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Comment by nilkn | Hacker News Reader

Natural light is one of the most important aspects of an office to me. A few years ago I actually turned down an offer because I realized I'd be sitting in an interior team-sized room with no windows and just a door to a hallway, again with no windows. I would have been giving up a seat next to huge windows with light flooding into the room. I just knew that I'd end up depressed in those working conditions and decided to turn it down.

Maybe this seems melodramatic, but sitting for 8+ hours in a small room with no natural lighting reminds me too much of high school. I was really unhappy during high school, and I honestly believe a lot of it was just the physical environment. If I can avoid it, I will. I still have that same seat described above next to huge windows and every day I'm so happy to come in and just bask in the sun's glory. Even if it's a cloudy or rainy day it's just great.

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I worked for the better part of a decade on my phd in an office with no windows and no clocks on the wall, and a coffee machine.

We liked to joke it was a near equivalent to a Vegas Casino for mathematicians.

I literally had a 4th floor corner office with a window in grad school. Unfortunately, the window measured about 10"x24", with a lousy view, and the office literally wasn't big enough to accommodate the three of us who shared it all at the same time. :P

I shared an office with a floor to ceiling set of windows.

Some director of another division found out about it and literally had facilities remove the desks and put high cubes in so that we wouldn't have more window than him.

That almost sounds like something out of Office Space

No natural light is pretty much illegal in most civilized countries.

This is why office buildings in most of Western Europe aren't as massive and square as in countries like the US.

Don't expect that in the US anytime soon as we haven't even mandated annual leave yet.

I really think natural light should be required for all. I went to a high school in Texas literally modeled after a prison. No windows, no natural light anywhere in the entire building. Built in 1979. What is wrong with these people?

I took my SATs at a high school classroom with a huge windows looking out to a forest setting... It was incredible

I struggled with fatigue for most of my sophomore year of high school. I started falling asleep in class out of nowhere. Then, as suddenly as I started falling asleep in class, I stopped.Looking back, I realized that I had been going days and weeks without seeing the sun. None of my classes had windows, nor did the lunchroom or the gyms. I had been getting to school early for clubs and leaving late because of sports. I was arriving at school before sunrise and leaving after sunset once the days got short enough.

Speaking of forests -- I think schools are overly concerned with controlling the environment kids learn in. I personally think that letting the mind wander for short periods helps your mental stamina recover.

I developed more-than-moderate SAD in high school that took years to get over. They really need to stop making high school kids get up so damn early, and adjust the school year so kids are off more in the worst of the Winter (like, most of it, ideally)

> I was arriving at school before sunrise and leaving after sunset once the days got short enough.

Is it possible that you were really really tired? That schedule sounds insane to me. Unless you're very high north, I guess.

It could make sense for Alaska.

It could also work for much of Europe, but we probably wouldn't use the word "sophomore", and I've never seen or heard of a school with no windows. I doubt it is allowed.

(For example, the UK requirements for a school building state "giving priority to daylight in all teaching spaces, circulation, staff offices and social areas" and "providing adequate views to the outside or into the distance to ensure visual comfort and help avoid eye strain" [1])

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/standards-for-sch...

The shortest day in San Francisco is 9.5 hours. The shortest day in Chicago is slightly north of 9 hours. The shortest day in London is less than 8 hours.

That's not an insane schedule. It's a bit longer than regular day, unless you're in London or north.

Ouch. Plenty of jolly and upbeat advice here for teachers on decorating their "Windowless Classroom", which is apparently a thing. OMG.

http://www.weareteachers.com/blogs/post/2015/08/25/best-of-t...

I sit right next to a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. The new designer who just started sits across from me and can't stand the sunlight, so he pulls the blinds down every day, all day. Drives me nuts, especially in the winter when I'm at work for all of the daylight hours I'm awake for.

Have you told him?

Not the OP, but it can be a difficult conversation.

I had a similar one when I was at CS school, one of our dorm room-mates was always covering the room's window with paper and stuff like that in order to not let the morning sun in. It drove me crazy. Being younger and more impulsive of course that I told him that what he was doing was bothering me. Not sure what the end-result was (this happened ~15 years ago), only that it created a tense atmosphere between me and said room-mate for the remaining of the school year. I'd imagine bringing that additional stress into an work-like environment it's not for the best.

I can recommend this book: "Difficult Conversations"

https://www.amazon.com/Difficult-Conversations-Discuss-What-...

I have my office windows all blacked out with blinds and a heavy curtain. Natural light makes it difficult to look at the screen. I will enjoy my natural light when I don't need to use my brain for coding and work. The best environment is like an evening or night: darkness except some dim, indirect lights, just like evenings and nights with slight ambient lighting. Best offices accommodate different needs.

Sorry for off topic comment but I would like to know which programming languages u use? Do u still like clojure ? Thanks

C and Python. Lots of bash scripting. Spare time projects still tend to favour lispy languages. I use Clojure, Chicken Scheme, and others. I'd love to use Hy but having tried it a few times seriously, it's not mature enough yet.

It's not melodramatic. I have a Film background and it's the same there - any person who's minimally studied artificial lighting will tell you that artificial lighting is still nothing like natural lighting. This is just considering the color spectrum reproduction you get and not even going into natural health benefits.

If we can't even film with artificial lighting and get away with it, what makes people think we can live under artificial lighting conditions for the majority of our working life ? It's madness.

In Europe it's even forbidden by law. You need some minimal percentage of natural light, or the place is not allowed to be worked in constantly.

Now I'm having 5 big windows in my room, from 3 sides :) Working from home as contractor.

I had several years of that when I worked in a DOD closed area. Never going back to that again.

Working in a SCIF is the WORST. Never again. Though I was able to work in one, very briefly, that had windows. It was bizarre to me being in a SCIF but with windows that had blinds open...

Working in a SCIF isn't so bad when you've got an outside office. I typically spend half my day in each location. I have had days, however, where I go into the SCIF in the morning and don't emerge until its time to go home. Fortunately, that's pretty rare.

I worked at a place that put a cube farm in a 'cleaned' out oil bunker for the former power plant. They built false walls and had airflow between the concrete wall and the false wall[1] which was a rather scary wind noise since we were 50' underground. Obviously no natural light and cell phones and radios didn't work. Had to wear a tie / jacket because dress codes even though it would have been illegal for a client to get into our area. I call that job my "3 Seasons in Heck".

1) something to do with concrete still bleeding oil even if sealed so smell wouldn't get to us.

And for those wondering what is a SCIF: "A Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF; pronounced "skiff") in United States military, security and intelligence parlance, is an enclosed area within a building that is used to process Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) types of classified information."

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