Building a Better Office 828
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."
An atmosphere for great coding (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a fan of Joel Spolsky's writings (see Joel on Software [joelonsoftware.com]), so I was fascinated to read about the office space he has designed at his company, Fog Creek Software [fogcreek.com].
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.
Re:An atmosphere for great coding (Score:5, Informative)
Re:An atmosphere for great coding (Score:5, Insightful)
Key elements from a 'techie' perspective
#1 : Able to see outside, double points if you can see green things outside.
#2 : Sunlight, triple points if you can block it when you want.
#3 : Ability to close the door. Nothing improves productivity like being able to shut out the world.
#4 : More 110v outlets providing clean power than you possibly imagine ever using. Triple points for UPS.
#5 : Cable routing ductwork.
#6 : Room for more than two computers, including network jacks and table space.
#7 : Whiteboards, lots of whiteboard space.
#8 : Bookshelves, lots of bookshelves.
Want some other tips
Find out what the individuals drink. Make it available, free. The wholesale cost of a six pack of soda per day is inconsequential compared to the cost of building and staffing that office.
Real hackers don't want to socialize with other people. Collaborative coding can happen in their offices, but the real producers could give a damn about a foozball table or artwork by famous painters. True hackers don't participate in group activities or group sports.
Caffeine. Lots and lots of caffeine. More caffeine than you think a normal human could possibly consume.
Twin 18" LCD monitors hooked up to a twin-headed video card - will give a coder about 90% more real estate than a single 20" LCD while costing about the same.
Most new computers come with a $6 keyboard and a $3 mouse. Throw away both, get him a high quality rig.
Re:An atmosphere for great coding (Score:5, Interesting)
P.S. - If you mod this up, it means I win
+5 Insightful (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:An atmosphere for great coding (Score:5, Insightful)
Coding is inherently a _very_ boring activity, if you're a total extrovert. And I can see it around me every day. The ones who produce good code and lots of it, are the ones who can shut up for hours straight and just program.
This doesn't mean being a complete hermit, and unable to communicate at all. Sometimes, yeah, it's necessary to talk to someone else in the team. Sometimes you have to convince people of your vision of the architecture. And the occasional chatting pause at the water cooler or smoking place is OK, too. (Noone is 100% introverted either.)
But in the end, to actually have a program by the deadline, and earn your 8 hours a day pay, you damn better be able to spend at least 7 of them actually coding.
On the other hand, the least productive two, the ones who haven't actually produced anything in two years straight (not a joke), are also the most social people. Not only they'll talk to each other for hours, they'll even turn any communication with other team members into a 2 hour negotiation.
To get any of them to actually fix their own bugs, it turns into something resembling a negotiation with terrorists. You first have to explain to them why you want that bugs fixed, why you can't possibly live with their function returning the wrong result, listen to their view of why it's OK, listen to their grandious view of their architecture and why it shouldn't be changed (even if it returns the wrong result or crashes), etc.
Not only they're not producing anything in that time, they're also keeping other people from producing something.
When such people get promoted, it's even worse. They end up calling endless pointless meetings, just because they're bored. The kind of meetings where in the best case you spend 2 hours learning that nothing is new and worth discussing, and in the worst case you spend 3 hours hearing about their vacation or their kids. The kind of pointless meetings that keeps a whole team from working, just to entertain a bored PHB.
Either way, please do realize that some people would rather concentrate and work than listen to you. Hence the request for doors.
The absolute worst environment I've been in, was one freaking big room with 20+ people in it. No walls, no cubicles, just a ton of people in a cathedral sized room. And with the accoustics of a cathedral.
At any given time you'd hear at least two different conversations, one co-worker slurping tea in the loudest possible way, one idiot listening to music on his speakers (I bought him headphones, but he said he hated headphones and continued the noise pollution), 2-3 idiots taking a break to play Counter-Strike (at least one of them on the speakers, on a bad day also with a subwoofer), etc.
It was such a noise cacophony that it was plain old impossible to concentrate on doing any work. Eventually I started listening to loud music on the headphones just to cover that disruptive ambient noise. Of course, that was a bit of a distraction in itself, but it still beat listening to the equivalent of coding in a railway station.
Re:An atmosphere for great coding (Score:4, Insightful)
Guess what? 90%+ of programming _is_ design and analysis, even if it happens in front of the computer. The routine mechanical parts are already handled by the compiler, IDE, plugins, standard libraries, frameworks, etc. That's the easy part.
The hard part is taking a problem and splitting it into an architecture and algorithm that solves the problem. Preferrably also in a way that's robust, easy to maintain, and easy to change when the client comes and says that now he wants something different. Those don't happen by themselves. That's what programming is all about: mostly design work.
Of course, if the respect you have for programming work is summarized by the words "code monkeys", you probably do get monkey quality at the end of the day. The pipe dream and marketting fraud of the last 20 years straight was that somehow you could buy a silver bullet that makes any monkey able to write a good program. Never happened so far.
