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The Bionic Office 317

Posted by timothy from the beats-this-motel6 dept.
hondo77 writes "Joel Spolsky has finally moved Fog Creek Software into their new digs. Read about what went into the design of "the ultimate software development environment" from your (my) cube and drool."
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The Bionic Office More

The Bionic Office

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  • biggest pet peeve (Score:5, Insightful)

    by British ( 51765 ) <british1500@gmail.com> on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:08PM (#7047925) Homepage Journal
    My biggest pet peeve at the office is having almost no room between the table and wall to get a power plug through. I'm sometimes bashing the plug(or the ferrite core) behind the table so I can get it to the outlet or Ethernet port.

    All cubicle tables should have a notch cut out for this purpose.
    • Better yet, a power strip on the wall just above the work surface.

    • Re:biggest pet peeve (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Schwartzboy ( 653985 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:21PM (#7048101)
      Amen. I can't even count the number of workspaces I've had, either at my own workplace or at client sites, that have the plugs at ground level & right up against, say, the 76-ton (empty weight) steel file cabinet full of small rocks. While I don't see a great deal of use for the HDTV in an environment where people are supposed to be working, I'm a huge fan of this line-of-sight stuff, and other than the "dear God I'm blind" shade of green, it really does look like a nifty place to work.
      Big straight tables for collaborative sitting/hanging out/pair work and doors that close, plus millions of LAN ports (no mention of any wireless stuff that I could find, though) and color-coded sockets to easily figure out what goes where based on which electronics need UPS goodness, and did I mention the doors? This article should be from the "Geek Eye for the Clueless PHB Guy Who Likes to Pack Coders in Like Sad Little Cube-Dwelling Sardines" department. Heck, I can see all kinds of potential for enhanced productivity (or at least more /. reading and LAN gaming) in this setup just for me and a bunch of my best geek buddies.

      It's a pitiful wasted dream to imagine that programming-types working for non-software companies will ever see this sort of environment, if the idea takes off anywhere else at all. Pity the child who reads this article and will never live to touch the promised land...

  • Tangerine Dreams (Score:3, Funny)

    by vonFinkelstien ( 687265 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:08PM (#7047926)
    Now I see why they could not afford a 17" PB (or even a 12" PB). That's gotta suck programming around all day on a tangerine iBook.
  • I read the article. Hmm. Looks nice enough, but it's not front page of /. stuff. Frankly I'm unimpressed. What is jaw-dropping about it? Nothing. And before you mod me flamebait, try asking yourself what is so great, exciting or thought-provoking about the article.

    graspee

    • Re:colour me unimpressed (Score:5, Funny)

      by MoonFog ( 586818 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:19PM (#7048073)
      And before you mod me flamebait, try asking yourself what is so great, exciting or thought-provoking about the article.

      What I found thought-provoking .. there wasn't a single coffee machine ... do they really expect a programmer to work without coffee ?
      • Well, it says there is a kitchenette in the common area... I'd have to imagine there is a coffee machine.
      • Yeah... forget green walls and easy to get to plugs (although the latter is a nice feature, come to think of it). What would make me an even more productive developer would be some sort of coffee tap right here at my desk. Oh, and an ashtray. Oh, and lifting the ban on smoking in the building.

      • Omitted from the office (Score:4, Funny)

        by dsandler ( 224364 ) <dsandler&dsandler,org> on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:41PM (#7048305) Homepage
        there wasn't a single coffee machine ... do they really expect a programmer to work without coffee ?
        Damn, you're right. Now that you mention it, a whole bunch of things are missing from that office:
        • Front door. How do people get in? Not very productive.
        • Bathroom. Seriously, not one commode in any of those photos. Less of a problem if there's no coffee machine, I guess.
        • Air. I didn't see any air molecules in the photographs, either. Coding without breathing is hard! (Although sometimes necessary; see pair programming [macslash.org].)
        </smartass>

    • Re:colour me unimpressed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by etcshadow ( 579275 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:27PM (#7048177)
      I think part of what's revolutionary about it is a manager making a rational economic argument for why it is worthwhile to spend this kind of money on giving developers a nice work area, and then putting their money where their mouth is (damn english, lacking proper indirect third-person singular pronoun).

      It would be nice if my company could see things this way, instead of making lame-ass defeneses that "We can't treat the programmers specially, when there are non-programming paper-pushing staff right down the hall. If they get cubicles, we can't give you nice offices. While we agree that you *deserve* better, they'll get pissed off at the disparity." Hell, they probably tell those people "We really can't do better for you... I mean, we *already* treat you as well as the programmers!"

      <aside>
      By the way, the word is "color", friend. KIDDING!
      </aside>
    • Ever worked in a cube farm, no daylight, no quiet, chatter all around and always feeling somebody watched you from behind?

