Good: whiteboard, open, natural light, proximity to great food and coffee
Bad: across the street from bus stop and court house
Ask HN: What do you love about your office?
21–30 of 48 posts
Re: Ask HN: What do you love about your office?
#22What I love most about my office is that it is mine. Meaning I rent it directly. Not provided by an employer. Since it's mine I have a lot of freedom as to what to put in it, what activities occur in it, and when to go there and how long to stay. No more corporate bullshit or bureaucracy. The commute time is 10 minutes. If the weather is bad or I just don't feel like going there, I don't. I have a door I can close and lock, with windows and blinds closed. It's quiet. I can go many hours without interruptions or watercooler chitchat and get zero drive-by management. My utilities are free. I have a huge LEGO TIE Fighter in it. A comfy leather chair and footrest I can veg or take naps in, as needed. Lots of table space and potential whiteboard space. Since it's not tied to a single external business I can use it for multiple different projects or businesses, as desired, or even personal projects not officially related to "work". In fact it allows me to blur the lines between work and non-work as much as I want. Well, within reasonable limits. It ain't perfect but it's closer to it than anything I've had previously.
Re: Ask HN: What do you love about your office?
#23Awesome! Another South African on HN. Not in the US but I think our guys have gotten a lot of things right (Cape Town software house):
1) The view - I'll be impressed if anyone can better this - the flat side of Table Mountain on the one side, the sea on the other, at night the lights of Long Street stretch out in front of us, and a good view of the stadium if that's your thing. I think that's just luck of the draw though, the company moved here before the CTN foreshore became fashionable.
2) There is no such thing as too many whiteboards, although glass walls with writing on them is also pretty awesome.
3) Great canteen with space to prepare food if you aren't into buying, but on a related note...
4) Close to decent food places, including one favourite that sells sandwich ingredients for a good price
5) A decent number of meeting rooms with whiteboards (the more I work the less I want to use projectors.. but we do have those too)
6) Unlikely that anyone else here would think of this, but you'll know why I bring this up: safety at night... again, luck of the draw but there's a CIDC station positioned half-way between us and the car park, and often a fair number of people around after dark. For me being able to work late (as opposed to early) is A Big Deal.
7) Not my thing but other people like proximity to gym - some cycle to work and shower before coming into the office, others hop in the pool during lunch.
8) There's a TV per floor with one or the other DSTV lite package, basically sports + discovery + Music channels (Mythbusters is most popular lunchtime viewing). The console of some sort that gets close to zero attention
9) (Soft) drinks fridge that is rapidly shortening my lifespan + fruit juice that runs out very quickly
10) A cleaner who brings real character to the office, as well as clean dishes
11) EDIT: forgot, we do have what looks like a decent coffee machine (does foam and stuff) but I'm not a good judge as I'm the only HN reader who doesn't drink the stuff. It is in constant use though.
12) EDIT: forgot some more... WATER COOLER FTW... I like that it is the kind that filters tap water and not the kind that takes those huge bottles of environmentally unsustainable mineral water.
Disclaimer... we're not a huge company but definitely not startup anymore, +-50 in our CTN office.
Re: Ask HN: What do you love about your office?
#24[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What do you love about your office?
#25Likes:
-Our building is 100 feet from the ocean up on the cliffs. Going outside to get some air and see the Pacific is quite refreshing. It is also a few minutes away from a very nice surf spot.
-We have a nice clean kitchen.
-Plenty of space with large desks, Aeron chairs, and all the pixels you can handle.
-Fresh water. This is big for me since I drink a lot of water.
-Fast network connection. Not blazing fast, but fast enough.
-We have a very nice gym onsite complete with lockers, trainers, massage therapists, pool, track, volleyball, etc.
-Parking right outside building.
-Office is always clean.
-Nice restaurants nearby.
Dislikes:
-Lots of noise/people talking. 90% of it is not work related or interesting which is more the problem than the noise. This quote from PG's quotes page pretty well sums it up: "I'm surrounded by postmodern idiots and blatherers. Your writings give me hope."
