You won't believe how nice Notch's office is
kotaku.com
kotaku.com
From my window, I can see just three freeways tightly surrounding this place-less office park from each side. And I am hungry, right now, there are just two ugly canteens that close by 2 PM anyway. It makes me feel desperate. Hunger is not nice.
In Berlin pretty much all the food is cheap, but very little of it is good. The standard of sushi is generally passable, though it's not my favorite thing.
Unless midtown food options have radically changed since I last worked up there five years ago.
In those pictures, you can see a long table that looks like lunch is eaten in-house.
Reminds me of the Joel Spolsky school of keeping good developers happy: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/12/29.html
We worked in a building that was only at about 20% capacity so the canteen was closed and there was no food shops within a miles walk.
Basically, forgetting to make a packed lunch meant staying hungry all day and trying to subside on vending machine coffee alone.
Question the style choices, sure, but the assumption that is in anyway more expensive than average is completely false.
There's an ad agency here in Seattle called the Wexley School for Girls that has a crazy office space with an all-white room and a Chinese restaurant section, etc. Written about here: http://www.seattleite.com/creative-spaces-unique-seattle-off...
when I walk by, I always think it would be cool to work in a place like that, but I don't think I would enjoy it, long-term.
That picture is about as posed as posed gets but in my (limited) experience, people in the tech industry do tend to dress 'up' somewhat more than in the US.
But, you know, if notch were in a smoking jacket or a Hefner-style robe, I think it would still work ;-)
During the summer several people showed up with no shoes at all.
"Practising being formal" makes sense, I think.
It makes you feel different. You think about yourself differently, and everyone else does too.
It's kinda fun. Everyone should try it sometime if they haven't, even if it's just wearing a collared shirt instead of a T-shirt. Try it out and see how you feel.
That being said, I don't see ANY computers there, so maybe they just didn't picture their brickwork in this photo shoot.
You're welcome.
Also, I expect many of them use the rest of the space to dream up ideas, plan, and work on laptops.
You can see some to the far left of the second image (the one after the collage). Then if you skip to the final image and note the shelf-unit (at the end of the long table) it snaps into focus - and you can just see the desks behind :)
Ion Storm on the other hand basically used their fame and some promises of a future product to get a load of cash from investors, and spent that on a very nice office.
[0] http://0x10c.com
For instance it be possible to have a Minecraft-esque gameplay mechanic on the planets and, as a player, to acquire through some in-game currency a pre-designed spacecraft created by others. So it could be played as an ordinary space trading game to an extent. In this form it'd be an extension of Minecraft.
For others, I can see guilds being set up around exploitation of the programmable computers onboard spacecraft, with guilds developing their own encrypted communications protocols and attempting to break those of their competitors while still engaging in standard space game warfare with the added extra of electronic warfare. This is far geekier, but it has scope for players of varying skill levels occupying different roles without having to learn how to program the DCPU-16. This would be a sort of EVE Online scenario.
There are other combinations that would be available, given a big enough community, a way to exchange items and the right gameplay dynamic. If Mojang gets that right and sells it right then 0x10c may potentially become a huge hit.
Of course what I've described is ambitious in what's required from the game and there are a million things that could go wrong and make it too hard to make a game with this breadth and flexibility. The odds are against Notch and his team, but if they do succeed I think it'll be epic.
Let's not forget that to an outside observer Minecraft is very geeky and quite confusing. It's a game without any gaming like most are used to, yet over time interest snowballed and non-gamers got into it based on recommendations. I hope the same could happen with 0x10c.
This is some kind of ultimate mancave, I can't imagine a girl working in there.
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Mojang_AB#Current_employee...
Oh, so that's why.
Incidentally, I don't mean to call you out in particular, but when you call grownup female programmers "girls," lots of very cool women will decide to hang out somewhere else -- sort of for the same reason black men in the US aren't going to love it if someone calls them "boys." Not trying to police your language, just something to think about.
Why oh why do you need to point this out? I use the words girls and guys all the time and it doesn't mean anything racist or sexist.
Boy, not guy. If you used 'boy' for a black male, it would be pretty racist.
Know how today it's popular to call to someone by saying "Hey man", "Yo man", etc? That was a trend started by black men in response to racist white people calling them "boy" as a way to insult or demean. The stigma still exists throughout most of black culture because believe it or not, there's still parts of the south where full grown black men are called "boy" by ignorant/racist whites.
Using "girl" is not in the same ballpark, so I can see how this may have slipped your mind, but some full-grown women don't like being called a "girl". It's demeaning in a similar way, though I don't believe it was intended to oppress the entire female sex, so it's not nearly as bad.
If it's a professional setting, don't call people "girls" or "boys". It's just not respectful. If someone is over the age of 21, just use "woman" or "man", or whatever they prefer to be called. They will appreciate it.
Just because something should matter more doesn't mean it does. I agree that vocabulary alone should not matter, but this isn't how the world works. You can't use 'the N word' in public because people don't differentiate your intent from the vocab. Same goes for all terms for all kinds of people.
No matter what anyone calls themselves, it's important you treat all people with respect by default, regardless of how they act towards themselves or others. If your boss calls herself a 'girl', you should still call her a 'woman'.