Of course, it still doesn't stop idiots from trying. When you read statistics like "68% of Java 'programmers' don't even know Java" or "3 out of 4 programmers can't actually program"... well, you know who hired them. Someone who thought that it's all monkey job and hired the cheapest monkeys.
Of course, then the programming takes ages to finish, is awfully buggy, is an unmaintainable mess, and 2 years later ends up scrapped and programmed from scratch all over again. But hey, this time we have a silver bullet +1. It surely can't go wrong again this time.
Either way, I'm not saying there isn't a time and place for meetings, documentation, and drawing a grand diagram on the whiteboard. There sure is. And there sure is a need for people who, yes, mostly do analysis and architecture design. Yep. Please do hire those.
But at some point, _someone_ has to sit down and implement it. Someone like me. Call him a "code monkey" if that makes you feel somehow superior. But someone has to do it.
You can't have only meeting-happy people sitting around and showing off colourful powerpoint foils, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and have the program auto-magically just materialize sometime before the deadline. Someone has to actually sit down at a keyboard, and implement that grandious architecture and design sometime.
And at thet time, they better have a door they can close, so that they can concentrate on that work. It's a mental exercise, not just mindlessly typing like a secretary. If they have to listen to 5 others in 2 different conversations about their vacation, trips, car, and whatever else, it's damn hard to think about converting that spec into an algorithm.
Caffeine. Lots and lots of caffeine. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:An atmosphere for great coding (Score:5, Interesting)
So a desk that is big enough to place two chairs behind it is a huge plus for me.
The point about the mouse and keyboards are very correct, and i whould like to add double points for a cordless mouse (and enough batteries).
Another important point for me is a place (preferably outside) to go to just to get away from the screen and take some distance from the work. The most difficult problems are solved away from the code, by looking at the problem from some distance.
Re:An atmosphere for great coding (Score:4, Funny)
Don't get a public frig, unless you have someone assigned to clean it. It'd be better to just get those individual desk frigs; they don't hold much, but at least everyone would be responsible for their own.
. . . um, i don't even know where to begin with this one. are you speaking from experience here? did this previous job have hot secretaries? if so, are they hiring?
Re:An atmosphere for great coding (Score:3, Informative)
I work at a company where they spent a lot more than that, and the office was not nearly as nice as they described.
Even though we had a huge amount of space, management insisted on shared offices. Lighting was all florescent. Desks were cheap. Network drops were scarce, and switches non-existent.
I really hated it. But at least it had high ceilings.
Re:An atmosphere for great coding (Score:5, Interesting)
1) good lighting not only is easier on the eyes, it will make your employees be able to physically relax and get their minds focused on their jobs
2) if the tools that you give your employees to do their job are continuously breaking or causing problems (whether it's desks, monitors, software) then you need to consider replacing them.
3) lots of power plugs, lots of network ports so you can temporarily add & remove machines (laptops, client machines, etc) to the network with ease.
4) you need to also consider your network and computer-policies as an extension of the 'office' because your employees will spend more time (hopefully) wandering the 'virtual office', ie the network, than actually walking around the physical office...
Beyond coding (Score:4, Interesting)
I've seen alot of good software severely marginalized when the coder was seen as the sole creator.
Re:Beyond coding (Score:5, Funny)
That is the best solution.
Re:An atmosphere for great coding (Score:5, Insightful)
I think an office has to reflect the work being done so it can better facilitate productivity.
I think there are some universals:
1. Climate (too hot or too cold and it distracts people)
2. Navigation - people have to get around, to other workers, to printers, the mail room etc
3. Lighting - avoid eye strain
4. Infrastructure - whether telephones, computers whatever, make sure people don't have to work to gets things hooked up
5. Layout - avoid short cube walls, the noise from conversations and telephone calls will irritate the most easy going easily
It doesn't have to break the bank, just put thought into things and keep your options open in case a decision back fires it won't take months to correct. I also recommend varying carpet and paint to break up the sight lines.
flourescent lighting! (Score:5, Insightful)
For not too much more, however, you can get the office properly wired to avoid any such 60 Hz buzz. Installing "Happy-Lights" that more closely reproduce natural sunlight is a HUGE PLUS. So shop wisely for the lights and you can find some pretty relaxing spectrums that not only keep people happy inside longer, but allow them to see better as well.
Re:An atmosphere for great coding (Score:5, Informative)
Re:An atmosphere for great coding (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:An atmosphere for great coding (Score:5, Funny)
Sales needs a dark place where they can sleep off yesterday's hangover without getting caught, and they need somewhere to sell products that don't exist yet to customers that don't know what they want.
my ideas (Score:3, Interesting)
A window.
And Quiet.
LCD monitors are easy on the eyes.
Re:my ideas (Score:5, Interesting)
---
And Quiet.
These points really encapsulates the core issues of good workspace design, but achieving them can be harder than describing them. To restate them as I see them:
(1) Effective isolation from distractions. People doing valuable work almost universally need to be able to concentrate. For most of us, this means quiet. Intercoms, other people's phone conversations (and mobile phone ring tones), obtrusive music, noisy conference rooms, all steal productivity from your employees. (Some like having background music, some dont. Those who want it should have effective comfortable headphones so they don't disturb people who can't work as effectively with background noise).
