The #1 Office Perk? Natural Light
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So yeah,"the #1 office perk" for me is not getting interrupted with inane shit every ten minutes.
I get all my day-work done in the evening, when I'm in the office I just browse reddit or read HN because; unless I'm in a meeting or talking to a colleague- I cannot possibly be productive.
(I _really_ did try to avoid Reddit/HN but after 2 years of doing basically nothing above a 10 minute task I couldn't do it anymore, I was bored.)
And my company still trucks on with an open office policy. :(
Or the shaking of the floor. I worked in a "modern" high-rise of a well known company with open offices and the floor felt like it was made of Ikea particle board skin of an under-floor giant African drum.
I don't have an option, the fishbowl is thrust on me and has been for many years over many jobs.
Similarly; I actually prefer the dark, but were I in a situation where I walked into a dark room in the middle of a building- I would probably not like it.
CUDA, C++14, Python.
> Is it a better gig than previous one ?
It is! The office conditions are terrible, but my coworkers are freaking amazing, and I am genuinely excited about the work we do, which is the main reason I'm still there.
> Can you hear people farting and shitting in the bathroom ?
Only if the door is open and my headphones are off. :O
> How do you decompress after work
I hit the gym.
> are you currently searching for another job?
Actively, although the office conditions are mainly a symptom of utterly terrible management, which is my main reason for job hunting.
It's awesome.
Measured, it's right around ~60dB.
I just spent two and a half years working from home, where I could leave the tv on in the background. That was awesome. A little motion out of the corner of my eye, some noise, but nothing structured in a way I cared about. Loud reality shows about mechanical stuff were my noise-companion. I could just ignore them.
Music is full of structure. I love it far too much to work with it.
On the positive side, the "open office" I'm in now has some restaurant-style booths set up with glass doors. They're lifesavers.
Don't listen to music while doing creative work. Use noise, like sounds of the sea (I use an app called "Naturespace" for high-quality audio).
and people complaining about headphones don't buy the right ones. i use beyerdynamic headphones and could wear them all day.
This simply doesn't work for me. I understand it probably works for you: We are all a bit different. I find much of the "noise" (rain, seascapes, and so on) grating and annoying to the point that I don't want to finish anything creative. (I don't mind the real thing: I enjoy falling asleep when it is raining outside, for example, or hearing birds singing).
I'm also easily distracted by small sounds. A "quiet" library is full of shuffling, people dropping things, whispers, and so on.
However, drawing and painting to music of my choosing? Absolutely fantastic. I tend to choose things that are either instrumental or that actually use lyrics as part of the music instead of the music highlighting the lyrics. I'll even pick music depending on how I want to move when I draw or paint. If I want to create ideas or think? Stick on headphones and tune the world out. Perhaps go for a walk while doing so.
I tune in and out of the music, and that's fine. It tunes out basic noises: car and apartment doors and so on.
It converts it all into crystalline white noise. You can practically perceive the sound waves convert into a low pass filter, as soon as you turn the noise cancelling on.
Added bonus: put your chair and feet on a mat with vibration deadening material such as sorbothane, so you don't even feel people walk by.
Next I am planning on experimenting putting up a tri-fold poster board to block out visual distractions, too.
Call me crazy If my workplace decides they want continue to pay a developer salary and have it be at 20% efficiency, then that's on them to figure it out as long as it isn't effecting my outcomes. At the end of the day, I am there for the exchange of my time for their money. If my workspace begins to interfere with that, then I'll start looking for a new place.
It also doesn't solve having an actual conversation with someone else, which can be hard when you're competing with Sales-bro Bryan.
I felt the same for about 6 months. It's been a couple years now, and I am getting incredibly lonely and bored. Which is weird because I've never been a "social" person.
Even though my office is huge, it feels like hiding in a closet.
I often wonder why I even come in instead of working from home. All my collaboration with co-workers happens over email and screen sharing programs anyway.
Winnipeg might be much sunnier in the winter, but I'm not sure you'd get much more sun exposure given things like wind chill.
BTW, where on VI are you? Quadra here.
You want sunny days per year. Which Seattle gets less than 90. Most cities in California get over 200.