      Preferably close to a manufacturing area, not only the white noise from computers, but whatever droning sound is being generated within 20 meters doesn't leave you alone?

      And when by pure chance electricity goes down once, the most noticeable thing not being the darkness, but the quiet?

      I'd kill to sit in an office like that!

    • Re:colour me unimpressed (Score:4, Funny)

      by hondo77 ( 324058 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:31PM (#7048209) Homepage
      What wouldn't I give to have a window and a door! I sometimes hang awake at nights dreaming of having a window and a door.

  • Nice office... but who is going to pay for this? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mentatchris ( 585868 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:09PM (#7047940) Journal
    Looks like a great set-up, but you'd have to start your own company to have a set up like this. Who on earth would pay for such an office? Not that I'm bitching, my office at work is great, but jesus H. christ those offices look like Futureland on crack.

    • Re:Nice office... but who is going to pay for this (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:26PM (#7048171)
      When you start your own company your first desk should be an old door propped up with a couple of old milk crates. You have more important things to spend your money on when you start up.

      If more "dot coms" had understood that instead of burning their money on fancy digs, pool tables and Porsches a few more of them might still be around.

      Oh yeah, and clear idea of how you're going to make a profit to earn fancy desks, chairs and cars wouldn't be a bad idea either.

      KFG

    • Re:Nice office... but who is going to pay for this (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TheSunborn ( 68004 ) <mtilsted@nospaM.gmail.com> on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @04:09PM (#7048659)
      But it's not that expensive. He write that the price per developer is 700$/Month. I don't know the price of a typical offices, but even if a normal offices only cost half that much, I think that the 350$/Month per developer is a good deal, which will pay back.
    • If it's not in the middle of New York City I think you could get it for a lot cheaper. If it's not in downtown anywhere, you can get it a lot cheaper than that. I'm working in an office on the North side of Chicago right now, and it's great -- it's closer than downtown (for everyone in the office, as far as I know, not just me), it's obviously a much cheaper location for what you get, and it's just nicer. Maybe I'm just biased against downtowns (okay, I definitely am), but I prefer living and working in
  • The walls between the offices and the workstations are made of high tech, translucent acrylic which glows softly and provides natural light to the interior without reducing privacy.

    Or just drop acid. Cheaper long term. And the walls will also smile at you and occasionally dance.

  • Optimal office (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 ) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:09PM (#7047951) Journal
    1) Big window overlooking moutain range or lake

    2) Ethernet jack built into wall

    3) Large, multipart desk

    4) Large, swiveling, high-backed chair

    5) Carpet

    6) Door that can be shut

    7) Glass window to see who is knocking at the door

    • Re:Optimal office (Score:5, Funny)

      by MxTxL ( 307166 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:25PM (#7048147)
      8) Trap door so as to easily get rid of people knocking at door.

    • Re:Optimal office (Score:5, Funny)

      by seanmeister ( 156224 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:30PM (#7048199)
      Holy shit.

      Ethernet jacks built right into the wall, AND chairs that swivel?

      History may remember you as a madman, but in my eyes, you sir, are a visionary.
    • 1) Big window overlooking moutain range or lake ....
      7) Glass window to see who is knocking at the door

      8) Toothless but hot hooker under desk.

      Becuase, hey, for some of us, playing first-person-shooter games over the LAN just isn't the tension-releaser it's claimed to be.
    • Well, the more I write software the more I want to build guitars for a living. My ultimate office has sharp tools, air conditioning, a good dust collector and a better stereo, plenty of wood seasoning in neatly piled stacks and a 2 year waiting list of customers.

      Yeah, my ultimate office wouldn't even have a computer in it. Except for the air conditioner and the customer list the paragraph above describes my own shop. I just wish I could pay off the mortgage so I can go build something tangible. Compar

      • I love programing (Score:5, Insightful)

        by bluGill ( 862 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @05:04PM (#7049297)

        I was out of programing for a while, and to pay the bills I went into construction. I had a beatiful office then: outside with fresh air. I got to play with toys all day. (saws and nailers mostly, but once in a while I could attempt to get the 4 wheel drive forklift stuck) I hated it. Oh, I like working with my hands and building things, but I don't like doing it all day. I several times found myself standing on a 2x4 20 feet in the air and wishing I was anywhere else, (preferably the ground) while the other guy ran across the other wall and then teased me for not being at the other end already. I had to listen to the radio station the foreman picked. Then I finially got home after working 10 hours, and was dead tired. Even when I had a moment free, I couldn't pick up my mandolin because my body hurt too much.

        I'm now back in programing, and I love it. I get paid to read code all day. I sit inside an office (with a window that I never look out of) that is air conditioned. I write code! They pay me to write code! Once in a while I have to test my code, and that isn't nearly as much fun, but my job is writing code. I work less hours. I can choose my radio station, or bring my own CDs, or work in silence, my choice. When I get home I can play mandolin without pain.

