Comment by jroseattle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jroseattle | Hacker News Reader

For the engineers I've hired onto my team, I insist they be provided the very things that I want as an engineer:

  - Two big monitors
  - New dev machine/laptop, running latest bits
  - A top-of-the-line chair
  - Some natural light (not to be confused with *natty light*)

These are the non-negotiable items, and having taken a few senior mgmt positions, it's now something I state upfront: this is how we roll, no exceptions.

There's a second tier, depending on the environment: personal whiteboards. This is a function of the physical space, obviously; but anytime someone has a brilliant idea, I don't want them waving hands in front of me, I want expo markers flying around.

Aside from standard company stuff, that's it. And it's across the board -- everyone gets this. Everyone is valued, because your time is valued. I expect a lot from my team, and don't want anything petty getting in the way -- especially a few pieces of hardware and furniture that are negligible compared to the cost of the engineer.

It might not be everything in the world, but it sure seems to keep everyone happy because they are seriously productive.

Natural light can't be emphasized enough. I just moved to a window-less fluorescent fishbowl shared by three analysts/developers, and I've never had so many headaches.

I hate natural light and windows; give me a windowless room where I can set the temperature, light level, etc. exactly, independent of time of day.

The first thing after "private offices for anyone who wants them" is "24x7 HVAC adjustable as close to individually as possible"; I have a shared office in an invite-only coworking space which I largely don't use because the HVAC shuts off at 6pm and is on again at 9am, with huge windows -- it's barely ok in the evenings/mornings during the week, but unusable on weekends.

Maybe it's not possible if you're sharing a room, but in the past I was in a similar situation with regard to natural light. I turned off the ceiling fluorescents and brought in incandescent desk and floor lamps. It made the room much more comfortable and got rid of my headaches.

Another thing is desk position, I hate working at a desk that is right in the corner of the room staring directly at a blank wall.

adding two more to the list - peace and quiet, and as less meetings as possible

Big monitors, small offices. Give me a room where I can close the door. I'll share it with one other person, but it can't be a tight fit. If you expect me to work while you're interrupting me every 5 minutes, then you don't really expect me to be productive. Also good- conference rooms for ad hoc meetings. (Maybe for the people who like to work together in a room they can take over a conference room or whatever.... make your layout flexible enough.)

One company, when I was hired, asked me to tell them exactly what I wanted computer wise-- I was quite impressed with that. No more being forced to use crappy windows computers, I specified a MacBook Pro, etc. They said "whatever you want, within reason."

But I remember... years of fighting to have decent sized monitors. I think two big monitors is good, three might be a bit better. It seems displays these days are shockingly cheap compared to the value they offer over even just one year.

>No more being forced to use crappy windows computers

I laughed at this part of your post.

Yeah, the office thing has always been a function of available space for us. Some of our folks want complete isolation, others like an open environment. I've always tried to accommodate personal preferences, so I try to pull that from folks as we work together. Sometimes, what somebody wanted last year changes with this year; I try to be accommodating to allow everyone to change around; no need letting the workplace get stale, when simple movement can solve a problem.

I always give our engineers their choice of platform -- windows, osx, linux, whatever. I count on them to make sure they have the environment available to develop on. It's up to them to make sure they can work locally. (Shared services like data/caching/etc. are of course handled remotely.)

Our last few hires requested 17-inch Macbook Pro laptops, with dual Thunderbolt displays. Done. I do not sit around wondering if the cost of the tool is worth the expense, as it simply doesn't compare to the cost of the time of the engineer involved. Even if anyone might consider the developer is getting the "better end of the deal", I don't care -- I trust my team to produce. I just simply refuse to let hardware get in the way of potential output.

BTW: if a developer wants three monitors vs. two...great. Again, I trust my team and I have faith in them to make good business decisions about resources. Somebody tells me they want three monitors, it's a task delegated to our asset team. Done.

I'm envious, that's very enlightened. I've mentioned to my current and past bosses the fact that not everyone wants to work in a romper room environment and would actually prefer quiet instead, only to receive incredulous responses. The ability to recognize that your own preferences might not be optimal for everyone else is a surprisingly rare skill.

You sounds like a very enlightened manager. I particularly like your point about evaluating the situation periodically. People's preferences change over time and it's great that you try to adjust as they do.

One of my summer jobs needed a lot of stapling. Everything I did ended up being stapled to something else.

The stapler broke. A nice stapler costs just £10. It will last, with care, ten years.

I ask for a stapler. I get given a nasty plastic[1] bit of rubbish. It breaks after half a day. I use my minimum wage to buy myself a stapler.

I learn to hate that employer.

[1] the plastic was nasty - that translucent coloured plastic popular when iMacs appeared.

I don't get this new obsession with "let's just put everyone in a giant room so they can collaborate". I think it's a cop-out to not get bigger/better laid out offices.

