A Software Designer Knows His Office Space, Too

“Breaking bread together every day provides cohesion.”

Me and my team always went out to lunch together, but I only realised how important this was when we were banned from doing so by management. They wanted to give an impression of something being done by always having someone around. The problem is that we got less done as we no longer shared ideas or even had a clear understanding of what everyone was working on.

Well, it's impressive to me that JS appreciates the impact that environment (including commons time/space) can have on productivity. The flexibility to accommodate varied programmer work styles - likewise.

I could only wish that the Times articles had included personal comments from the staff about how they experience. I have to be a little concerned that office-design can run the same risk as software-design... when it springs solely from the resident boy-genius and we don't get feedback from the end users.

Joel never discusses what his designers/support staff/everyone else think of his company. I wonder if they love their office as much as the developers.

As a designer, I wouldn't be able to stand a company that values its developers so much higher than everyone else (note: I have no idea if Joel does this, I seriously doubt it, I'm only going via his statements on his site about how his developers get fancy chairs/offices)

"Mr. Spolsky used his personal interest in and amateur’s knowledge of design"

My Spolsky is a design professional, not an amateur. Would the New York Times write the same about, say, DKNY's headquarters:

"Donna Karan used her personal interest in and amateur’s knowledge of design"

?

There's a standard complaint about the media. When a paper writes about a subject you are familiar with, you tend to see the errors in it. I've read Spolsky's (gradually diminishing) essays for years, and when the nytimes writes about him, it's like he's some effete flower arranger, primarily concerned with the graduations of sunlight on his atrium's interior.

What is he, really? He's a gay, Jewish New yorker who worked for microsoft, started a business, got lucky with a completely unnecessary proprietary bug-tracker, inspired lots of manager-types with his stylish vision of modern workerdom, and now lives off the fat of his past efforts...