        To each his own. I've tried your plan. The work was different, but I didn't like it.

  • Nice Office, But.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Tsali ( 594389 )
    - Windows are good. I love windows to look out at - preferably something pretty.

    - Too much neon. It would distract me.

    But the other architecture is very interesting... whether it would be distracting is another thing.

    As long as I have an office with a door, I'm pretty much happy. Just wish I had windows...
    • Just wish I had windows...
      Blasphemer! Windows is the devil, and Linux is your salvation! Repent to all that is GNU and good, before thy mortal soul is consumed by the Devil Gates!

  • Summary of insights (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bikku ( 531345 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:10PM (#7047962) Homepage
    - Programmers work best without interruption

    - Office doors are helpful

    - It's easier to read someone's screen when sitting beside them, than when shoulder-surfing

    - Natural light is good

    - Window view is nice

    - Programmers like foosball and other dot-com era goodies

    I must have missed the "bionic" part.

  • ...you insensitive clod!

    (P.S. That's not a joke. :( )
    • For a while, my desk was in the closet behind the networked printer. It was funny to have people come in and wonder who this new person was, and why he was behind the printer :)
    • You're not at Wal-Mart's home office are you? They had a "policy" of sitting contractors at a teeny desk on an endcap. People literally had to step past them sideways. The message there was "get your code done and go home, we really don't want you here." At least that was the gig until around 1998ish.
    • Wow, I have an office with a door and a window.

      Not that I am in it right now.

      I took the afternoon off as I had some overtime banked.

      Yeah, I don't work overtime for free either.

      /let the downmodding being >:]
    • When I first started at my company, it was still a start-up working out of the founders basement. My desk was one of those round breakroom tables at the back of a niche next to the bathroom that was also used to hold everyone's coats.

      Now I'm in a nice comfy cube. :)
    • A friend of mine had her desk in a closet. Just the desk. If you saw her at the office and didn't know what was going on, you'd think that they put her against the wall as a timeout.

      Being openly Lesbian, this led to incessant jokes about being in and out of the closet. Not that she minded (I wouldn't be surprised if she actualy initiated it) .. In fact, in the telling of it, I'd say that she seemed downright proud of it.

  • "XXXX writes "YYYY has finally moved ZZZZ into their new digs. Read about what went into the design of "the ultimate software development environment" from your (my) cube and drool." What?! "new digs"? Sp34k g33k! ;)

  • Bionic office : disappointing I say ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:13PM (#7047986)
    It's so padded with carpetting even Jamie can't ear anything, and I keep bumping on furniture when I run over 60mph around the cubicles. Oscar told me it was all hype ...

    -- Steve

  • Super ultra elite developers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bartlog ( 154332 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:13PM (#7047992)
    One thing I've noticed, of which this article is a very good example, is how most everyone who hires software developers claims to be hiring (or at least looking for) the very best of the best.
    'We have an elite team'.
    'On a scale of one to ten, all our developers are at least a nine.'
    'We hire only the top two percent.'

    And of course in this article Joel kicks it up a notch by claiming to be after the 99.9th percentile. Makes you whether the industry is vastly deluded as to the actual abilities of those they hire...

    • Re:Super ultra elite developers (Score:4, Interesting)

      by kisrael ( 134664 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:19PM (#7048078) Homepage
      One thing I've noticed, of which this article is a very good example, is how most everyone who hires software developers claims to be hiring (or at least looking for) the very best of the best.

      Yeah, I wonder about that myself. I've heard that "10x as productive" programmer idea before, and while I've definately seen a continuum of good developers and awful developers, I've never met THAT guy. Or gal. And I wonder if that person does exist, finding an ubercoder like that who can also deal with people and the real world...they must be even more rare, a real lottery win.
      • Well, interestingly, I do think that there's something to the '10x as productive' idea. When I was at CMU there were a few freaks^H^H^H^H^H talented programmers who could throw down page after page of C code as fast as they could type, and I don't think it was worse, quality-wise, than what more mundane folks were able to achieve. But then, a lot of that speed came from implementing a vision that existed full-blown in their heads; in real life there's a lot of overhead in reading requirements, writing desig

        • Re:Super ultra elite developers (Score:5, Insightful)

          by pVoid ( 607584 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:54PM (#7048423)
          Let me tell you something, I can type page after page of relatively bug free C++ code as fast as I can type it.

          I learned as soon as I got into a working environment that it's basically pointless. After a project reaches a size, or deadline where a single person isn't good enough to implement it alone, things start changing, and most of the bottlenecks come from incompatible internal structures that end up being re-written. We had a programmer like that in our team (after I was no longer that kind of programmer), and he was looked upon by everyone else as the black sheep. He would spurt out 500 lines of code at the end of a week, and the rest of the team (5 people) would spend a week after that stiching it all together.

