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Comment by dekhn | Hacker News Reader

I worked at a startup where the CEO thought everybody wanted "light" and put windows all around the offices. It was terrible. Everybody who worked on computers all day had a hard time. When I was in college, I would have killed for a simple room where I could close and lock the door and have no external light pollution.

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Blinds are far less expensive than windows. It doesn’t make sense for a company to put windows everywhere but then not be able to afford some cheap window coverings. Every window-covered office I’ve ever worked in has had roller shades that were very effective at controlling glare. They’re even electronic so they can be automated. It’s not difficult or expensive.

As a counterpoint, I worked at a company where the engineering manager thought all engineers wanted to work I dark caves, so that’s what we got.

Except most adults don’t want to work in dark caves so a lot of us ended up working from the common spaces to be exposed to some natural light. Eventually we ended up working from home because there was no way I could last in a dark cave every single day.

> When I was in college, I would have killed for a simple room where I could close and lock the door and have no external light pollution.

Blocking out light is easy. Put up curtains or a sheet.

But you can’t go the other way. There’s no way to add natural light, exterior views, and opportunity for fresh air after the building has been constructed.

With windows, everyone can choose. Without windows, there is no choice.

There's a limited amount of exterior wall space. If you give the bedrooms windows then that pushes the living space to the interior and makes it window less.

That's how my freshman dorm was. Moving exterior to interior it was bedrooms, study space, and then a shared living room. The result was windows in the bedroom, where they were mostly covered with blinds, and no windows in the living area.

That's the wrong compromise. You want the light in the living areas where people are spending their days. Of all the different trade offs windowless bedrooms is 100% the right call.

> There's a limited amount of exterior wall space. If you give the bedrooms windows then that pushes the living space to the interior and makes it window less.

Or maybe you just make the floorplates smaller to increase the ratio of exterior walls to floor area like most residential buildings.

> There's a limited amount of exterior wall space.

So add courtyards. Or build an E shaped building. Or build multiple smaller buildings.

You know, the things we do for other large institutional buildings like hospitals and dorms.

Sure, but those all come with increased construction cost and less efficient land usage.

Someone who can afford to invest one point five billion US dollars into a single student's dorm is under little pressure to be efficient, one would think.

I work with computers 10 hours a day and I love having natural light. It kind of conects me with the real world and makes me feel better.

I live in a wooded area on a beautiful stream, and my house is full of giant windows. I still spend 10+ hours/day working and relaxing in the dark underground utility room, because that lets me control the light, and I’m only looking at the screen anyway.

Have you considered:

1. joining any one of the other 99.9% of companies where the CEO is not a sun worshipper?

2. if (1) not an option, using blinds?

george carlin?

No, just personal experience. When I worked at Uber, the main office was so big that it meant that large parts of the office were dark. Some teams, like, super critical to the core business and highly compensated paid teams, actually hung a bunch of plants in their area as a way to cope with not seeing sunlight.

Someone going on a rant about how miserable they were about having too much sunlight, while at the same time being incapable of applying incredibly common trivial solutions to solve this calamity - I found this quite silly and it made me a bit upset.

blinds don't work in a large open office. a small number of people want them open, a small number of people want them closed, and the rest of the people just want to get their job done.

blinds also don't produce the sort of light I want to work with. My preference would be no natural light, and only indirect diffused lighting for general illumination and point lights where I'm working with my hands.

Blinds literally work in a large office space. I work in such a space now. We get direct sunlight most of the year. If it’s too bright, people just go up to the window and put up the blinds. If it’s an overcast day, sometimes the blinds are up, sometimes they’re down, just based on any random person’s whim. As I said above, if you work in a place that literally makes the room so bright that you can’t see your screen, the solution is probably not to argue about your ideal setup with strangers on HN, but rather to have a conversation with your coworkers and make it so you can actually see your screen.

You’re describing an office, not a living space.

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