Last year was unusually warm and sunny in the summer as too, though I guess a couple years isn't really a climate change, it's just unusual weather.
On the flip side, people that got along without air conditioners 5 or 10 years ago are revisiting that decision, I called around a few places to get a quote for a split unit to be installed, and they were booked up through August.
Not to mention the week of smoke we've had the last 2 summers. ;)
The May-August period has very few clouds and a not-too-hot sun, so that is a fine season from the point of view of spending time outdoors and letting your skin work for your body.
Was a great choice for me.
I'm not a doctor either but have you consulted your doctor about this (or is this a short time frame for you to get back up to a health level?).
Cost isn't really an issue, I pay 15 dollars on Amazon for 360 5000 IU softgels.
Should note that I work in a windowless office room and almost definitely get less sunlight then the average person.
On a related note about sunshine, Sam Altman recommends a full spectrum LED light in the morning as his most beneficial productivity booster. http://blog.samaltman.com/productivity
In my home office, I'm fortunate to have both a large window and a simple IKEA floor lamp (something like this: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/10394129/). I alternate between the two, but never turn on the overhead lighting on the ceiling fan.
I find I don't mind higher CRI and higher frequency lighting nearly as much. You can get that in fluorescent lights and they're not as bad as they used to be, but the really good ones are expensive.
Anecdotally, I was a lot more nocturnal when I lived in New Orleans than when I lived in Boston and Seattle. It’s impossible to get too much sun up here, but down in the tropics, that’s a definite problem.
We had plenty of plants, fishtank and my customary giant Pac-Man. Good times.
When I went to work at Google, in a large windowless room, I was one of those people with a cover over their cube. Without the cover, one of the rows of artificial light would shine right in my eyes.
Now I'm in an office sitting right next to a 10x10-foot east facing window with lots of light and views outside. But I nearly always have the shade down since the sun shines right in and blinds me every morning.
All this could be solved with private offices. I just hope I live to see the day when our line of work reverts back to private offices from this open space insanity.
It's enough to throw off their work.
As a compromise you might try daylight balanced photography bulbs.
Consistent color but it feels like daylight.
It’s not a preference for me, it’s a disability. I love light, but glare is physically painful and results in migraines.
The strongly contrasting glare, from just a single blind being open, sounds horrible for others else in your area with sensitivities.
Then there is the uneven heating that natural light brings with it since it is blazingly hot where I live.
So #1 perk for me: enough schedule flexibility that I can ensure I can have some outdoor time during daylight hours every day, even in winter.
But I say scenery change, because one of my favorite things about my job is that I work off site frequently at industrial plants, agricultural facilities and the like. Its like a moderate vacation to just be away from a desk, even though my laptop is attached to me the entire time. Working in a dingy concrete bunker can be as much of a perk as it is to look out my window.
Mostly just monotonous environments tend to be what bothers me most I think. My last job was at a business attached to a mall (you could walk out the doors into the mall food court on the second level). Coffee breaks were often just walking around the downtown core or through the attached public buildings over walkways. Changing your environment is such a massive thing for me to help the day/week/month/years not feel like one long slog
Who has every thought to themselves, gee, I sure wish there was more flat concrete to look at.
You don't have to pay someone to mow the concrete slab, I guess. (And in the winter, don't shovel the snow, just make a sign that says: "warning, slippery!")
I've heard that cities are going that way to make pop up events easier. I don't think it really makes it that much easier though, and it looks like shit when an event isn't going on.
Personally I'd much rather have free lunches or unlimited PTO.
Somehow I got really lucky, and in 16 years of working in offices, I spent about 12 of them near a window (thanks in part to large suburban offices of Silicon Valley that offered lots of window seats). And for the most part I didn't have to deal with loud or stinky people or being far/close to other amenities.
Now I work from home, where I can see trees out my window. Sadly, Apple cut some of them down to make room for the offramp to their spaceship, so now I also see lights and power lines, but still tree too.
I wonder if it is related to coming from a northern country (Scandinavia) where ~1/4 of the year is really dark.
