Second best offices I've seen.
At Bowdoin College the CS professors have offices with an awesome view and a shower and bathroom in each office.
Joel on Software: The new Fog Creek Office
71–80 of 89 posts
Re: Joel on Software: The new Fog Creek Office
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do the UI designers have to... wait a minute, there aren't any! If he spent half the amount of money he spent on this amazing office for a kick ass UI team, he would increase sales by an enormous amount for Fogbugz. I know so many people who would switch if it wasn't so damn ugly and difficult to use. I don't think people use Lighthouse because it has better features. Joel's priorities seem very odd to me.
Could you quantify "ugly" and "difficult to use"? I use FogBugz, and while it's not the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, it's far from ugly. But then beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so it's said. I don't find it hard to use at all. I just use it for bug tracking and to-do reminder. I don't use any advanced features. What exactly do you find difficult to do?
We use Fogbugz too and like it (though Pivotal Tracker is calling our names...). In my anecdotal experience, many of the people who think it's ugly and unusable got this impression from earlier versions. It's improved a bit over the last few years. Not to say that it doesn't have room to go, but it's not that bad anymore.
Re: Joel on Software: The new Fog Creek Office
#73That looks like a pretty impressive office. It sounds like a successful recruiting tool; I would definitely like working in that environment. What other companies put that much attention towards work environment? I know that a lot of popular startups tend to favor communal environments, but seeing actual offices is pretty rare. All of the places I've worked at tend to fall somewhere between decent to hellish cube nig…
How do we resolve "offices with doors that close" with "communal work environment" anyway? Are they just diametrically opposed office philosphies?
I've spent way too much time thinking about this question over the years for my small teams. My conclusion is that neither is perfect, but the best options are:
-- Open work space for 3-6 people, IF everyone is working on the same project, IF everyone is committed to doing good work (and won't be surfing YouTube throughout the day), IF there are quite/private places to retreat to for phone calls and solo problem solving, and IF the configuration doesn't stay the same for years. Many people report being more productive for short periods with this sort of arrangement.
Bonus: pair programming seems to lead to a different sort of "flow" than solo programming, which is more amenable to an open work space.
-- Offices with a door for everything else. The upside of offices with a door: reduced interruptions, which are the bane of complex programming. (Try solving a really really hard problem with the threat of interruptions constantly on your mind. Not actual interruptions - just the threat, or memory, of interruptions.) The downside: teams have to be more deliberate in fostering team communication.
The "cave and commons" (elsewhere in this discussion) seems like a good compromise. Even better, in my opinion, would be a modular space where teams could work together some of the time in an open war room, during some phases of development, and where they could work privately during other phases. But that's not easy to find.
Re: Joel on Software: The new Fog Creek Office
#74That looks like a pretty impressive office. It sounds like a successful recruiting tool; I would definitely like working in that environment. What other companies put that much attention towards work environment? I know that a lot of popular startups tend to favor communal environments, but seeing actual offices is pretty rare. All of the places I've worked at tend to fall somewhere between decent to hellish cube nig…
How do we resolve "offices with doors that close" with "communal work environment" anyway? Are they just diametrically opposed office philosphies?
Cave and Commons is the way to go, as several other posters pointed out.
I'd like to add the critical factor: team size. Once team size gets too large (say over 8-10 people) random noise and distractions take over. I've seen teams of 30 try to do collocated, collaborative work environments and it just falls apart. At that size, the best I've seen so far is cubes, "study hall" and private rooms. That is, cubes for \half the day, a group "study hall" type atmosphere for the other half, and easily available small group work rooms. By "study hall", I don't mean a bunch of people being quiet, just a bunch of people in the same area working on group/individual tasks.
There's an interesting phenomenon that goes on in collaborative work spaces. Many times programmers get lots of benefits from working together but still would rather be left alone. So many times the team requires time that it works together, say for a couple of hours every morning, like it or not. Not everybody likes it so much. Many times there's a gap between "the way I like working" and "the way that I work that is the most productive"
Just goes to show that programming is not a technical exercise, as much as we like to talk functional code, security, and all the other bits and bytes bullshit. It's a human activity, and full of the irrational and quirky nuances that comes from working with hominids.