(2) Effective workgroup communication. Basically, this means it should be trivially easy to speak face-to-face with everyone each employees needs to communicate with during completion of their typical daily tasks.
These two primary considerations can work together, but there's a tension between them as well. Workgroup communication is ideal when I can turn my head to a co-worker and ask a question, but the more people I can look around and see, the noiser my workspace will be. Workspace isolation is ideal when everyone has private soundproofed offices, but there's an increased cost to either IM'ing someone (instead of having the nuance available in face-to-face speech) or taking the time to walk over to the other person's office.
I have come to believe that workspace sharing is crucial, but the upper limit of a really effective workspace is around six people. You can possibly have eight very cooperative and respectful individuals, but workspaces tend to last longer than the teams that occupy them and I wouldn't recommend larger than six.
In my own history, I've seen lots of different office plans, from cube farms to private offices and lots of variations between. My favorite office layout had the team of seventeen (including development staff, QA staff, and the team lead in "quads". Each quad was a 20'x20' room with two walls covered with whiteboard, two others had bland office paint and some nice artwork. Four desks and a 4' round table easily fit in each quad. The five quads had staggered openings on a common hallway that led to one small conference room, one large conference room, a kitchen area, and the front door (on the other side of the common areas).
One other very nice amenity that I've never seen anywhere else was a single stall shower adjacent to the bathrooms, so doing a lunchtime jog around the hills near the office didn't leave you sweaty and stinky for the afternoon.
Too bad they were in Cincinnati when I really wanted to be in Austin...
Regards,
Ross
Knock Down The Cube Walls (Score:5, Insightful)
The "everyone in the same room" philosophy works wonders. At our office, it's one big room. Everyone has identical desks and nearly identical computers - the boss sits among us (if you were to walk in, you'd have no idea which was the boss's desk). No cubicle walls. It makes for a very egalitarian work dynamic - without cubicles or offices, everyone's equal. Communication is a snap, we can just talk across the room with each other. If we absolutely have to see what's on each other's screen, simply walk across the room.
What's best is it basically eliminates the need for company meetings. If everyone works in the same large space, I've found that everyone's on the same page on projects. There's no need to organize everyone into one central place like a boardroom for a meeting, because everyone works in the same shared space to begin with.
Of course, we're a small company (about ten people), but my boss has always said that if we grew to be 100 people, he'd like to have the office set up the same way.
I've worked in a cubicle setting, an office setting, and a one-big-open-room setting, and the latter is by far the best at buliding co-worker comraderie.
Re:Knock Down The Cube Walls (Score:4, Interesting)
The OBR arrangement might be good for scrappy development teams where there are lots of interactions between developers. But I doubt if it would scale to larger teams, and probably would only work well in the initial stages of a longer project.
Perhaps a happy medium for larger projects would be to use OBR for the initial stages of a project, and offices after the team and project have gelled.
Re:Why I hate my office... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Why I hate my office... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why I hate my office... (Score:4, Informative)
30's hot
20's nice
10's cold
0's ice
What I've had and loved... (Score:5, Interesting)
-Fast internet connection. Not only useful for downloading tools/patches/etc fast, but people will want to use the internet to check news, email, slashdot in the morning. A fast internet connection will help them get it out of the way quicker (right now we have a 5 floor building on on T-1 that also serves as a connection between buildings. I'm lucky if I get 5k/sec).
-Budget in money for free sodas/water/coffee. I like to go for a morning coffee run, but I'd rather have an espresso machine and some cold Coke's at the office
-Aeron chairs. Spoil my ass please. These things are more comfortable to sit in than it is laying down. I bought the one I used when I quit one of my previous jobs
-Actually, modern looking furniture in general makes the place look a lot better and makes it seems like your job is more important than it really is, making you a little happier
-Cubes offer good privacy, but you can feel cramped. The best experience I had was a big open room. People had their l-shaped desks against the wall, so you couldn't see their monitor, but you could see their face. Also, moving desks is never fun!
RANT MODE ON (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and cubicles (it's NOT "cubes") offer the illusion of privacy. In fact, they do nothing of the sort. Everyone can spy on you, and everyone's sound bothers you. Big open rooms are a nightmare -- "grand central station" springs to mind. No, give me a separate, enclosed, real, no-foolin' OFFICE of my own every time. With a door I'm allowed to close, too, thank you very much.
One thing you didn't mention: quit it with the fascist network policies. This encompasses everything from logon scripts that overwrite your preferences in the registry to not having access to your own C: drive to "Unacceptable Use Detected" internet intercept screens. HANDS OFF, please. If you don't trust me to do my work, how do you trust me at all?
[Exhales] Sorry. Bit of a rant there.