I would guess that all Scandinavia countries have similar rules, and there's actually a minimum amount of light you're legally allowed to have in a room. The law in Denmark for instance actually require a room to be insanely bright.
In at least one case, it wasn't just me. I used to work editing photos on California's central coast and after we moved to a building with loads and loads of skylights, and got a bunch of new glossy-screen iMacs, it was really hard to get color accuracy if you wore anything but a black or white shirt. It was like staring at a mirror all day long. Eventually we got umbrellas to blot out the sun and that helped.
I have just been using stylus and using dark themes for sites I use often, but would love a more automated approach, especially for sites I don't use that often.
I work in Germany where direct access to natural sunlight is part of our OH&S policies.
Luckily, where I work now, we're getting a new office, and when the manager presented the plans, one of the first questions was, "Who gets the window seats!?"
"I've worked in an office without getting paid, really takes a toll on you." Sounds ridiculous. Why would you work without getting paid? Same for natural light.
Like some other people have mentioned, you start wondering if you might prefer to work construction or in a food truck or just anything so long as it's outside. But really you can get most of the way outside with a good office space and you may find you enjoy your job a whole lot more.
If an employer doesn't offer remote work or a door, my rate goes up a lot.
I've resorted to sticking a takeaway menu into the vent to stop it blowing in my direction.
I worked for a large department in a huge corporation about 3 years ago. Around half the department sat in a large cube-farm room. Around the edges of that room were managers' offices and a meeting room, which entirely cut off natural light.
It was like a vegas casino in there, perpetual half light, no concept of time of day. Really depressing. I was glad I got to sit upstairs by a window.
That's pretty much my setup. It feels especially good to have managers with windows offices tell you to man up when you complain about lack of light.
I can't even imagine working in a place like that 8 hours a day. I would probably rather live in the woods or something.
I get really jealous of the construction workers when it's a nice sunny day outside. I've worked a few different outdoor jobs, and there's nothing quite like working on a sunny day, it really lifts the spirit.
Shame there is no e-ink laptop sometimes soon, most likely...
There are commercially made shades too. Look around.
Here in France we all have well lit offices with natural lights and windows. Well not all but the vast majority.
To me it seems punitive to work in a blind/artificially lit office.
The cost to my health is measurable.
I like your attitude.
I'm currently gazing down a glass-ceilinged atrium so will not be firing anybody for the time being.
greetings, eMBee.
I know it’s a different mindset. Do it long enough and you realise you might as well work for yourself. Or work on contracts and sub out what you can’t directly do but are willing to manage.
My old mindset when I started out was that employers know everything and are all powerful. In reality they had better have more experience than you in multiple ways or they’re going to be fired either by the market or when you have to quit (which is obviously you firing them).
Then the second person who comes in every day shows up and flips all the overhead lights on every god damn day.
When I’m working and the lights flip, I get a sense of rage and depression. I think it will be the reason why I quit this job.
You have to keep your head down and act like it’s Candide: whatever your company currently does is the best possible thing they could ever do.
The way you approach doing this goes a long, long way toward how you're perceived.
"It’s not possible to have these preferences treated in an adult way in modern corporations, and anyone the issue got escalated to will just see it as whining."
I imagine you think this is the case because you see others asking for similar types of things as also being "whining". All you have to do is ask politely and calmly, and things should be fine. You might not get your way, but asking for something isn't automatically seen as "whining" by most people.
I take other peoples’ preferences very seriously and treat them with respect. People should at least be heard and compromises attempted.
Management and capricious brogrammer types in every company I’ve ever worked for across 12 years however do not act this way at all, and reasonable requests will only be used against you. This has been outwardly and definitively proven time after time.
It sounds like your working experience has been wildly unrepresentative of the reality of modern corporations.
Maybe it's not the actual light, but it's a signal that the circus has arrived and your peaceful hour is over.
(I’d honestly prefer windowless to a window I couldn’t control, too. Windows with effective shades are nice, particularly if they can be opened for fresh air, but I’d be completely fine with a windowless office with a substantial door, great artificial full spectrum lighting, and HVAC under my control 24x7. Especially if my door and lock had a security rating.