          Unless these people you talk about were the borg, and could neurally interface with each other, I'm pretty sure what you say is impossible.

          I'll tell you one programmer I met that to this impresses me to no end: before he was our DB developper he had worked for Sybase. I would ask him to write stored procs for our DB. He would send me .txt files of the stored procs that he'd written in notepad. Would never run the stored procs to see if they worked. They just did. Probably around 200 non trivial stored procs he wrote (with complexe cursor work etc), and the *only* time I got an error was a mistyped keyword. And as far as spec goes, he was always dead on what I had asked him.

          But as the grandparent post indicated, I was his interface to the world of humans, aside from me, he was incapable of talking to anyone.

    • Re:Super ultra elite developers (Score:4, Insightful)

      by I8TheWorm ( 645702 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:39PM (#7048282) Journal
      I see what you're saying, and I agree. But, they could be a little jaded by what kind of software they're working on.

      I'm probably an upper tier developer when it comes to RDBMS and reporting programs. But I really don't know much about OpenGL/DirectX, audio, etc... I do, however, know a devloper who writes games, but isn't all to great when it comes to extremely normalized databases. So maybe there are three or four "top 1%" groups.

      Of course, that still leaves 96% or more that nobody wants to admit they hired.
      • More genres than four.. There are programmers that write vehicle controllers, ones that write aircraft software, ones that write for RDBMS, ones that write against the back end of one of a thousand specialized software packages. I've worked with the top 1% of about five different specialities, and none of them would overlap significantly.. Sure, one of the embedded guys was pretty hot with hacking an ethernet driver, a couple of the RPG guys were handy in C++, but they're pretty mutually exclusive..

        Me, I'm

    • Re:Super ultra elite developers (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:53PM (#7048414)
      Yes, and I'm *sure* you can easily hire the best of the best software developers who are really enthused about writing bug tracking and content management systems! err.... nevermind.


      From my experience hiring, work environment is one factor, but interest level in the software being developed is definitely a big one in terms of the quality of developers you'll be able to attract. Great developers want to work on interesting, challenging products that do something new and different.


      I also think it's nearly impossible to have a complete team of all "top 1 percent" developers. That's like having all chiefs and no indians (pardon the racially minded analogy, it's just an expression). You need people who are good competent developers, but aren't primma donna superstar types who know how good they are. It's a balancing act to build a competent team that works well together, and knows each other's strengths and weaknesses. Frankly, that's just as important than having "all top 1 percent developers" in the long run.

    • Come on, now.

      He is bound to end up with at least one of those no shoes, pizza-skittles burping, mosquito-attracting types, who's last shower was a hour before the interview.

      You gotta have the honkin' air conditioning unit to tame that stench, the kind with the HEPA, charcoal and whatever else you can use to keep breathable air for the rest of the staff, right?

    • Re:Super ultra elite developers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by crazyphilman ( 609923 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @04:01PM (#7048483) Journal
      I've met a lot of programmers, some good, some bad, from a wide variety of backgrounds including everything from Harvard grads to CC dropouts. I think that when you've met enough people, you find that programming "brilliance" is a lot like physical beauty in women. In other words, it's everywhere, but most people fail to notice it.

      Here's what I mean:

      There's a wide range of physical beauty in women, going from the truly hideous to the utterly fine. But somewhere to the left of the middle of the range lies "attractive". Once someone is attractive, they're attractive, period. Any additional beauty is just a tiny little incremental change -- beauty isn't linear.

      I think that most people who studied computer science in college (and took it seriously) are the comp. sci equivalent of "attractive", at least. They understand the subject, they know the basic constructs, and they understand the languages they work with. Given the opportunity, and a little bit of respect, they produce great work.

      So, it's all about perception. Stop trying to look for tiny super-elites, and you'll see talent everywhere you look. That's one of the secrets of life, by the way. The most amazing things are usually right underfoot. Poor Joel seems to have missed this basic truth. 99.9th percentile, indeed. I hope none of them have a bridge for sale... ;)

    • 6 weeks vacation (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Freedom Bug ( 86180 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @04:02PM (#7048514) Homepage
      Joel is probably one of the only people that can attract the top 0.1%.

      Reasons:

      1) high visibility with his blog & columns in various magazines
      2) Downtown NY & salaries to match
      3) Office with a door
      4) Boss is a programmer, not an MBA
      5) smart coworkers
      6) 6 weeks vacation
      7) lots of other stuff, read his site

      I might be wrong about that 6 weeks vacation thing, the only reference I found on his site was when he was talking about hiring European developers.