Re:RANT MODE ON (Score:3, Insightful)
C
Re: I agree about the computer access (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re: I agree about the computer access (Score:5, Insightful)
In a larger company (the one I'm in now has about 2000 employees), you have to assume that there WILL be employees who will be stupid, who will be malicious, etc., etc., so you probably NEED to have some central control.
And that is one of the reasons why I GREATLY prefer working for small companies.
Re: I agree about the computer access (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a tough one. I've been a sysadmin in a couple small companies. I started at the company I'm at now (family business), and locked down the network a little bit, but users could install software, and change things a fair amount. What happened was eventually systems were becoming totally unusable as adware got installed, and all sorts of other garbage people were trying out got on there, and the system would need to be redone. Since my primary job wasn't being a sysadmin, this made me do a bunch of extra work.
I then went over to a software development company, and as we grew, I took on the role of sysadmin there as well. Initially I tried a mildly locked down environment with software delopment from Win2k server, and it was a nightmare. I took it off within a day because the programmers all hated it, and it was easier to install manually on the few support staff systems than it was to create packages.
When I came back to my current job (which is not a computer company), I decide it was time to redo the network. So now it runs on Samba, and the workstations are locked down so that users can't install software, and a few registry changes are forced at login. I also use wpkg for software deployment, which is a huge timesaver. Most of the security, however, comes from the permissions on network shares and folders.
While this is what the grandparent poster hated, I can totally understand why. The amount of time I deal with dumb problems of users screwing up their machines has dropped to almost nothing, and I only get a few people annoyed ocasionally that they have to get me to install software for them. (Well worth my reduced time). I think for the most part they understand too, because our workstations are basically never down.
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.
But then it's after-the-fact. You now still have to spend time reimaging and configuring the system. Then you lock it down, and the user is angry because they can't make changes like they could before and like everything else can.
Re:RANT MODE ON (Score:4, Insightful)
Its their computer, they can decide how you use it. If your job doesn't require you to change the system settings, its much easier to remove the ability instead of just trust you to do your work and it prevents problems due to mistakes. If its corporate policy to have a single screensaver and wallpaper, then you should be locked out of changing them, because I have never met someone who could be trusted not to change it after they were told not to if they could. Most workers think they can be trusted not to do the mundane things they were told not to, but time has told that they can't. Its not your system you just use it, so suck it up.
Re:RANT MODE ON (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:RANT MODE ON (Score:4, Insightful)
To put it another way that PHBs might be able to understand: One way to keep productive employees from leaving the company is to raise everyone's pay 10%. A much cheaper way is to eliminate any company policy that is annoying/wastes people's time without doing anything to bring in more revenues.
Don't implement policies for the sake of implementing policies. Have a reason. It's not that you don't have the right to implement stupid policies. You can have a required weekly department meeting at 2:30am on Saturdays if you want. Just remember that some of the things you have the right to do as a business owner will hurt your business if you do them.
Re:RANT MODE ON (Score:5, Interesting)
IT people have a large amount of power, and some of the correct use is making sure idiots (usally those outside the company) can't do bad thing to the company. The correct focus of the IT person should be the productivity of the employees, not your ability to make life easier on yourself.
New rant: This is someplace were Unix/Linux is wonderful. With Linux I can cheaply install more software on every machine then almost anyone would use. Very few applications are ever missing. Costomizations stay in the users own directory. If you have a problem expect me to restore yesterdays configuration. If your machine has a software problem, it's going to get wiped. In this world the User gets all the power and the admin gets a consistent easy to install system. Everyone wins.
Yes, I'm both the admin and the user. I have worn both hats often at the same time.
Re:RANT MODE ON (Score:5, Insightful)
Truth is, you're both right about your respective situations, and wrong about each others.
Those in programming jobs always seem to have a hard time understanding that they aren't the only people around using computers in their workplace. And not everyone works for a company that produces software. (For any company that doesn't, any programmers on board are support staff too.) The vast majority of people using computers at work have nowhere near the expertise programmers do. They just try to use the machine as a tool to do their work.
On the flip side, admins (at least the sort you are ranting about) are overexposed to those users with minimal experience and knowledge w/computing in comparison. (Anyone who admins those kinds of users can tell you they NEED to be restricted, or they WILL break everything in sight on a regular basis and support costs will go through the roof.) Trouble is they get stuck in that mindset... and put all users in that same boat. Which is a problem... particularly when managing machines for programmers. For all the reasons you give.
Solution? Easy...
Admins should treat programmers as a separate class from other users and give them permissions (within reason) to manage their own machines accordingly.
And programmers should understand that when admins are talking about needing to restrict users, they are talking about Joe MBA and Jane Marketing types, not you.
Re:What I've had and loved... (Score:5, Insightful)
Gymnasium. Fit, relaxed people think better, it's a fact.
Car parking. Enough of it, close enough to the building.
Free sodas, water and perhaps pastries one day a week say "we value you" loud and clear. Fast internet connection is just not optional. Aeron chairs are perhaps too expensive, but if one person gets one then everyone should.
