midtown Manhattan location. That works out to $11,000 a year in rent just for my office. There are also utility reimbursements, garbage collection fees, insurance for the property, etc.

I don't know what sort of office rent statistics you are looking at, but even downtown SF is going to be $35.00 PSF for Class A office space (unless you have a huge company and get some sort of bulk discount).

Re:Cost is way lower, differential cost is even le

[wtansill]

Politically, it's bad if you're not in the office for extended periods of time. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that.

How is that bad? I don't have a manager micro-managing me, and can actually get more work done. I can work days I wouldn't other wise (sick days, etc). I can put in partial days, or even do overtime or on-call shifts a lot easier.

How is this bad?

if you work from home, you are always at the office, and can be called upon at any hour to log in to the corporate network

Great!! I'd love the overtime! And the on-call pay!! And if I didn't want to be bothered, I'd not answer the phone.

So you're an hourly worker with poor interpersonal skills and no desire for advancement! Great for you! I'm on salary and get to work all the free overtime I can stand. Not answering the phone is not an option. Enjoy your stay on those low corporate rungs...