I watch the slow progress of several buildings under construction. A huge tower near Central has appeared, the stairway core apparently. Two big projects to the north also, near the cinema and Donnelly field.
Soon I'll see the first yellows, reds and oranges of fall.
I enjoy the view so much that I brought in binoculars to see more detail. I have a sort of hobby of identifying landmarks visually and then finding them on google maps. This can be surprisingly difficult to do. The relative scale of things is surprising. Things that loom large in my view don't look big on the map, and vice versa.
I can visually trace a good portion of my bike path to work, as I live near the top of a distant hill. I identify the landmarks on that route.
Despite these treasures I only remember to look up at the view a few times a week. I sometimes forget to open the blinds for days at a time. Very sad! I'm happy that this article reminded me of this great pleasure. It's trite, but life is short; enjoy the view.
I don't mind it that much, and I usually leave work while the sun is still out. I can see some people having an issue with it, however.
I never open my curtains at home either.
Mea culpa, Mea maxima culpa.
Compared to what, sitting?
We already spend 8 hours "lying on our back" every day -- sleeping, and we have evolved for it. It also puts little pressure in our body compared to sitting for hours on end.
I think once you become quadriplegic you have bigger problems than your position when using your computer, but overall user on your back is definitely better for me than sitting up in my chair.
* Yes, that is the correct medical term.
For me, sitting in the dark is depressing.
I feel much better in a dimly lit room. Not pitch black but a twilight kind of darkness.
However, I am autistic so that may have something to do with it. I only recently realised this. Ever since I've lived on my own I kept my curtains closed and my room dimly lit, but I never made the link to my autism or sensory issues. It seems kind of obvious in hindsight.
For some reason things that make 'normal' people happy have the opposite effect on me, and vice versa. For example, socialising makes me feel depressed while the more time I spend alone the happier I am. I don't think I've ever felt lonely either.
To many people NOT socializing doesn't compute.
There is an overabundance of sharp blue light in most modern light sources. I highly recommend either using tinted computer glasses when working or something like f.lux
Even worse are flickering lights. Even at a high (nearly imperceptible) frequency, I have seen so many colleagues(myself included) suffer from headaches due to them.
What should be done? Either invest in better smoother lighting for your workers or let plenty of natural light inside.
Also, you can buy a professinal CRI meter so that you can get an idea of what you’re buying here.
Outside LED there are also high-CRI CFL lights which are easier to fit into overhead lights compared to LED. Still they need to be measured.
Light quality is generally measured in CRI (color rendering index), with 100 being sunlight. Best professional photo lights give you up to 97 CRI. I don't know how closely CRI reflects the biological effect of the sun light, but we sort of can judge it by proxy - CRI reflects photography requirements, which correlates with closeness to sun light spectrum, which correlates with biologically positive effects. Even being a proxy, this measuring ability is still vastly better anything we have for the "health" light which you can't really measure except in a control group study which none of us can do.
In practice I suggest going to Amazon and shopping for high-CRI lights, such as photography LED panels, about $100-$200 a pop. They're not big enough to light up a room, but they can light up your desk or maybe cubicle. I bought a few and the light is very, very pleasant. Alternatively shop for high-CRI CFL lights to replace the ceiling lights, those can light up the room. I haven't tried that yet though.
It might also be useful to buy a CRI meter so that you know where you stand. Expensive as they are, might be still worth it considering the benefits. Also maybe pool money with friends on this - you're not going to use it a whole lot.
I have been trying to figure out how to make my own, but it's tricky.
Why don't buildings put natural light collectors ("windows") on exterior surfaces, and use light redirectors ("mirrors" and maybe "fiber") to shunt the light to places that otherwise lack it. The light could be output through the same fixtures that host artificial light sources. (Sensors and dimmers on artificial light sources could compensate for variations in natural light.)
It would be much more pleasant than artificial light and it would save energy. Perhaps the ROI isn't high enough.
Any job where I can just have a window looks really good to me now.
CO2 concentrations under 1000 ppm are described as having 'good air exchange'. CO2 between 1500-2000 is unpleasant, causes drowsiness and feels stale and gross. 5000 ppm is the typical workplace health limit.