Apart from all that see "Peopleware" by De Marco & Lister, for good coverage of things that management often don't consider until the padlocks are on the front door and everything is being sold at auction.
Personal Space (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Personal Space (Score:3)
My dream work envornment... (Score:5, Funny)
- Massage Girls in Bikinis [google.com]
- Flying Fish IPA on tap [flyingfish.com]
- La-Z-Boy Recliners [lazboy.com]
- Dual 2.5GHz G5s for all [apple.com]
- Sweet aromas all day [aromaweb.com]
- Foot spas under all desks [homedics.com]
- Killer game room [klov.org]
- And the soothing sounds of the dead all day long [dead.net]
Oh, you have a budget?Re:My dream work envornment... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My Actual work envornment... (Score:4, Interesting)
We have free soda,
We have a free coffee machine (Beans, not instant-mud)
We have kitchen facilities,
We have a pool table, a dart board and "ping-pong"
We have an open office, two desks together, loosely couple by project.
Everyone has the same style chair.
There is a non intrusive radio playing all day.
Directors sit in a "fish bowl" (Out of the kitchen as it were)
Everyone has a PC that is capable of doing their job.
Everyone has VMWare too
We have fast internet access (Well it is NZ, so this becomes another story!)
And Friday is beer o'clock day, company funded.
If a small company can do this....?
read "peopleware"... (Score:5, Informative)
Any suggestions I would give are probably covered there.
Work from home (Score:3, Informative)
And think of the savings... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just imagine if everyone who could work at home did work at home. The few who did have to commute would fly along on a nigh-empty freeway.
And all the fuel saved...and the environmental improvement...and the lessened dependence on foreign petroleum...
Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been working in a basement office for 2 years now and there are some days where I wish I could just look out the window and regroup.
Re:Windows (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh yea? (Score:5, Funny)
Several suggestions... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here are ideas to consider:
No fluorescent lights. Try to provide full-spectrum sources where possible, and give people the ability to control how much light they work with. I have a big black insert in my window to keep glare off my screen and usually keep my overhead off too. Programmers and creative types are usually the most sensitive to this.
We have a couple people that are seldom in the office. We actually give them larger offices with a spare table and use them as mini-conference rooms while they're gone. And since they're seldom in, they usually have clean desks. (This assumes you have square footage to spare like that.)
If anyone in the office commutes by bicycle, a shower is a great thing to have. Appreciated by them *and* their coworkers. >:0
If you have a snack area, you'll probably have a microwave. Consider also having a toaster oven, or better yet a full size stove/oven. This makes it easier to fix whatever you're in the mood for. And I'm more likely to hang around the office if I can have what I'm in the mood for. (Microwaved bagels are right out, for instance). Ditto for an icemaker.
Have enough printers. Having to walk from one end of an office to another just to print a short doc is annoying. Make sure the printing facilities are split up and placed strategically around the office.
If you have creative types as mentioned, at least one conference room should be wall to wall with whiteboards (or smarter equivalents if you have the budget). I like to have two in my office alone.
Make sure there is good (and adjustable) air conditioning and heating. It's very hard to productive when you're too hot or cold.
At my current company we have an M&M jar on the front desk that gets emptied and replenished every couple of days. Nice for those times when you've got a munchie attack but don't have time before your next meeting to go get something. Doesn't have to be M&Ms, but just something along those lines.
Lighting! Yes! Let your employees choose! (Score:5, Insightful)
What he said. User-controllable lights are a must. Ask people about their light preferences, and group your people accordingly.
If you work with papers on your desk all day, or a telephone and a Rolodex, you're probably a "light person". If you say things like "I hate a dark office! I can't work in a cave!", you're a light person.
(Light Person Symptoms: 3.0 GHz PC under the desk with 21" monitor with fingerprints all over the screen, the contrast and brightness both cranked all the way up, but running at 640x480x60Hz, and that's just fine with him because all he uses his computer for is PowerPoint slides)
If you work with a CRT all day, and use IM and email, you're probably a "dark person". You can't work in a lit room, you need to see your screen. If you say things like "Fuck, I hate the glare! I can't see a goddamn thing in here!", you're a dark person.
(Dark Person Symptoms: 3.0 GHz PC with the cover off and assorted computer guts splayed all over the desk, and a 21" monitor that gets a daily spritzing of Windex every morning and has the on-screen adjustments have been perfectly tweaked for razor-sharp convergence at 1600x1200, because every fucking pixel counts - not just when using Photoshop or paging through reams of code, but when fragging his cubemates at 5:01 pm!)
Group the dark people together and the light people together. Don't believe the bullshit from light people about how a "dark office" makes people sick and unproductive. Don't believe the bullshit from dark people about how a "light office" makes it impossible to read the screen. Just acknowledge that these two types of people are different, and provide adequate space for both.
Re:Lighting! Yes! Let your employees choose! (Score:5, Insightful)
We just moved offices into something a bit nicer, and since it's only the three from the dev team in here we can have the lights off and the only light either sneaks in from the door that connects us to the rest of the building, or the nice big window that lets some of that "natural light" stuff in.
