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Let me take you through my dream office

blog.coderbyheart.com

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Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#101

Post by mjevans »

tckr wrote: post #41
mattpratt wrote: post #10

I recently finished _Deep Work_ by Cal Newport. In the book he discusses a workplace concept designed by David Dewane called the "Eudaimonia Machine". This workspace has multiple sections you progress through linearly, slowly moving towards independent, distraction free, personal chambers where you perform your most productive, thoughtful, deepest work. My dream office would have more rooms like this!

Yes! I imagined having a floor where people arrange themselves based on lighting preferences, so the farther you go into the floor the lower the lights are. You can't have the lights brighter then the previous office.

If only our monitors were good enough to follow that trend... instead of defaulting to brightness that tries to battle the sun at noon.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#103

Post by mgkimsal »

ensiferum wrote: post #88
noir_lord wrote: post #49

Decided to change job recently, applied for two, went for an interview at the first and they offered me the job. I took it on the spot despite the other place paying more. One of the reasons I took it on the spot was when asked where I'd prefer to work and I said somewhere quiet he said there are offices upstairs, take whichever one you want. That was the major deciding factor (among others), I know the other place i…

"some" developers? I'd guess that's in fact "most". In my experience the only people who like open office are those whose job is to talk all day long. Sales guys, visionaires, busy bodies etc. Everyone else just suffers.

This evergreen topic comes up enough that there will always be multiple sides to this topic. I've gone so far in past threads to imply that other devs were "wrong" about being more productive in open office plans, and got bashed for that. "Don't tell me how I'm more productive", etc.

There may never actually be hard data on this, because it's, at core, likely very hard to measure, but I'd love to read some research/findings on this issue more.

I'm in a coworking situation now, with a private space, and I'm always more productive in the private space. But I do relieve some stress and get energized by interacting with others in the common area. And in previous jobs, there's of course always times when you need to talk to colleagues about project issues, and that's a requirement.

To the folks (devs) who insist that they are "more productive" in open plan offices, I wonder if the rest of the folks in the room with you are equally as productive, or if the productivity is just being shifted from some people in the room to others.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#105

Post by deadbunny »

noir_lord wrote: post #57
jay_kyburz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be interested to hear what hardware you will buy. What's your ideal hardware? Just a MBP or something more interesting?

Was offered a tricked out iMac or similar but I'm a linux user through and through so I'll self-build. Current plan is Ryzen 1700(possibly X)/32GB DDR4 (2x16GB, board supports 4 slots so can upgrade if needed) (going to need a lot of virtualisation capability to handle dealing with multiple legacy systems, windows for interop and 8 cores with 16 threads at that price is a hard match from Intel), 500GB SSD with 1TB WD…

If you're running linux you can use the lxc plugin for Vagrant[1], I'm on the devops side of thing so end up needing to spin up a lot of machines from time to time to test clustering etc... and the lxc plugin has been a saviour as you can get much higher density of "machines".

The only caveat is you can't do things modify kernel params etc... but that's usually ok for my use YMMV obviously. Also they don't update Atlas with new images so you need to build your own but that's really easy[2].

1. https://github.com/fgrehm/vagrant-lxc 2. https://github.com/obnoxxx/vagrant-lxc-base-boxes

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#106

Post by Grue3 »

loteck wrote: post #36

As a technologist working at a company that helps businesses design & build office space, one item I notice always lacking in conversations about office space is growth. The article brushes off growth by suggesting you just open a new office when you've grown. This suggestion lacks understanding of how growth happens. It's rarely an instant doubling of headcount. Most organic growth creeps up. So let me invade your "…

Solution: grow mostly by acquisitions, and only buy firms with reasonable density offices.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#108

Post by noir_lord »

deadbunny wrote: post #105
noir_lord wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was offered a tricked out iMac or similar but I'm a linux user through and through so I'll self-build. Current plan is Ryzen 1700(possibly X)/32GB DDR4 (2x16GB, board supports 4 slots so can upgrade if needed) (going to need a lot of virtualisation capability to handle dealing with multiple legacy systems, windows for interop and 8 cores with 16 threads at that price is a hard match from Intel), 500GB SSD with 1TB WD…

If you're running linux you can use the lxc plugin for Vagrant[1], I'm on the devops side of thing so end up needing to spin up a lot of machines from time to time to test clustering etc... and the lxc plugin has been a saviour as you can get much higher density of "machines". The only caveat is you can't do things modify kernel params etc... but that's usually ok for my use YMMV obviously. Also they don't update Atl…

That sounds interesting, I generally deploy to vagrant via ansible using the same config as production (just a different file with configuration variables) since that allows as close as possible replication of the deploy environment (particularly for older projects on 14.04 when I'm running 16.04 on the dev machine), lxc would be useful for those "I need to simulate lots of machines" configurations though.

I wasn't aware that it had gotten as good as those links look so thanks! :).

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#109

Post by noir_lord »

chinathrow wrote: post #100
noir_lord wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was offered a tricked out iMac or similar but I'm a linux user through and through so I'll self-build. Current plan is Ryzen 1700(possibly X)/32GB DDR4 (2x16GB, board supports 4 slots so can upgrade if needed) (going to need a lot of virtualisation capability to handle dealing with multiple legacy systems, windows for interop and 8 cores with 16 threads at that price is a hard match from Intel), 500GB SSD with 1TB WD…

> MS Ergo 4000 keyboard and a decent mouse. Currently typing on one of these. I hate the loud clicking noise though, especially with co-workers around me. Are there any similar but less noisy versions of it?

Not that are specifically the same as the 4000, there is the new microsoft ergo keyboard which is quieter but I don't like the key travel.

The 4000 isn't really that loud (I found it was louder with the front edge on as it creates a void space under the keyboard like a speaker) especially compared to the mechanical I was using before.

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/en-gb/products/keyboar...

I know people who've used those and love them, I personally didn't too much like a laptop keyboard the travel feels wrong.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#110

Post by Fredej »

tckr wrote: post #58
loteck wrote: post #36

As a technologist working at a company that helps businesses design & build office space, one item I notice always lacking in conversations about office space is growth. The article brushes off growth by suggesting you just open a new office when you've grown. This suggestion lacks understanding of how growth happens. It's rarely an instant doubling of headcount. Most organic growth creeps up. So let me invade your "…

Ok, so I would ask an architect: build me an office that can scale. What would they answer? We have shitty offices because there is no solution, so allow me to at least say: if you want me to work in your office (which I think is not necessary at all) build me one, that suits my productivity and not the constraints of the real estate market. Realistically, as a company you would start with one floor, and once it fill…

We did that - paying existing businesses to move out as we grew. Took over one floor. Took over the next. And the next. And the next. Ran out of floors. Then the offices started filling up more and more. And more.

Top management started looking at more space a long time ago but it's hard to come by because we're smack in the middle of downtown in major city and a lot of the people working here are really enjoying the easy access to public transportation and general life of the city. Location was part of the reason I accepted the job myself.

We just found some additional offices though, so all is well again :)

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