Some guidelines are based on 1950s air quality, which had 250-350 ppm CO2. Today, you need more circulation to maintain acceptable CO2 levels than you did 50 years ago because the outdoor air has a higher concentration.
The #1 office perk for me is silence. Game sudios are so noisy, holly cow!
The lamps are CRI 90-95, a mix of 5500K and 4000K; they produce pretty bright light (4500 lumen in smaller rooms, 6000 lumen in the bigger room, 3000+ lumen in the bathroom), and it's pretty comparable with the light from the window in the summer.
Note that I live in a NYC apartment which is not exactly spacious; in a typical house, I'd use 1.5 to 2x the amount of light. One of my friends who happens to have particularly large rooms uses 4 to 6 T8 tubes to light them; the tubes are full-spectrum ones used to light movie sets, something like KinoFlo.
I love the natural light, but I hate the noise and visual distraction 10 times more than I love natural light.
I know of a few workplaces in the US that do feature free alcohol at work, but many times out of 10 someone gets way too drunk and ruins the fun for everyone.
I believe that office workers are required to have actual windows and honestly I don't think even the employers think it's right to have windowless offices
There has to be a source of natural daylight and there must be clear windows that you can see through. Of course there are always exceptions, but they are just that.
https://arbejdstilsynet.dk/da/regler/indeklima/belysning-og-...
As an employee, I hate this rule and would love a windowless office. Right now, I just keep the curtains closed all day.
I can't really imagine not being look out a windows during the day. Also I think I'd feel trapped without windows, not that I can just jump out my 3rd. floor window.
Sunlight is nice if I'm going to be outside admiring nature, but it's crap for reading, playing video games, any number of activities I want to do at home.
The cheap place I'll be staying on vacation in a couple of weeks offered a "free upgrade" to a room with a window and I was like "I don't understand - what would I in theory see out of this window?" because it's in a city centre, and obviously as a tourist I shall go out and look at museums and galleries and stuff, I shan't be sat there all day looking out the window, so it seems pointless. The other person I'm going with likes windows, so they'd already paid a little bit extra to have a window anyway. Crazy.
On a side note I don't think I'd stay in a hotel/motel room without windows, that just seems creepy. For the same reason I don't book room on ferries without windows, even though I'd just see the water.
3: pillows may be considered passive weapons but that is irrelevant unless it is used as such or carried in a context where it is likely intended to be used as such (e.g. while participating in a demonstration). That said, assaulting random people in public with a pillow is probably still illegal because it involves assaulting random people (albeit with a weapon that's less likely to cause permanent injuries directly).
5: Both drilling and throwing bottles into containers cause noise pollution. It's not the act itself that's verboten, it's the noise it causes.
6: This is the same thing as 5. The law doesn't give an exhaustive list of activities that might be too damn noisy so I have no idea where these come from.
8: Calling a police officer "du" is a sign of disrespect. If you're new to the language and struggling with the distinction, the police officer will likely correct you or ignore it. Treating police officers disrespectfully is a misdemeanor and addressing them as "du" is one way to be disrespectful.
9: This is a widely held misconception. The "Deutschlandlied" is not illegal. The national anthem only has one verse and that's the third verse of the Deutschlandlied (or actually "Lied der Deutschen"). You can still sing the entire song but if you were going for singing the national anthem, you'll spend two verses singing something that isn't the national anthem. The reason people will still look at you in disgust is the same reason the anthem only uses the third verse: we don't take to jingoism too kindly after WW2.
10: I'm pretty sure it's not a law that you can't drink Export or non-Munich beer at the Oktoberfest, considering the Oktoberfest is in essence just a private event, but it's Bavaria so I'm not sure of this one.
"Passive weapons" are not illegal; it is illegal to bring them to a demonstration with the intent to use them to avoid police interventions.
I realize it's not the only reason possible to take body armor to a demonstration, but it is the reason for most people wearing them.
If you bring a shield to a demonstration it means you're expecting to be attacked, which either means you don't trust the police to protect you from aggressive counter-demonstrators (which presumably shouldn't be a reasonable concern) or you intend to start a fight.