Of course, if you have a dark office you have to deal with the crap of people constantly wandering into the office with witty comments like...
"wow, dark in here"
"you guys like the dark or something"
"this must be where the mushrooms live"
"wow, it's dark in here"
et infinitum
I really want a 1,000,000 candle spotlight to point at the door in cases like this. It's fine for the first few times, but after the 50th person who wanders in with a "dark in here isn't it" comment, you really want to kill someone.
Re:Several suggestions... (Score:3, Informative)
Fluorescent lights gets a bad rap. Flourescent lights are available at various different color temperatures and are also available full-spectrum versions [naturallighting.com]. (Just google for full spectrum fluo [google.com]
Where to begin? (Score:5, Insightful)
Next comes the offices. If you've got programmers, give them the offices, and let the directors and VPs, who are never in their offices anyway, have the cubes. Programmers need peace and quiet, and the ability to hang a "stay the hell away from me" sign on the door.
Re:Where to begin? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you living in a dream world...the directors and VPs working in cubes, EVERYONE WILL WORK IN CUBES BEFORE VPs AND DIRECTORS EVEN CONSIDER IT
most VPs and Directors won't even give up the space if they knew for a fact that it would get the company bigger profits. VPs and Directors are one of the few types of people that generally have bigger egos than programmers so again I will say...IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN
Nuttles
Christian and proud of it
A good actual kitchen rocks.... (Score:5, Interesting)
A Hindi to English dictionary of course (Score:5, Funny)
Whitboards (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Whitboards (Score:3, Informative)
Needless to say, we have big old whiteboards in our conference rooms as well.
Floorplan (Score:3, Insightful)
I am a fan of a floorplan that has offices at or near the center, cubes around the perimeter, and lots of windows. More light gets in that way and those without a walled office don't feel so much like a lower class of employee because they will be closer to the windows.
Also wireless and meeting spaces / conference rooms of various sizes encourage people to move around and collaborate.
2 words (Score:5, Funny)
Re:2 words (Score:4, Insightful)
Coworkers choice.
Simple - Outlets! (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows (the kind you look through to see the outside world) are nice, too...
Hey, HIRE it done. (Score:5, Insightful)
Many times they will also point out sources for fixtures and whatnot that are much more economical than the places geeks would go. And no graybar is not the place you buy your overhead lights. Oh and they are all current with the workplace safety / egonomic regulations as wekk.
HIRE it done with a caveat (Score:4, Insightful)
Hire a pro who has done offices you like and even more important: are liked by the people who work there!
It is possible to design GREAT looking offices that win design awards.....that are counterproductive. I refer you all to the wonderful book: "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman for examples.
I once hired "professionals" who designed aworkspac that was both inargueably ugly and difficult to use; it was an expensive mistake but the folks we tried after that did an excellent job with a difficult space. Quality varies.
No Cubes, Lots of Windows (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No Cubes, Lots of Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
This of course doesn't work too well if your building is *really* big. More smaller buildings ( or wings ) are better than one big brick with a windowless interior.
People working on the same or similar projects get adjacent offices. Offices should be large enough to not feel cramped but too small to even *think* about putting two workstations in. Each office "ring" like this should have at most 15 or so offices- and should mirror your teams. This is a good design for creative professionals to work in.
You have teams with more than 15 members? Who manages that team, and how well? Think about subdividing it. Really.
If you can't, for whatever reason, give people real, individual offices, you're probably better off with big, open, space rather than thin walls that block light but nothing else. Cubes suck, period. If you have the luxury of designing your space from the ground up, design it so people can have real offices with an informal gathering space right outside every team member's door.
Spare Chairs (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have an impromptu meeting, do you want to be standing or sitting on the edge of a desk?
We have a hot tub (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Beware the excesses (Score:5, Insightful)
A Gamespy article [gamespy.com] has a nice quote predicting their downfall: Work should be a practical place to get things done - cubicles are reasonable balance between cost, privacy, and personal space. Having meeting rooms, bathrooms, and a kitchen is also nice. The traditional approaches to work spaces are done because they work well enough.
Re:Beware the excesses (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, a bathroom would be nice. The last place I worked we all just pissed on the floor. Lemme tell ya, if you think cubicles offer a good amount of privacy, try taking a shit in one without attracting some attention to yourself.
A place/time to congregate (Score:3, Interesting)
Beer! (Score:3, Insightful)
Lights! (Score:3, Insightful)
- Having natural light instead of flourecent is GREAT, but it's not always an option (raining outside, winter daylight hours etc).
I honestly believe having the sun shining in your office has a huge positive impact on office morale than sitting in a damn cubicle with flourecent lights humming over head.
- Having non-overhead (and non flourecent) lighting whenever possible. I hate overhead lighting. I REALLY hate overhead flourecent lighting.
- Allow me to control the light in my area somehow. I like things around me a bit dimmer when I'm working on an important file or project.
