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The Curse of a New Building

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Re: The Curse of a New Building

#21

Post by lief79 »

spolsky wrote: post #16

Jeez, I hate this attitude... that the only way a company can succeed is if you suffer. You spend all friggin' day at the office. It doesn't have to be a coalmine for the company to succeed. On the contrary. When a startup gets to the point that it needs to recruit the top talent, it better have nice working conditions. Look at Amazon today... crappy offices, pride in using doors as desks, and huge turnover among the…

It's a trade off. The first place I worked mis-planned their moved, and was suffering the following 3.5 years to maintain profitability. The margins weren't high enough and through put did not increase enough to justify the more expensive location. I think they moved out of that location about 10 years later, when the employee base had shrunk to a quarter of the original size.

Yes, it is a single antidote, and there other complicating factors ... such as it being 2002 when the markets were already difficult.

Re: The Curse of a New Building

#22

Post by potatolicious »

spolsky wrote: post #16

Jeez, I hate this attitude... that the only way a company can succeed is if you suffer. You spend all friggin' day at the office. It doesn't have to be a coalmine for the company to succeed. On the contrary. When a startup gets to the point that it needs to recruit the top talent, it better have nice working conditions. Look at Amazon today... crappy offices, pride in using doors as desks, and huge turnover among the…

Do you have more insight into why Amazon's turnover is so high? I'm starting there fairly soon, and things look pretty peachy on the outside, but I am aware that for some reason or another people up and leave after about 2 years.

I honestly didn't mind the office - cramped sure, no fancy furniture sure, but I'm there to work, not marvel at the finishing and grain on my desk...

I do agree though, IMHO from the article the biggest loss was putting people into their own offices - but that's a failure in planning and understanding the company's development dynamics, not necessarily in the very act of moving.

Re: The Curse of a New Building

#23

Post by potatolicious »

jpwagner wrote: post #6
stanleydrew wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about more than excessive spending: "The new building telegraphed to our employees, “We’ve arrived. We’re no longer a small struggling startup. You can stop working like a startup and start working like a big company." We started to believe that the new building was a reflection of the company’s (and our own) success. We took our eye off the business. We thought that since we in such a fine building, we were gen…

This is absurd: "Now every engineer can have their own office." NOT INEVITABLE--EXCESSIVE SPENDING "The new building needs to reflect that we’re a successful and established company. Lets “do it right” and have a lobby and reception area that projects a professional image." NOT INEVITABLE AND IMPLIES EXCESSIVE SPENDING "Lets get comfortable chairs and great new desks for everyone. None of this used stuff." NOT INEVIT…

On the contrary, I don't believe excessive spending was the problem - it was the fact that they were spending on things that were counterproductive to the company.

Your own office? Great on paper, and as the article points out, deadly on productivity.

There's nothing wrong with a nice lobby and reception area - it does help get business, and honestly, assuming the author is right about how well they were doing at the time, well justified.

Another point to take from the article: your engineers may know what they want, but this may not be the best for either themselves or the company (case in point: your own office).

Re: The Curse of a New Building

#24

Post by [deleted] »

jibiki wrote: post #20
spolsky wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolute rubbish. I can give you just as many anecdotes to the contrary, viz.: Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, all of whom had reasonably perfect offices two decades ago.

Parkinson published his book in 1958 :) One imagines that there were counterexamples even in his day, though. Can anyone think of some companies that were rising stars in 1958? Did they have nice offices?

[deleted]

Re: The Curse of a New Building

#26

Post by ghshephard »

gregk wrote: post #8

This happened to me when our company moved at the height of the 1st dot com boom and ended up burdened with space that caused us to close (rumor said about $1mill / 100 people). It certainly was months of disruption. In my neighborhood I can think of Sun, Netscape, Bay Networks and SGI that had this happen. The big move is at least an indicator to look twice.

As one who started at Netscape in 1996 and saw it through to the sale to AOL ($4B Sale, Final Day of Trading $10B) - I'll agree that the constant shuffling, moving, and campus growth was a pretty constant distraction - but what else could they do? Ton of product lines, lots of markets in the land grab, and you needed to put the people _somewhere_

I think Netscape managed their office shifts pretty well from 1996 onwards. I don't think it could have been done much better.

And, one could do worse than selling their five year old company (April 4, 1994 - sometime around April, 1999) for $10 Billion. :-)

Re: The Curse of a New Building

#27

Post by skmurphy »

spolsky wrote: post #15
skmurphy wrote: post #12

This is one of Parkinson’s Laws: "perfection of planned layout is only achieved by institutions on the point of collapse." In the chapter "Plans and Plants" of "Parkinson's Law" (see http://www.amazon.com/Parkinsons-Law-Cyril-Northcote-Parkins... ) he makes the point that "During a period of exciting discovery or progress there is no time to plan the perfect headquarters. The time for that comes later, when all the i…

Absolute rubbish. I can give you just as many anecdotes to the contrary, viz.: Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, all of whom had reasonably perfect offices two decades ago.

To the extent that the organization believes that it has "arrived" and the focus shifts from customers or the people that it serves to catering to the management then a gleaming headquarters serves as an outward physical manifestation of attitudes that presage decline.

It could be that a gleaming headquarters blinds the leadership to threats and the need for continued change.

Re: The Curse of a New Building

#28

Post by billswift »

spolsky wrote: post #15
skmurphy wrote: post #12

This is one of Parkinson’s Laws: "perfection of planned layout is only achieved by institutions on the point of collapse." In the chapter "Plans and Plants" of "Parkinson's Law" (see http://www.amazon.com/Parkinsons-Law-Cyril-Northcote-Parkins... ) he makes the point that "During a period of exciting discovery or progress there is no time to plan the perfect headquarters. The time for that comes later, when all the i…

Absolute rubbish. I can give you just as many anecdotes to the contrary, viz.: Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, all of whom had reasonably perfect offices two decades ago.

Parkinson was writing humor. There is a core of truth to his stuff, but he obviously exaggerated for effect.

Re: The Curse of a New Building

#29

Post by billswift »

spolsky wrote: post #16

Jeez, I hate this attitude... that the only way a company can succeed is if you suffer. You spend all friggin' day at the office. It doesn't have to be a coalmine for the company to succeed. On the contrary. When a startup gets to the point that it needs to recruit the top talent, it better have nice working conditions. Look at Amazon today... crappy offices, pride in using doors as desks, and huge turnover among the…

I don't think it was about suffering so much as not thinking the move through and, more especially, in taking their eyes off of what was important.
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