January 5, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Bionic Office - V2
January 6, 2009 at 2:22 am
Don't move to the basement Steve. Being able to glance out of the window and see trees and greenery is a contributing factor to office comfort and tranquility.
January 6, 2009 at 4:15 am
My home office was in the basement once. It was dank and dreary.
I swore I'd never have another basement office - need the windows for the light, and to be able to see out the window and get natural light!
January 6, 2009 at 4:33 am
The best office I worked in was also one of the scruffiest.
It was at Defra (a UK govt dept) and was a site that had been built, but never used, as a wartime hospital. Each block was single storey and consisted of a wide central corridor with "wards" off. Each ward was a long room with windows down each side.
Wherever you sat, you could see out of the windows on both sides. The hospital had been built in the grounds of a Victorian villa that was still there, complete with croquet lawn. So looking out you could see mature trees and shrubs, plenty of grass, birds, rabbits and even the occasional fox.
But the best bit of all was that the windows opened. Fresh air whenever you want, and work at whatever temperature you want.
January 6, 2009 at 5:36 am
My current position has the nicest office I have ever had. My first job was probably the best place to work as I was learning a lot and we were doing a lot of neat development.
I also read Joel's blog and I am impressed by his business model at least for treating his employees. I think in today's economy that these types of businesses will be the ones that survive. Business that treat people well will always have employees and customers as people are willing to take a little less money or pay a little more for a product when they are treated well.
Jack Corbett
Consultant - Straight Path Solutions
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January 6, 2009 at 6:10 am
This is one of those topics where a "keen sense of the obvious" comes in very handy, but unfortunately, in my experience, it hasn't. Its great to design a comfortable and friendly office - a nice place to work - but unless you work alone (likely at home) such a design in commercial space is overly dependant on the people who will occupy that space and this should be an amazingly obvious factor, but surprisingly it isn't.
I once worked for a company that followed Intel in their 'open office' design. Everyone sat in a large space, including the executives, line workers and support staff, and the concept was that the 'openness' of the place would lead to good team dynamics. The problem was that the company was run by a guy who had all the management skills of Benito Mussolini. He wanted his company run his way - no talking, no extraneous noise, and worse still he used this open office concept to keep tabs on such vital things as how many bathroom trips certain employees made each day. It was a horrible place to work and employee morale was rock bottom. People left that company regularly and I will never forget how this guy would complain that here he was, providing this great 'open office', so why were people leaving? Answer? You!
I've never forgotten the lesson I learned there - its great to find or construct a nice place to work, a place people will feel comfortable and inspired to do good work, but if the human dynamic does not match the design - forget about it - you're just working against yourself. You've got to have both, the place wont make the people, and the people cannot make the place - you have to have a good 'work arena' and then inspired and driven people - otherwise, you're just clapping with one hand.
January 6, 2009 at 6:48 am
blandry (1/6/2009)
This is one of those topics where a "keen sense of the obvious" comes in very handy, but unfortunately, in my experience, it hasn't. Its great to design a comfortable and friendly office - a nice place to work - but unless you work alone (likely at home) such a design in commercial space is overly dependant on the people who will occupy that space and this should be an amazingly obvious factor, but surprisingly it isn't.I once worked for a company that followed Intel in their 'open office' design. Everyone sat in a large space, including the executives, line workers and support staff, and the concept was that the 'openness' of the place would lead to good team dynamics. The problem was that the company was run by a guy who had all the management skills of Benito Mussolini. He wanted his company run his way - no talking, no extraneous noise, and worse still he used this open office concept to keep tabs on such vital things as how many bathroom trips certain employees made each day. It was a horrible place to work and employee morale was rock bottom. People left that company regularly and I will never forget how this guy would complain that here he was, providing this great 'open office', so why were people leaving? Answer? You!
I've never forgotten the lesson I learned there - its great to find or construct a nice place to work, a place people will feel comfortable and inspired to do good work, but if the human dynamic does not match the design - forget about it - you're just working against yourself. You've got to have both, the place wont make the people, and the people cannot make the place - you have to have a good 'work arena' and then inspired and driven people - otherwise, you're just clapping with one hand.
Bravo! 100% agreement. People are in my opinion FAR more important than the workspace. Any one of us can deal with a depressing workspace by decorating it as necessary, plants, etc. Most of us probably just keep our heads down and do work anyway. But try to work with impossible people? I don't care if I've got the corner office, if nobody is working with you, ain't worth it.
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January 6, 2009 at 6:59 am
I absolutely agree that people are more important than working space. I used to sit in a conference room with 5 other people, I did not have much space but we all got along very well and had so much fun. On the other hand, I used to have a big office by myself and no one in my group socialized with anyone, they all sat in their big office and worked, it was one of the worst place I worked.
January 6, 2009 at 7:37 am
Big topic Steve, and an important one.