Developers need to write code either alone or in pairs. Large places breed interruptions, killing productivity. All these experimental ideas with unassigned offices where anyone uses them when they need to don't work either because people will simply squat on them.

If you want your developers to do actual work instead of being distracted, give them individual offices + lots of shared meeting space with whiteboards. This is the gold standard. Anything less (e.g.: n developers per office) will reduce productivity.

Here's my formula:

  productivity = hours_per_week * total_developers * (baseline + (1-baseline)/(avg_developers_per_office^ALPHA))

Where baseline is the minimum fraction (0 to 1) of work a developer can get done even while being distracted at all times, and ALPHA is a constant left to the reader to determine. productivity is measured in useful hours per week for the whole team.

What's new about it? It's rare these days to get your own office for any job. Open plan somehow took over all the workplaces to all our detriment.

I think the relatively recent thing is putting everyone in an open room with nothing really separating you from the person sitting at the long table next to you, as opposed to putting people in cubicles which at least have a tiny suggestion of separation.

In my experience (in bigger companies), if you get to know (to a level of trust) the real estate people and then happen to ask them, they'll tell you the decision is top down and cost-driven. 100%. It's all about square feet (meters) / employee.

That would be the immediate, upfront cost. A real/realistic assessment of expected employee productivity is hard to find. (Though reference to various external "studies" and "assessments" may be made. "Best practices", "industry standards/norms", etc.)

The internal publicity is heavily or entirely about "collaboration" and "facilitation" and "workflow", etc. Whatever. Just ask the people over in real estate (if they trust you).

I agree that distraction and interruption are giant problems, but I don't think that private offices are the only way to solve that.

I'm much happier in team spaces, where everybody who's involved is nearby. You do have to be disciplined to make it a good environment for coding. E.g., requiring that off-topic conversations happen elsewhere, and that people be generally quiet and respectful. But it can definitely work, and it makes collaboration 10x easier.

I'm not sure it's a new obsession -- I've worked in those environments eons ago.

We have a combination of open environment + offices now, with several people sharing offices. Privacy quite often leads to productivity, but I've found it ebbs and flows with people over time. Sometimes a few folks need to be out in the atrium or in the common area, it just really depends. No judgment from us, if they want to crawl in the vent and work, get to climbing!

We always try to make sure we can accommodate most everyone's wishes for workspaces.

Some people prefer an open office environment. I know I do. I just from a job where our whole team sat in one room to a place where we all have our own offices. I kind of hate it. It's not that I'm any more/less productive, it's that all kinds of other conversations just don't happen.

"Did you see that article on hacker news about X?" "Hey, what do you guys think about this design?"

All of that stuff can happen, but you have to force it to happen by leaving your office. It doesn't happen as naturally. You might think of these as distractions, but I think these are the type of interactions that make people more invested and passionate.

Also, I get WAY more distracted when I have my own office. I find it really easy to just sit and browse the Internet instead of working. When my peers are around me it's harder to get lost on the Internet because I don't want to look like a slacker.

To each their own. I can understand the advantages and disadvantages of both.

I want to work with you.

I've currently got a ~4' whiteboard, a ~13" laptop with a ~15" 4:3 monitor attached to it in my cube.

Takes some getting used to compared to the IdeaPaint-covered WALL at my home office and the two 24" widescreens.

I have a whiteboard wall at my office. Let me make a recommendation.

Don't do it. Paint your wall white, or whatever, and get a big sheet of glass (or a few). Mount that sucker on the wall.

Glass doesn't suck up color the way whiteboards do, and it's easy as hell to clean. It's also cheap as all get out - it's a big sheet of sand, after all. And you can do nifty things - arduino, RGB LED, mild paper backing, and you've got a damn mood-light / whiteboard :)

Anyway, I recommend this to everyone I know that talks about this. A company we sub for in VA did this because I was in town when they were planning the whiteboards for their new office, and they love it.

Actual "glass whiteboards" are tremendously expensive - we're talking thousands of dollars. They seem really slick. Are you doing a DIY sort of thing, like this: http://www.ikeahackers.net/2012/01/not-expensive-glass-white...

+1.

We have a bunch of Ikea glass-top desks, which at first I thought would be lousy. Turns out the glass is far better on your skin than the various other finishes of wood-type desks (the ones from Ikea).

But, huge side benefit -- people are writing notes, designs, etc. all over their desks. It's very cool.

Or buy a huge piece of shower board for $12 and mount that on the wall.

I read this and think back...

The only ones who got dual monitors were management and HR. One of our developers wanted two monitors - he was told to go buy them himself, so he did.

Whiteboard? More frequent is post-it notes.

Current development equipment - Was doing kernel development in 2003 on Pentium 75s.

"he was told to go buy them himself, so he did."

Which is a problem in itself. I understand he needed another monitor. But buying it himself shows the management that they have absolutely no need to invest in that, if devs are ready to buy it themselves in the end.

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