For efficency and my personal thoughts. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't even think about doing this without reading "Agile Software Development" by Alistair Cockburn . . . even if you aren't doing software development!
In any office, communication efficiency is the most important factor in productivity. My father works at a college, I work in the financial industry, and my brother is a filmmaker. In all these diverse industries, communication is the essense of getting things done effiently (obviously, _just_ getting things done _just_ takes bodies).
Now for some personal preferences: I like to have a personal private space for photos, plants, doodling. I like to be able to arrange the space as I like, including the furniture. I like to have privacy in the space so that I can veg when I need a mental health break, or so that I can concentrate when I'm in a bad mood and don't want to deal with people. However, I also really enjoy working in an open area with other talented people. The open area must have lots of whiteboards, good network access (802.11g is good enough), lots of stationary supplies, large work surfaces, and ideally a good relevent reference library handy (easiest to populate this with suggestions from the people working there). Much as I like some natural light, too much can ruin work in the morning or evening when the Sun shines directly into a space - one way to solve this is to orient most windows to the North. A good number of real air-cleaning plants is a good investment too since humans are naturally in a better mood when exposed to nature.
Hope that helps.
My office... (Score:5, Interesting)
It was wonderful.
However, now I live in Hawai'i and my lab here is kinda the opposite -- here I have an office which is completely surrounded with glass - but overlooks a beautiful landscaped garden - so it's worth it. Still have the rolling chair, no carpeting and incandescentlighting and locked door.
Re:My office... (Score:5, Funny)
I've got a mile long list (Score:5, Insightful)
But let's just cover a couple big ones:
You spend about half your waking life in an office, and therefore you shoudl expect some level of privacy and a decent standard of living. The biggest infraction against this that many modern offices make is the "cube farm".
Cubicles are a great economical alternative to traditional offices, but you must give people ample room to breath, and ample privacy. 2 foot by 4 foot cubes with waist/desk-high walls is BAD. 6-8 feet on a side and walls that are neck to head high on the average employee is GOOD.
Additionally, it helps to provide ample privacy rooms. These are small conference rooms (actual rooms with doors and (possibly translucent glass) walls. They don't get booked for meetings, they're designed for impromptu use. When someone needs to make a telephone call that's personal in nature, or a couple people can see their discussion is getting a bit heated for cubeland and needs to be hashed out in private, or small impromptu team meetings, etc. This keeps distracting drama-rama out of the cube area, keeps people's privacy better protected, and prevents the distracting small team meetings in the cube-hallways that annoy everyone nearby trying to work.
Good quality white-noise generators help a little bit on the privacy and distraction fronts as well. Just enough to drown the distant din, but don't turn them up so loud that people can't willfully talk to the guy in the next cube over.
Lighting. Your employees use computer monitors. This means you don't want the outdoor light coming in through windows causing glare on their monitors, and you don't want nasty flourescent lights wreaking havoc in the eyestrain dept (hint: flashing light + flashing computer image = fried eyes). There are flourescents out there that are better than average for this, but the ultimate is anything that doesn't have a flashing frequency like flourescents do.
Hmm this comment is getting long, I'll be back later.
rear lighting, no windows behind monitors (Score:5, Interesting)
However, number one on my list of light tips is NEVER EVER put a light source in the field of vision behind a computer monitor (eg. don't face your desk and computer out a window). It will force your eyes to continuously adjust between light levels while trying to focus on the light produced from the monitor and that coming from behind it. Always put light sources behind the viewer. Use diffused lights (eg. not a window) when possible to reduce glare, too.
Plants are also a benefit in increasing the mood of a room. I don't have any at work (yet), but the shelves in my home office are covered in plants, and I can attest that when they're not there (I recently had a mealy bug infestation and had to quarantine them) the room is not as nice of a place to be. And I mean real, living plants, not the plastic kind. If you're worried about maintenance, get succulents like hoyas [succulent-plant.com] -- they'll stay happy even if you forget to water them for weeks, and they have really cool flowers.
Get plants. (Score:3, Insightful)
A library (Score:3, Interesting)
And then there's the obligatory open bar, couches, etc.
Best/worst office environments I ever had (Score:3, Interesting)
The worst office is probably the one I'm in right now at a customer's site. Nobody in the whole company can see a window, except the receptionist by the front door. The colors are so bland I want to scream. The cubes are half height, and I can clearly hear a person's conversation on the other side of the 100 person cube room I'm sitting in right now. There are no plants (since there's no natural light). You need a special pass code to dial out so they can track your usage. Nobody even bothers with pictures of family or personal items.
That's it... I'm going back to the hotel... I miss my old job!
My boss likes Feng Shui (Score:3, Funny)
Whilst I have to recommend lava lamp especially, it is said that the health of the plant and whether the lava has gone cloudy (if you leave it in the sunlight) affects your promotion chances.
I'm not kidding.