I wouldn't say the worry is entirely misplaced, but the general idea is that if you were allowed to bring equipment that protects you from police violence the police would have to apply more violence to subdue you and nobody wants that.
IMO police violence and negligence should be prosecuted more thoroughly (see G20 vs the failure of police to uphold the law during nazi demonstrations in Chemnitz recently) but I don't disagree with the idea in general because at least it means we don't have stand-offs between white supremacists and black activists carrying (semi-automatic) assault rifles like recently in Texas, or shield formations like in Charlottesville.
EDIT: It's the same thing as with gun ownership, really: if guns are so widespread that you have to assume every suspect packs heat, you have to treat every suspect as a potential shooter and be ready to shoot first. If a cop stops your car in Germany, there's almost no chance a weapon will be involved.
And everywhere else, too, since “the State” is simply a label for whatever aggregate of actors exercises a monopoly on legitimate use of force.
A lot of European countries, as far as I know. Not sure if it's all of them. But others have replied, so we know about Denmark (and it's the same in the other Scandinavian countries, probably all the Nordic countries, i.e. Scandinavia + Finland and Iceland), Germany, possibly Spain (not sure), Netherlands, ..
I'm not sure whether they were talking about EU regulations or about the regulations of specific european countries.
Edit: typos
Eg http://www.right-of-light.co.uk/services/calculations-and-re...
Sounds like backdoor NIMBYism
source in French: https://www.senat.fr/questions/base/2012/qSEQ121002524.html
”8. Natural and artificial room lighting
8.1. Workplaces must as far as possible receive sufficient natural light and be equipped with artificial lighting adequate for the protection of workers' safety and health.
[…]
10. Windows and skylights
10.1. It must be possible for workers to open, close, adjust or secure windows, skylights and ventilators in a safe manner. When open, they must not be positioned so as to constitute a hazard to workers.”
Effective since December 31, 1992 (two years later for Greece)
I wonder how that is interpreted? Does that exclude buildings older than the code? Does it prevent new buildings from being constructed without these features? It would always be "possible" if enough money was spent on it (and you ignore other considerations, like historical values)...
* If the nature of what goes on inside a room conflicts with the presence of windows -- e.g. labs (say, a laser lab)
* if the room isn't meant to be used by humans (e.g. storage closets, server rooms) -- If humans sometimes enter such rooms that's OK, but it can't be their "assigned workplace".
The example I know of where it isn’t enforced is of people working inside a refrigerator. I can imagine security conscious jobs and radiology departments also may be exceptions.
It also doesn’t mean all rooms need windows or even natural light. Toilet rooms often don’t, for example, and storage rooms often only have windows high in the walls or in the ceiling (typically way more than in “a room with a view” in Cupertino :-) )
Where I just had lunch they get natural light whenever a waiter opens the door to bring some food out.
Source: I live in the EU and have been inside a lot of restaurant kitchens in both Germany and Hungary.
Sunlight is not only good for morale, but also good for health.
It's possible to circumvent this by putting an office into space that was designed as storage or as factory. But you will then usually also lack toilets, kitchen and decent air condition. If you do the renovation to get those things and abide by the law, you will have to arrange a window too.
In practice some individuals in overstaffed offices will work from a space that was originally storage, then negotiation room and now a shitty office room.
edit: And yes, I've worked in places with and without natural light, both white collar jobs and near minimum wage jobs. Comfortable temperature for the amount of physical activity I'm being asked to do and a comfortable amount of space in which to work are both a million times more important and the former only requires pushing some buttons or turning a dial, not cutting a hole in the side of a building. If someone asked me what would make work suck less back when I worked in one of those jobs where I didn't get to any outdoor light (some of those jobs didn't even suck) natural light wouldn't have even been on my radar as an issue.
No nationalistic swipes on HN, please. Your comment would be fine without that bit.
I keep 2 different jackets in my office locker to wear at my desk in the middle of summer, because I don't know how hot or not it will be at my desk.
At least in offices without it, I know to dress appropiately based on the weather outside.
Since lots of people don't take care of their teeth even though they know they should, some people will avoid all sunlight.