+1 for natural light.
Ask HN: What do you love about your office?
41–48 of 48 posts
Re: Ask HN: What do you love about your office?
#42One thing I've always wished for but never had. Quiet time: One hour every day where no one can schedule meetings or call their co-workers. One hour of zero interruptions. Most tech people I know work after hours or from home, just to get this. I'll spend 30mins in the morning carefully writing an email to detail the current status of my project. Then I'll get four or five 5-15min drivebys interspersed throughout the…
Try talking to your team members and manager. One of my senior colleague who mas mentoring others was in similar situation.
He worked out a deal with the manager - no interruption from 10am to 12 noon. He even got a board saying 'Quiet Hour 10 to 12' outside his cubicle. It took us a week to realize he was serious when our manager told us. We respected his quiet hours.
Re: Ask HN: What do you love about your office?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd love to hear PG chime in about the chairs. He's been negative on them in an article or two. I think I agree with Joel here. I'm a frugal bootstrapper - I always turn off the heat before I leave my apartment. But cheap chairs can be bad for your back in the long-run. Long-term back problems are a pretty bad trade-off for a thousand bucks. And from looking at the market, it seems like a bit of an either/or scenario…
One other observation: if you don't have the money to buy new, buy used. There's a place called Anderson's Office Liquidators in Tucson that sells Aerons for $500. Aerons last a really long time -- which can be useful in the resale market. I think you have to be "a frugal bootstrapper," but there's a key difference between "frugal" and "stingy" or "foolish." Good chairs are an obvious place where that difference play…
Two years ago my employer threw out the 12-month old decent chairs my IT department bought for ourselves, and replaced them with spectacularly uncomfortable new cheap ones.
So I bought a 6-year old Aeron on eBay for my own use at work and have been very happy with it. Apart from a couple of small scratches on the feet it is still like new today. As an investment in my own comfort at work it has already paid for itself.
Re: Ask HN: What do you love about your office?
#44White 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…
I dont agree with the fact that $900 chairs are magic, and $200 chairs are not. I have never bought a chair more than $200. I am using chairs that are many years old - and they havent fallen apart. I have used chairs that cost over $1000 at work. It didnt part the seas, it was just a chair - with more adjustments.
From my experience - $900 chairs will NOT: - cure your back problems - make you code better - make your startup successful
But they WILL: - make your office more luring for staff (which is very important!)
Re: Ask HN: What do you love about your office?
#45Obviously things like the view out the window and the amenities in the neighborhood are not always the easiest to control, and have huge impact on the price and availability of an office. So I'll focus on the little things that make a huge difference for me at work.
- Coffee, tea, and good water available. I do like taking breaks at times to run out to the coffee shop, but sometimes I just don't have time or energy or money, and being able to step into the kitchen and get what I need is great.
- Full spectrum "natural" lighting. I'm lucky that my office has tons of windows and a view, but when it gets dark or when I'm working on something detailed at my desk, a good full spectrum light is really important both for accurate color and just to be nice to my eyes.
- Dual computer monitors. I suppose this is a bit subjective but I go insane if I don't have a second monitor (doesn't have to be anything special, mine's just a small square) to put things like email and music and reference documents on while I work.
- Refrigerator space. I try to bring lunch most of the week instead of eating out, and more often than not it's leftovers from dinner with other random things thrown in... being able to just toss it in the fridge in the morning is great.
- A comfortable desk chair. I don't know about the $1200 chair (I certainly couldn't afford one at this point) but make sure it won't hurt your back after sitting for a long time.
Re: Ask HN: What do you love about your office?
#46One thing not many people have mentioned, is avoid open plan. I currently have the misfortune to work in an open plan office and basically get far less productive work done than when I worked in one with cubicles where you at least could get some work done without being distracted by other people (I'm not saying that cube farms are ideal either .... )
Re: Ask HN: What do you love about your office?
#47Keyboard trays. You can't beat a good keyboard tray.
Re: Ask HN: What do you love about your office?
#48Good: whiteboard, open, natural light, proximity to great food and coffee Bad: across the street from bus stop and court house
This just about sums up my office and what everyone likes about it. Snacks and coffee and a fridge filled with beverages is a huge plus that everyone seems to like. And definitely lots of natural light.
And to add to the bad, how about being next to a military airport with jets flying past all day (yes, I speak from experience).