      Note to managers: 6 weeks vacation is an absolute kicker of an incentive. It's cheap too. If you can't keep a company going without "key personnel", you've got bigger problems, and I don't want to work there.

      Bryan

    • Makes you whether the industry is vastly deluded as to the actual abilities of those they hire...

      Maybe, but not in Joel' Spolsky's case I wouldn't think. He's apparently a fan of Phillip Greenspun, whose writing he links to in the part about a coder needed a nicer workspace than his home.

      In that same article, Greenspun links to this article [apa.org] from The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which addresses that very thing. Article is titled:

      • Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recog

    • Warning signs (Score:3, Insightful)

      by John Miles ( 108215 ) *
      From Joel's Guerilla Guide to Interviewing [joelonsoftware.com]:

      Some signs of a good programmer: good programmers have a habit of writing their { and then skipping down to the bottom of the page and writing their }s right away, then filling in the blank later.

      Sounds great, Joel! <smile, nod amiably, back slowly toward door>

      They also tend to have some kind of a variable naming convention, primitive though it may be... Good programmers tend to use really short variable names for loop indices. If they name their loop
  • Your business success will depend on the extent to which programmers essentially live at your office. For this to be a common choice, your office had better be nicer than the average programmer's home. There are two ways to achieve this result. One is to hire programmers who live in extremely shabby apartments. The other is to create a nice office."

    I was wonderink why my bossky vas smilink ven I tell him in Soviet Russia I livink in cardboard boxes. I am lovink my new janitors closet/office!

  • As long as we're dreaming here... (Score:5, Informative)

    by xanderwilson ( 662093 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:15PM (#7048011) Homepage
    Pixar's environment to this place.

    http://www.sltrib.com/2003/May/05302003/friday/f ri day.asp

    But it's still nicer than my old cubicle. I'm pretty thankful that I work out of my apartment now.

    Alex.

  • Bionic? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:15PM (#7048016) Homepage Journal
    Where does bionic come in? I presumed bionic was an electronic or electromechanical supplement to an individual or being. Not an environment.

    That said, these are pretty cool digs and I agree completely with this statement from the article: Hey, this is my job; this is where I spend my days; it's my time away from my friends and family. It better be nice.

    I have a couple of windows I can look down on the city in the valley from my workstation. It's pretty nice to get natural light and to be able to focus on something farther away than the computer screen or the lab bench from time to time. Looking out over the valley, I've seen U2's flying up the valley, I saw the space shuttle on the back of its 747 take off from the airport on the other side of the valley and I've seen a cool tornado.

    • Where does bionic come in? I presumed bionic was an electronic or electromechanical supplement to an individual or being. Not an environment.

      This is Slashdot and "bionic" is a shiny technical word. with a 5-digit UID, you shouldn't be surprised.

  • Developer Office Design (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:16PM (#7048026)
    I agree with a lot of Spolsky's office design rant here, but I am not sure about the part about trying to get developers to live in the office, and that being key to software development success. Sure, you do want people to be happy in the office environment when they sometimes put in an extra long week, but do you really want to operate under the assumption that developers should "essentially live in" the office? I thought that in the post-1999 era, we realized that people need to have balance in their lives, that we can work hard sometimes, but that we should never have to put in consistent, regular 80 hour work weeks.


    I have asked developers who worked for me to work those kinds of ridiculous hours before, and I've asked it of myself, mostly because I was forced to by forces outside of my control. These days I prefer to operate under the assumption that work should be scheduled around a 40-50 hour work week, and the office/working environment should be a nice and pleasant one, but it shouldn't supercede home, and you shouldn't have to eat dinner at work every day, spend all your free time with your co-workers, etc.

    • Re:Developer Office Design (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bmj ( 230572 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:26PM (#7048163) Homepage

      I agree with you completely...but...

      There's certainly a group of programmers (most of whom are good programmers) who really truly love what they do, and will work terrible hours because of that love. And I mean programmers who are doing _interesting_ stuff, not just chugging along in the corporate environment. Most of these folks don't really have lives outside of work, and if they do, they are the sorts of lives that can be put on hold for indefinite periods of time. I too lazy to find the link, but there was a story a month or two ago about how the best scientists and researchers are unmarried. Duh! Of course they are. No person can serve two masters, as it were.

      That said, I think the Fog Creek offices would be perfect for the average 9-5 programmer. They allow for greater productivity, thus allowing more actual work in an 8 hour day. And these are the type of people that would be more impressed with such a setup. A good programmer who doesn't necessarily want to live in their office would be more likely to join a company with an office like Fog Creek's, rather than just another cube farm somewhere else.