I too work from home, and my office is a small corner of a room, but I have a great chair and windows are right beside me. I hope your basement is a walkout. It would be a travesty to live where you do and spend your working hours unable to enjoy the view.
A word on cubicle setups. I had to become a Les Nesman type the last time I had one of those. It's amazing the number of people that think if you are visible, you are waiting to have a conversation with them.
One other item I deal with is working on-site. I've been relegated to the corner of a desk before, and it was on a heavy duty programming job. 6 or 7 years ago I was able to talk my employer into writing into our customer contracts some minimum requirements for the working environment that the customer would provide. I doubt we would argue the point if the client didn't live up to them, but stating these expectations up front seems to have the desired effect.
Happy New Year!
January 6, 2009 at 7:40 am
I suppose the biggest problem I have with the physical working environment is it seems cubicles have gotten smaller and smaller over the years. Also, the current place I work has cubicle walls that are only half height, gets very distracting because right in front of my line of sight is the printers that everyone on this floor uses so people are constantly walking there.
The most interesting work environment I was ever in was a few years ago at a computer distributor/reseller in an area called the "Web Cave". The web development team had a room of their own in the middle of the building mainly full of the sales/marketing people and the parts of IS that supported those groups. The walls of the Web Cave were covered in posters, there was an air hockey table in the middle of the room and 8 desks spread around the room facing the walls. There was also a stereo in the corner (in a computer rack) that had a 300 CD jukebox. Yet with all those potential distractions, and occasionally getting system requirements written in crayon from a 7 inch tall stuffed bunny, that was the most productive IS group in that company, and consistantly produced high quality programs that met the business needs. They frequently had to rewrite systems the other IS groups had done wrong before.
January 6, 2009 at 7:47 am
see how the other half lives at http://www.officesnapshots.com
January 6, 2009 at 7:48 am
Chris Harshman (1/6/2009)
...and occasionally getting system requirements written in crayon from a 7 inch tall stuffed bunny,...
OT: This just made me laugh. The most unique project requirements I've received were for a marketing list, drawn, not written, in pencil on a folded piece of paper. Target audience segments were stick figures and the end product was an envelope with wings on it. There were only 3 phrases in writing describing the stick figures.
😎 Kate The Great :w00t:
If you don't have time to do it right the first time, where will you find time to do it again?
January 6, 2009 at 8:12 am
I'm on the 'it's all about the people' front. While I do require a decent chair (at least adjustable to the correct height of the work surface) due to physical disability, I have had the gamut from a luxe cube to a shared worktable in a server room to a windowless closet called an office to sitting cross-leggedy on my bed and I can't say my work product was affected by the physical surroundings. Once i get into the work my brain ignores the immediate environment. However, the general atmosphere and the individuals to whom I'm exposed on a daily basis definitely have affected my productivity and attitude in a more fundamental way.
Another factor that gets to me is ambient noise. Voices don't bug me so much if they are in good spirits but complainers and whiners grate me to no end, as do loud phone conversations--I can't help but listen. While it's sometimes appropriate and pleasant to submerge into a headphone supported music realm, this is only possible for me during certain phases of development. My roles (data architect & dev) typically require more customer facing interaction (which means I need to be available to the phone) and as a consultant I am also expected to do a fair amount of mentoring and cross training. Mechanical noise too can be an annoyance; while the white noise of active servers is tolerable, a squeaky printer or clacking copier can drive me to distraction. :crazy:
😎 Kate The Great :w00t:
If you don't have time to do it right the first time, where will you find time to do it again?
January 6, 2009 at 8:33 am
Our office is very pleasant - spacious workspaces, comfortable chairs, despite having a "cube farm" design, except for one big problem - the temperature. It is an icebox in here. I finally brought in a space heater for my cube and am much happier now, but I regularly see coworkers in heavy outdoor coats and gloves struggling to stay warm. Sometimes it is warmer outside the building than inside.
I usually am good at tuning out extraneous noise but they have the customer facing project managers right next to development, so sometimes they get on a phone call with a customer and get pretty loud. We don't have sufficient conference room/white board space though on occasion, so it's hard to have just a one-to-one pow-wow with another techie without being the ones to make the noise to inconvenience the rest of the cube farm.
--
Anye Mercy
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January 6, 2009 at 9:07 am
I definitely agree with blandry that the people make all the difference. I've been in similar situations and the people make or break the space. We built a bullpen one weekend (late night IT maintenance, took apart cubes and made one space out of 4). It was great for about six months, then we got a new team member and he didn't fit in, didn't joke with us, complained about noise, it wasn't really a good setup anymore.
The basement is a walkout. I could move the batting cage :w00t:, and setup next to the windows, which would be a good thing. That might be the ticket since the weather is so nice here. Not sure how that works with the podcast lighting, might have to play there.
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