Sometimes people will unwittingly foster an unwelcoming culture by making jokes about themselves. Sexual harassment is one example. By calling herself a 'girl', and by making derogatory comments about women, this boss could be setting the standard for all women in the office to be treated, which is very unfair. The same thing happens with race, religion, etc.
I agree with you that calling female programmers and coworkers as girls is demeaning, but it IS NOT the same as calling a black man a boy, which has a long history of racist oppression.
And there is no history of sexist oppression?
I only want to point out that racism and sexism, while related, are distinct and different. Referring to women in professional circles as girls is a very different kind of thing compared to calling a black man "boy", and attempts to draw parallels between the two are problematic, as we get into the territory of identity and experience erasure.
I'm not arguing that they are equivalent, but both are part of a long history of violent oppression.
Take a look at how 1950s professional men in Mad Men call their female coworkers "girls." You know what the legal context was? Women were literally a lower caste than men. Didn't have the same rights to divorce, didn't have the same rights to appear in court, didn't have the same rights to serve on juries, didn't have the same rights to take many respectable jobs, didn't have a right to equal pay for the jobs they could take, didn't have the right to stop their husbands from raping them, didn't have the same rights to inherit property. 50-year-old women were called "girls" by 30-year-old men because the law itself treated women like servants, wards, or objects rather than independent adults. And this was true throughout the United States when you, or your mother, or your grandmother was born.
So I do think it's similar to the kind of issues that black men have with "boy." But thanks for your thoughtful response, even if I disagree. I try not to rant about this stuff, and I hate that we have to cope with it all in order to have a simple conversation, but here we are. There's plenty of crappy history to go around.
Also, I did not mean to imply anything about Mojang, it's just that the place looks masculine [1].
Personally I wouldn't had gone in the "gentlemen's club"-direction, feels a bit old and stuffy as well as having some bad connotations (if it isn't meant to be ironic that is) but each to their own I guess :)
Prohibition era gangsters?
Then again, you can't politize everything and it's probably meant to just be different and be in "good fun", shrug
Guess the good thing about having your own company is that you can do what you want :)
What you're missing is the role of the members clubs in the industrial revolution.
They were instrumental as a place where business leaders could get together, relax, share ideas, views, experiences and do business. Debating the days' news, and enjoying a drink.
From that light... I'd do it too. I'd build part of an office as a club and would encourage other startups and developers to drop-in and share.
Gentleman's clubs were the environment for serendipity of their age. And even with mass communication and global travel, it remains the case that if you can get people together, relaxing, dreaming big ideas and laughing... magic can happen.
Yeah, I'd build a club environment too. And it wouldn't be so I could pretend to be of that class, it would be to construct an environment that was proven to be good for serendipity.
I'd also stock the bar well and subsidise it... helps to grease the wheels.
The space is great, the facilities and the culture they're obviously trying to create through them but let's just say it's not to my taste.
Which is a polite way of saying that to me at least the place looks foul.
My first reaction was that this might be a deliberate provocation against what would be considered good taste in Sweden.
1) It's dark. Dark is nice for atmospheric, not so nice for avoiding eye strain, plus overall light is just more pleasing - ask an estate agent (realtor in the US?) what sells property - space and light is the answer. I know we're not selling the office here but it's a good measure of what people really like - what they're willing to pay for.
2) It does look more like a private club, but not just that, it manages to look like a private club without being high end. Look at that carpet - it looks like something you'd find in a budget hotel or conference center.
3) From a design perspective it just clashes - you've got at least three wood tones in there (including very dark and really pretty light), at least two different basic styles (the old world globe and leather chairs, the ornate candle stick and taps against the clean lines of the bar, the exposed ceiling, the light wooden floor).
The more I look at it the more horrible I find it.
And I should be clear, I have nothing against the more "traditional" look. I once worked for a major global law firm where the office decor was in places very conservative (think wood panels, ornate dark wood furniture in reception, thick carpets) and it was beautiful, and I live in a house that's about the same age as Texas which is obviously not modern in it's appearance.
As I say, it's very much personal taste but whether you like it or not, I think it's hard to say that that the aesthetic is not all over the place.
I'm sure someone who knows way more than me about such things can come along and tell me why it's all great from an interior design perspective but to me at least, it's a mess.
I think this place looks amazing. Leather and books and dimmer lighting are exactly my personal sweet spot.
Of course it's a matter of taste and I think this part is nice to receive customers / partners. But for me (and at least a few of my colleagues) it would have to be a lot looser than this. And lighter.
And about the suits; I have a bit of an issue with that because it was mandatory for programmers to wear a suit here not 15-20 years ago. And I did and hated it. I do it now when there are formal events or client contact, but outside that, I really feel forced if I wear such a thing. Again; matter of taste. I do agree you should try and that you DO feel more powerful doing it. It just doesn't mix that well with coding :) IMHO.
Nice office but it's almost too try-hard :P There are better ways to make good work environments than make it look like something out of a sitcom.
Not that providing some entertainment for employees isn't a good thing, however this seems way overboard.