      • Nah, I never said anything about 9-5 chug-a-long programming. Just that balance is important in life, and I don't think it's a reasonable way to run a sustainable company, to try to burn out young programmers who will work for lower salaries and then toss them away when they get frustrated and angry by having too many unreasonable demands placed on them.

        I support and agree with his office design decisions, I just question the wisdom of encouraging even the best programmers to make their work and their li

      • There's certainly a group of programmers (most of whom are good programmers) who really truly love what they do, and will work terrible hours because of that love.
        Yes. Most of us work in games and get paid less than all those 'serious' proper working programmers :)
    • How many offices have you been in where instead of wanting to work, you want to get the hell out and go home? I think his point is, by making the office comfortable enough to live in, you'll encourage your developers to focus on their work instead of going home.

    • Ok, but after balancing our lives, we find the jobs have balanced themselves right over to India.
    • Yeah, no kidding... I wouldn't work for this Joel character. Who wants to spend all his time with his coworkers? I treasure my time away from them like a fine wine. When it's quitting time, I'm out. I asked my boss to build a big slip-and-slide from our eighth-floor office down to the garage to facilitate this, but he said it would cost too much (yeah, even the inflatible airplane slide). I tried to compromise, and suggested ending the slide at the bar across the street, but it would still have been too exp

  • Nice digs but... (Score:2, Informative)

    by fiannaFailMan ( 702447 )
    .... where's the table football, inflatable furniture and all the other dot-com era regalia?

    I have my doubts about the private office == higher productivity stuff. Everyone at my company has a private office and the temptation to skive is phenomenal. Although fear of our CEO is a good counterbalance to that..........

  • Joel = John Romero? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by truffle ( 37924 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:19PM (#7048069) Homepage
    The only reason this article is newsworthy is because of Dot Bomb flashback syndrome. We'd all like to live in the magical world where employers spend tonnes on us because we're so damned valuable. The article seems to suggest it's cost effective to spend a lot of money to get the 99.9th percentile of coder, but is it really? Are you really just getting the 85% percentile of coder, but calling them the 99.9th percent to foster a sense of l33tness?

    I mean it's a nice office and all, but this isn't really news. It's one guy who made a cool office.

    Not much chance any of us will be getting cool offices any time soon.
  • How can this office be bionic without an intelligent, talking padded table...I mean sofa?

    Without a sofa with a talking scale tucked inside, this might as well be the Amish Office of the Future.

    Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice, shame on..Won't get fooled again!

  • Nice, but it's still in New York (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rick the Red ( 307103 ) <Rick@The@Red.gmail@com> on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:23PM (#7048125) Journal
    if it means we can hire from the 99.9 percentile instead of the 99 percentile, it'll be worth it.
    Sorry, Joel, but it'll take much more than your fancy new office to entice that 0.9 percent to move to New York City. I mean, it's a nice place to live and I really wouldn't mind moving there, but you've gotta pay me three times what I make now just so I can afford a place half as big as where I live now. No thanks, Joel. Not even if you stop calling us idiots for supporting Open Source.
    • umm.. actually, I am moving to NY but I already have a job and have had one (and yes, above my payrate in the year 2000) working for a dotcom.
      people complaining about "dotbombs" in my opinion most likely had job titles that included the word "guru" or some other such nonsense.

      The reality, the companies that went bust never had anything in the first place and were hiring farm kids out of Iowa who had had made one page in Frontpage or some other junk and paying them 80k.. Now they are bitching because they a
    • Yeah, no kidding. You forgot the two hour commute, the 250.00/month parking fees for OUTDOOR parking, the unbelieveable traffic, the low-lying smog destroying your lung capacity, the hookers and muggers and homeless people flinging bricks at random strangers so they can get locked up and survive the winter...

      Yeesh. I don't miss NYC. I moved the hell away from that dungeon two years ago and have never looked back. Ick. Foo.

  • Great advice (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nucal ( 561664 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:24PM (#7048136)
    The office should be a hang out: a pleasant place to spend time. If you're meeting your friends for dinner after work you should want to meet at the office. As Philip Greenspun bluntly puts it: "Your business success will depend on the extent to which programmers essentially live at your office. For this to be a common choice, your office had better be nicer than the average programmer's home. There are two ways to achieve this result. One is to hire programmers who live in extremely shabby apartments. The other is to create a nice office."

    Well, we all know how good Philip Greenspun is at running a business.

    The third option is to forget about the office and let people work out of their home ...

  • Instead I get to work in a common area, with no windows, with people coming in and out and having meetings all day. Not even my own workstation, though since I work at this machine all day, no one else really uses it.

    Reading this article just made me wish I had my own cubicle. I'm supposed to be dreaming of having my own office, instead I dream of having my own workstation and my own cubicle, and wondering what it's like outside right now.