Re: Joel on Software: The new Fog Creek Office
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do the UI designers have to... wait a minute, there aren't any! If he spent half the amount of money he spent on this amazing office for a kick ass UI team, he would increase sales by an enormous amount for Fogbugz. I know so many people who would switch if it wasn't so damn ugly and difficult to use. I don't think people use Lighthouse because it has better features. Joel's priorities seem very odd to me.
Could you quantify "ugly" and "difficult to use"? I use FogBugz, and while it's not the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, it's far from ugly. But then beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so it's said. I don't find it hard to use at all. I just use it for bug tracking and to-do reminder. I don't use any advanced features. What exactly do you find difficult to do?
A couple of months ago, my company's software team evaluated FogBugz as a possible replacement for our Trac setup.
I would describe FogBugz as ugly by modern standards, because it appears to have been written a little under ten years ago. And I would describe it as difficult to use partially for the same reason, and partially because some very simple features are missing, e.g. cc'ing people on tickets and bidirectional integration with SCM repositories. The "special" features, like integration with customer email, are not important to us.
Yet what it does is not very difficult, and many other options exist -- free, for pay, hosted, or any combination thereof. I now wonder why people listen to Joel on software.
Re: Joel on Software: The new Fog Creek Office
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do we resolve "offices with doors that close" with "communal work environment" anyway? Are they just diametrically opposed office philosphies?
I will never EVER work in a communal work environment again. I can only work in a space somewhere between an 'office with a closed door' and a sensory deprivation tank.
Agreed -- I might be a fancy typist when you get right down to it, but that doesn't mean I want to work in a typing pool.
Re: Joel on Software: The new Fog Creek Office
#77This is a seriously awesome office space that any developer looking for the urban lifestyle that NYC offers would be nuts to not want to work at. But Joel, you already have a fantastic reputation and should be able to recruit top talent based on your location, reputation, and because because you employ other smart people. That 500K of your own cash you put into that space depreciates over 39 years. You basically can'…
Where do you work in Western MA? I'm a software CEO as well and do a lot of work out there. We should get together sometime.
Re: Joel on Software: The new Fog Creek Office
#78Seriously, how does Joel make both ends meet in an expensive place like NYC ? Selling bug-tracking software ?
I would bet Copilot is pretty profitable too
Re: Joel on Software: The new Fog Creek Office
#79Why do the admins have to sit in a closet?
Why do the UI designers have to... wait a minute, there aren't any! If he spent half the amount of money he spent on this amazing office for a kick ass UI team, he would increase sales by an enormous amount for Fogbugz. I know so many people who would switch if it wasn't so damn ugly and difficult to use. I don't think people use Lighthouse because it has better features. Joel's priorities seem very odd to me.
I tried using fogbugz a couple of time and agree with you. For the ease of use, I know that there were quite a few things I didn't really get (though I forgot which one). In the end I'm now using pivotal tracker instead.
Now apart from that I completely agree with joel's reasoning regarding building a great place to work for programmers, I just think that he should also hire more designers and ui experts...
Re: Joel on Software: The new Fog Creek Office
#80My envy on this place is mighty (and all this from a bug tracker?), but is tempered by more annoyance at the Javascript nightmare that is Picasa. Why can't I middle-click to open pictures in new windows? Because Google Breaks The Browser. Top.
If you were using The Browser, Opera, here's how you could open those pictures effortlessly in new tabs:
1) Right-click on top of a picture, keep the button down.
2) Flick your mouse slightly downwards.
3) Release the right mouse button.
And there you go. Now, after checking out a picture, you'd want to close the newly opened tab, and get back to where you were:
1) Right-click, and hold
2) Move the mouse slightly downwards, and slightly to the right.
3) Release the mouse button
And there you go again. It doesn't take long to get comfortable with Opera's Mouse Gestures, and you'll realize they're very handy.