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Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

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Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#41

Post by tinyhouse »

matwood wrote: post #35
KenArrari wrote: post #3

Looking back it really is funny how impressed people used to be by dumb office perks. Free food and coffee? Sure, for the convenience. But the slides, the ball pits, the scooters? Sure it might make the office a nice place to be but once the novelty wears off it's still really hard to beat working from home.

The coolest office perk we had was a ping pong table and keg. We also had a very good table tennis player come by and give us lessons every few weeks. A lot of great memories from that time, but everyone got older, married, had kids, and stopped hanging out after work. About a year before covid we went fully remote. Now, I'll never go into an office again if I can help it. But, if I was in my 20s again I'd probably h…

> But, if I was in my 20s again I'd probably have a different opinion.

Or in your 60s and empty nester.

Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#42

Post by quickthrower2 »

KenArrari wrote: post #3

Looking back it really is funny how impressed people used to be by dumb office perks. Free food and coffee? Sure, for the convenience. But the slides, the ball pits, the scooters? Sure it might make the office a nice place to be but once the novelty wears off it's still really hard to beat working from home.

Looking back my best office perk was working in the countryside and having fields to walk through during the lunchbreak.

Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#43

Post by philomath_mn »

asnyder wrote: post #16

I remember my walk through Github's office so many years ago, the Oval Office, Situation Room, t-shirt room, just to name a few, and somehow maintained a very chill vibe. Pretty epic stuff, definitely was a shock to this east coaster at the time, made the Bay Area tech scene seem like a paradise comparatively. Was that the pinnacle? I remember many offices at the time were going all out on both coasts. Have things mo…

In hindsight, nothing screams ZIRP more than a tech office with a replica of the Oval Office.

Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#44

Post by abusaidm »

mym1990 wrote: post #18

Off topic, but is it not crazy that there are ads plastered on just about every possible place of this write up, yet there are 0 pictures of the actual office?

Was on my phone and thought it was bizarre indeed. Left me hanging and didn’t read the rest of the article.

Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#45

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

mtmail wrote: post #4

Photos (originally from user Manjuuu in a previous submission https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36107267 ) https://officesnapshots.com/2015/04/06/github-san-francisco-... https://www.officelovin.com/2014/05/inside-githubs-san-franc...

> Every morning GitHubbers choose where they want to work: in one of two bars, several cafes, a library, a park, a speakeasy, a museum, a coder cave, or from home.

This is what it looks like when you have more money than sense. Just imagine. You want to build an office for people to work in to create your business. So you build a half dozen unrelated storefronts, just so your workers have the convenience of working from some other business.

If you didn't have the money to build that, what would you do instead? Text your coworkers to meet up at a real dive bar, coffee shop, library, museum. Take the money you would have spent on a plush office, and instead invest it in the actual business: more unique value-adding feature development, more customer engagement / support / UX, more reliability, more training and iteration on remote culture.

Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#46

Post by quickthrower2 »

gumby wrote: post #32
contrarian1234 wrote: post #14

Am I crazy ? ..didn't GitHub pretty much pioneer working from home (called "remote work" then) way way way before the pandemic? Definitely before 2016. They were one of the first to scale salaries to where you lived and set a lot of the common industry standards. It was all about dogfooding their own product and working remote using Github itself. They were all about NOT having an office. I never even realized they h…

> didn't [GitLab] pretty much pioneer working from home (called "remote work" then) way way way before the pandemic? We were doing this in the early 90s (even before the WWW). Foosball tables, fire engines, beds to nap in, kitchens full of food: none of that is somehow magically new

For me 90s job hunting everything looked Regus style corporate

Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#47

Post by Aromasin »

paul_f wrote: post #27
mtmail wrote: post #4

Photos (originally from user Manjuuu in a previous submission https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36107267 ) https://officesnapshots.com/2015/04/06/github-san-francisco-... https://www.officelovin.com/2014/05/inside-githubs-san-franc...

OMG, those barstools with the flat bottoms. Painful after 10 minutes. Who does this? I see this in co-working spaces all the time. Whoever designed them does not actually do any deep work. I just want a great chair and 3 monitors.

It baffles me too. They're for perching, not for sitting. Compare that with something like an upmarket Korean internet café, where all the chairs are supremely comfortable and the monitors are a gorgeous 4k 120Hz. It's really a lesson in the designers being the users. Internet Café owners in Korea generally grow up using them too. Tech offices are made by the same people who design hipster cafés, wealthy homes, and restaurants interiors for a living. They don't understand the demands, and go for aesthetics over function.

Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#48

Post by Aromasin »

escapedmoose wrote: post #11
mtmail wrote: post #4

Photos (originally from user Manjuuu in a previous submission https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36107267 ) https://officesnapshots.com/2015/04/06/github-san-francisco-... https://www.officelovin.com/2014/05/inside-githubs-san-franc...

Does this make anyone else hungry for a burger and a beer? The interior reminds me of the many brewery/restaurants that have come up in town over the past few years.

Probably made by the same interior designers. Same aesthetic, with no consideration as to the purpose and required function.

Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#49

Post by tinyhouse »

echelon wrote: post #10
KenArrari wrote: post #3

Looking back it really is funny how impressed people used to be by dumb office perks. Free food and coffee? Sure, for the convenience. But the slides, the ball pits, the scooters? Sure it might make the office a nice place to be but once the novelty wears off it's still really hard to beat working from home.

I want both. The office is energizing. Collaboration is amazing. Food and amenities take pressure off. White boards, conference rooms. Everything is always clean. Hanging out after hours with an open bar and video games helps with bonding. Working from home is comfortable. There's no pressure, no transit, and you can build it however you like. You can interleave your chores, focus without distraction, and be around t…

Great comment. This is exactly it. The best of both worlds is when you live close to the office and have the flexibility to come and go whenever you please. For companies that means either an office in a place like Manhattan where they know that they can hire young talent in close proximity to the office, or an office somewhere in the suburbs where they can attract older folks.

Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#50

Post by jacooper »

> If tech can look past the totalizing shame it currently feels, it can more honestly evaluate both its accomplishments and its shortcomings, and find a way to weave them together into a memorable public legacy.

I don't live in the U.S., but I think the article has over done this no? Shame in the entire sector? This can't be real.

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