Death of the cubicle (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, I hate those fucking things. Drab, immoralizing grey-colored pieces of shit plastic that offer the illusion of privacy. You realize quickly it's an illusion whenever someone walks by and stares over your shoulder at whatever's on your monitor. Or depending on how they're facing, people peek over the sides and gawk while rambling about stuff you really don't give two shits about. And the minute you try to personalize them by bringing some *gasp* COLOR into your miniture world via posters, you get bitched at by management for inappropriate material. Wow, an 8x11 of me snowboarding in CO is inappropriate? Good thing I left my Barely Legal in the car.
As someone else already posted, L-shaped desks against a wall in an open environment is awesome. Take down the barriers, you MBA fucks! If someone really needs their own space, give them a personal office. And while you're at it, put as many windows in as possible. And hire an interior decorator...just because you furnished your house for under $400 with piss-stained Goodwill furnature, King of Decore you are not.
Make the place friendly, open (with as much natural light as possible), and comfortable. Granted the dot-com is dead and not everybody gets to play with pinball machines and ride segways around the office...but that doesn't mean your office environment needs to be modeled after Office Space.
Easy... (Score:3, Informative)
- 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).
I've done this before. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Chairs and office mates (Score:3, Interesting)
Second, don't lock people in their own offices, and don't put them out in one big pile of desks or cubicles. Most development is done by multiple people anyway, so put two people per (spatious) office, specifically two people who are working on the same or related projects. It's nice to be able to ask the guy a question about what he's doing by turning around rather than walking down the hall. It's also nice to be able to take an impromptu break and chat with him about whatever is on my mind for ten minutes, then get back to work. If you're going to be doing any team-development (eg, eXtreme Programming) anyway, this will make things logistically so much easier, while still balancing socialization potential and get-the-hell-away-from-me-while-I'm-working behavior.
I'd also suggest some decorations. I used to spend a fair amount of time just looking at the map of the city that was posted over the water cooler, just for the hell of it. The ability to zone out at a painting, tapestry, poster, or something that requires brainpower to process (complex patterns) is very good exercise for the brain, just as it is for a baby's brain. Maybe some of those computer-generated 3D poster things?
stand up meeting rooms (Score:5, Interesting)
1. no chairs
2. work table set to standing height for papers, etc.
3. all the walls are whiteboard.
With no chairs, meetings are exactly as long as they need to be, and no longer. Yes, I *have* worked in this kind of environment, and it works great.
Why are you asking us? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, unless you're trying to maintain some sort of artificial professional distance between you and your underlings (or superiors if you're a secretary), consult with your users. They know if they work in pairs, trios, have cross-functional needs (2 engineers, 1 creative on any given team), or if all 15 engineers work alone and only need to talk with sales every month, while the creative guys are the support for sales.
Start by evalutaing the space you have, and the company needs. Make sure you have some expansion room if you think your company can become healthy inside of 5 years. Make sure you don't have to turn the break room into an office if you hire that 16th engineer. If your company (or division, or branch, or what have you) necessitates customer NDAs -- or might ever, don't go with any kind of open cubicle arrangement. Even if you do lots of intercommunication, enclosed single or double offices provide a degree of privacy that makes the employee feel trusted. Consider making your offices or spaces such that nobody has to sit with his or her backs to the opening (door or otherwise). There are plenty of metrics for productivity that don't involve sneaking up from behind someone. I've seen studies inside of my company that concluded cubicles didn't save the space anticipated once you factored in the space requirements of break out rooms so people could actually have some discussions.
Furniture is less important. Give everybody a whiteboard and handle ergonomic needs as they arise. Consider using LCDs (if color realism isn't necessary) for clarity and space efficiency (energy savings are exaggerated, although measurable). Have some flexible policies regarding people decorating their own spaces, and you're probably set. Some people covet windows, others loathe the day-star entirely.
As with any problem, a customer is involved (this time, your workers). Consult with your customer and make sure you understand the problems they think you'll solve. Listen to their suggestions on how to solve the problems, but make no promises until you've worked something out. Julius Caesar always asked even the lowliest of troops for advice before a battle-- he always had other plans in place, and the troops' advice rarely had any impact at all, but the illusion was that he cared about their opinions. Because they felt like their opinions were valued, they fought harder and won many battles that they should have lost by all accounts. If your workers feel valued, they will work harder for you.
Re:Canine-friendly (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Canine-friendly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Canine-friendly (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Canine-friendly (Score:4, Insightful)
not the same thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Canine-friendly (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yeah, and all of the really stupid pet owners who can't control their animal, nor clean up after them, doesn't help your case. Usually ends up being part of the lease agreement.
Which is really too bad, because that would be nice.
Re:Canine-friendly (Score:3, Insightful)
To the people who are whining: grow up. The dog isn't going to eat you, shit on the floor, or anything like that.
Re:A good espresso machine. (Score:3, Funny)
The only solution is an intravenous caffeine drip system. This keeps them literally chained to their desks. Coffee, sodas, and water should also be prohibited unless the employees have unusually large bladders.
-The Management
Re:Use Visio (Score:3, Funny)
Visio, much like evil, was bought out by MS.