-We have quite a bit of wasted space. e.g. a conference area which is rarely used. This space could be used better.
-Restrooms are to small and don't accommodate a full office well. Luckily there are others to use neraby.
Re: Ask HN: What do you love about your office?
#26The most appreciated perks at my office are out table-tennis and foosball games. I think they beat video game consoles / TVs / etc for a few reasons:
- even the minimal amount of physical activity they provide is a great break from sitting at a desk
- inter-office rivalry is great fun
Also, healthy food is a must, and like others have said office location is huge.
Re: Ask HN: What do you love about your office?
#27I like the Nord Stage 88 that is sitting under the windows. It's a great productivity and well-being enhancer!
Re: Ask HN: What do you love about your office?
#28We have nice big desks. The chairs aren't Aerons but we don't buy them (in our last office we bought cheap chairs and they sucked. I promised never to do that again, in our next office if I'm buying the chairs, everyone is getting an awesome chair).
We have natural light but I want a balcony. I think if we had a balcony it would be nicer for smokers (smoking's not permitted in the building) and we'd get a decent view of whatever's around.
We're pretty lucky. You can see the Kennet Canal from our roof, but otherwise it just looks like urban Reading, Berkshire, UK. Lately with the frankly crap weather we have more light from above than from outside.
We have a wide selection of alcoholic drinks and hangover cures - ornamental of course. It's mostly wacky stuff we'd never drink, although there's an 'Emergency Guinness' and this weird stuff called 'Dr Hangover - with 47 ingredients!'. We have a Nabaztag that tells us when pentests finish, when investigations are over and when we get paid. Unfortunately he's very insecure so we keep him on his own network.
We don't have whiteboards - we used to but not anymore. Instead we have detachable flipchart paper and blu tack. It's like infinite white boards, that is actually awesome. You just take it down when you don't need it.
We have a golden lucky chinese cat from vegas and a book with pictures of Japanese girls in school uniforms. I think there's a reason for both but I still haven't worked it out.
A good coffee machine/water cooler (hooked up to the mains) is essential. It doesn't have to be in your office, just in your building.
We're near a train station so parking isn't important. Being in a city it turns out is important for us. You can go on your lunchbreak and do pretty much anything and get back in time for work. In our last office we couldn't do that, and frankly compared to our own office it sucks.
I'd avoid game consoles, nap couches, dark rooms etc. What's the point? I worked in one office with a fussball table. It was great to play but bad to work around. Focus on what makes people work well and keeps people happy, not what compensates for suck.
Re: Ask HN: What do you love about your office?
#29All our walls are covered in white boards. It lends a nice, brainstormy feel. We actually have a whole floor, and we sublet to a few other early-stage startups (one pretty normal web startup, one small trading firm, one consulting firm, and a couple others) so there are lots of different people around. We also have a nice view of the Empire State Building. :)
Re: Ask HN: What do you love about your office?
#30White boards are excellent. So is an espresso machine and/or Chemex. As others have also said, nice chairs and monitors are really, really cheap relative to the cost of employees and office space. Get Aerons or Embodies (I'm now using an Embody), which go for about $900 and $1200, respectively. Read this: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDeveloper... . Note this excerpt, which is long but posted for…
It's a tough call because I've kitted out an office for 10 people (the original Citizen Space location in San Francisco) for less than half of your one-person's $4k budget. (I've become a master at planning out offices with Ikea furniture and how to put it together so it isn't wonky or unsturdy)
I guess it comes down to funding, if you've raised $1m+ then sure it makes sense. But I would hope that potential employees interviewing at my 'for-arguments sake' angel-funded or bootstrapped startup to look beyond the Ikea furniture and appreciate a company that is being careful with it's runway.
On extras like espresso machines, etc the best advice is to constantly consult the team or even give them the freedom to make purchases they want within budget. Some teams appreciate a good espresso machine so they don't need to leave the office, others enjoy taking a break to pop down to Blue Bottle in which case that expensive espresso machine might go unloved.