    My previous employeers had great perks and working conditions, I

  • Been there...done that. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by weez75 ( 34298 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:28PM (#7048183) Homepage
    I worked for a place with all these amenities plus the view was of the ocean. That's right...we were 6 feet from white sand and blue waves.

    At first, the space was incredible, the free drinks, groovy toys, and high-powered colleagues were great. Everyone got along and the work being done was of the highest quality. Everything was humming along.

    What the struggle became however was burnout. While it seems really groovy to have all kinds of cool things they were all just ways to keep us there rather than being at home with our families. Sure we would frag a little, have a beer, and hang out for an hour a day. We'd also end up leaving the office well after most of our families had gone to bed.

    There's nothing about this article worthy of my praise. This is old hat and not as well thought out as it's made out to be--in the end this crew will be no more or less productive, happy, or able than all the other companies like mine that failed doing the same thing.

  • NYC offices... (Score:2, Informative)

    by thung226 ( 648591 )
    We relocated to a spot in midtown last year (though, not with the budget Joel had, apparently), and let me tell you, this is even more amazing considering he did in NYC. Take any ordeal with real estate anywhere in the country and multiply it by a 1000... then you're only somewhere near the neighborhood of what it feels like to negotiate digs in the Big Apple. And don't get me started on the wiring jobs and the telecom lines in this city, cuz it's a freakin' mess. His NYC office space advice is here [joelonsoftware.com].
  • In the spirit of showing off desks..
    here is My desk [intercosmos.net]

    Yes.. I have a fabulous view of the buildings in downtown New Orleans.. and sometimes if I look down I see random parades :)

  • The Developers he wants wont even notice. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LibertineR ( 591918 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:35PM (#7048240)
    Would a Carmack be wanting to hang at the Plasma screen? Is Joel planning a pool tournament during lunch times? What 99.9%th percentile programer takes lunch or watches TV much at all? I dont fault most of what Joel did; I remember taking less money at Microsoft because I was getting a real office with a REAL FUCKING DOOR, the single most valuable piece of office furniture ever.

    The best programming environment is one where you can be left alone to do what you do without idiots bothering you. Interuptions take a long time to recover from, even those for good reasons.

    The best programing environment is one where for whatever reason I can zone out and STAY zoned out until I have accomplished something that is ready to be tested.

    When I can put up a sign outside my door that says "Stay the Fuck out, unless the world is coming to an end", I will find a way to work for them, and I'll take care of the inside furnishings myself.

    When that workplace is established, I might work for almost nothing but Pizza money.

  • Kill the Programmers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ridgelift ( 228977 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:38PM (#7048275)
    "Your business success will depend on the extent to which programmers essentially live at your office. For this to be a common choice, your office had better be nicer than the average programmer's home."

    What crap! The best office I've ever had is the one I have now - a home office. Any employer that sucks the marrow out of their staff by having them work 90 hours a week will only burn their staff out.

    Maybe I won't create the greatest apps overnight, but next week is just fine. Plus I have a healthy relationship with my 2 year old son, a beautiful wife, and another child on the way. I love programming, and having worked with computers for over 20 years. Because I take care of my health and mind, I'll still be here 20 years from now while slave drivers like Joel Spolsky have moved on to greener pastures with other anti-human ideals.

    The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.
    • You make some good points. But not everyone likes working at home. For some, it can be depressing lonely at times if you never get to interact with your colleages in person. It can also be hard to stay motivated when you are telecommuting.

  • Won't the true US high tech office of the future consist of a project manager's desk and a VoIP video phone that connects to the development team in India?

    I mean the very near future.

    A bit further down the roard the development team will be in Romania.

  • Hmm. Seems some folks haven't learned the lessons of Dot Com Bust Past. I estimate he'll be out of business in 2.5 years.
  • Obviously a home office is the best approach. I work from home most days. In my office I have a door (which I don't need to close because no one else is in the house during the day), and a window with a beautiful San Francisco view. I can play my music as loud as I want, and I'm home for UPS deliveries. Of course it's nice that I don't have to waste time commuting; however the best part -- employers take note -- is that if I need to work late or on weekends, I can do it from home, which means my family doe

  • What I got from this (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Yobgod Ababua ( 68687 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @03:56PM (#7048451)
    Having participated in several office renovations and build-outs over the past few years, I found this article quite interesting.

    I was particularly impressed by the archtectural solution of angling the offices (requires wasting some space) to effectively get windows on two different walls in every office.

    The "cable trough" along the back of the desks is a deceptively simple idea, but one that seldom gets implemented. We put something similar down the center of our conference tables, which made supporting laptop-laden meetings infinitely easier. It's unclear from the photo if there are cutouts to also allow cables to run under the desk. If not, that's the one important modification I'd add, as it is often neccessary to place an electric or electronic device on the floor.

