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Ask YC: Office space - cheap or creative?

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Re: Ask YC: Office space - cheap or creative?

#31
I highly recommend reading the book Peopleware by DeMarco and Lister. It devotes a chapter to the programmer's environment and speaks passionately about how important it is to get it right. They get into details about offices. They also say that if you can't get the environment right, you might as well stop there. Of course, "environment" also includes things like frivolous interruptions, etc. Anyway, it's an excellent read:

http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-S...

Joel Spolsky (another big fan of Peopleware) wrote on this when he had his office designed:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html

Re: Ask YC: Office space - cheap or creative?

#32
If you are not hiring programmers, then go for the cheap office space, but spend money on the furniture to make it look really nice. The location is important though - it should be in a lively area. Also, make sure you don't have to look at someone the whole day long, i.e, people are reasonably separate.

One can turn almost any space into a nice looking room. You just need an appropriate amount of inspiration and some outside help.

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