    The other thing that was of particular interest was his comments about using straight desktops in order to make it easier for people to collaborate. I've definately noticed the 'squeezing around the corner monitor' problem, but hadn't thought of encouraging a different monitor/desk configuration to address it.

    Still, it's always nice to see people/companies actually thinking about their architecture, and fitting technology comfortably into it, when they get the chance.
  • and I can tell you that 99% of the stuff done here won't make it in my world. Desks? $129 office depot jobs or folding tables from costco. Pastel paints on the wall? Not on your life. Whatever is there is staying. I'm more interested in *gasp* money and having some to reinvest in the business. We haven't finalized the move yet, still negotiating, but before I talked to the landlord we had a short staff meeting. Most people agreed that they'd rather keep the $$ in the bank as a cushion against shitty
  • Having drop-dead gorgeous, private, windowed offices makes it a lot easier to recruit the kinds of superstars that produce ten times as much as the merely brilliant software developers.

    I'm sure it does, but just wait until they discover you didn't remove the brown M&M's and smash the office up.

  • And the cool thing is... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Pvt_Waldo ( 459439 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @04:08PM (#7048635)
    ...we'll be able to buy all this stuff on E-Bay in a year!
  • How 'bout giving me the $700/month/developer for office space and letting me work from home? (Yes, I know, true Extreme Programming requires 2 people in the same place. But although I already follow most of the tenets of XP, and I do strongly beleive in peer review, I'm not convinced that having somebody look over my shoulder while I'm typing increases productivity. Quite the opposite, it slows me down and increases my error rate, as I can only focus on one thing at a time - either the code or the other per
  • We can redecorate it, we have the technology...

  • The Programmer Pedestal (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @08:45PM (#7051071) Homepage Journal
    Well, it's my own damn company and I can do something about it, so I did.
    Oh gawd. I used to work for this guy. Well, no, not this guy, but one like him. And not for the guy himself, but for the company he founded. The guy himself got canned because he spent too much investor money on his dream office.

    Let me tell you what's going to happen. All that fancy cable-routing, pseudo-ergonomic office furniture is not gonna wear well, 'cause it's designed by idiots. It looks so cool in the catalog, but after a year or two the parts freeze in place (maybe you're supposed to oil them every month or something), and they stop being ergnomic and routing.

    Windows. Yeah, I love a window office. Natural light cheers me up. But most geeks seem to have glare issues, which they deal with by minimizing background light. So our fancy everybody-gets-a-private-window building had 3/4 of its blinds closed at any given time.

    And what do we do with the other people that help a software firm make money? Yeah, developers are key, but so are QA people, integrators, tech writers, sales people, marketeers, and of course the customer service people. But we can't afford to give all those bozos fancy private offices, so we'll just put them in cubes. Yeah, that's really great for promoting friendship and communication between the developer-gods and lesser mortals.

    Actually Spolsky avoided one mistake our own deity made -- he didn't put the developer-gods on a different floor, behind a separate set of keycard doors. (Of course if his company had more than two products...) Then again, sitting in one's cube, watching the "key" employes hang out behind their translucent walls, watching the plasma TV and doing other geek stuff, might be even more detrimental to morale.

    Here's the nasty thing about us geeks: give us a little money or power, and we turn into the stupidist, most arrogant assholes!

  • Is this so fascinating? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Shamashmuddamiq ( 588220 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @10:25PM (#7051732)
    Did this guy sleep through the dot-com boom and the dot-bomb bust? Did he learn anything? This sounds like articles I used to read way back in 1997.

    I was one of those "elite" programmers that got hired to an "elite" company, and it was great at first. They had all the frills and benefits. Company trips to Las Vegas, kitchens with free food that didn't quit, games, toys, paintball, etc. Laptops and cell phones for everybody, and an office view looking out over the hills.

    It didn't work, and let me tell you why. The work sucked. We weren't just encouraged to work 16 hours a day, we were expected to. We were forced to use crappy build tools, a crappy home-brew revision control system, a crappy OS (Windows), and worst of all, I was stuck programming a GUI client in Java (GOOD LORD!).

    The office frills are certainly a good thing, but it pales in comparison to the effect the work itself has on you. Is it fun, interesting work? Are you treated like a contributor of ideas, or are you just treated like an "implementation monkey"? Do you believe in the product of your efforts? Is this the kind of thing you want to do the rest of your life? Are you learning important skills? Is your career actually progressing, or do you feel hogtied?

    All of these questions need to be answered positively by an employee before you can start to think about keeping him/her around. If you can have toys and pretty offices on top of that, then fine. Just make sure your employees are happy with their work and their future, and they'll stick with you always. Treat them like cattle, and they'll perform poorly and leave you as soon as they get a better offer. Most software engineers would be happy working in a dank cellar if the work was still fun and challenging.

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