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Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

I was disappointed to not see a single actual work area -- just the conference rooms and such. I assume the work areas will be SF startup standard huge open rooms full of lines of back-to-back desks?

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I run Office Snapshots, which originally published the Dropbox office. I get this question fairly regularly, and there are a number of reasons that can contribute to the common lack of workspace photos.

- The design firm submitting the project didn't work on the workstation portion of the office, and therefore does not take photos of them

- Professional photos are generally taken after the company has moved in, and workstation photos are too difficult to do when there may be confidential information present. These photo shoots can take many hours, so disrupting employees for a day is not what companies are interested in.

- Workstations are just not as sexy as conference spaces to show off (I disagree, though)

All that said, I like to use foursquare or instagram to browse photos taken at offices to get a real look at the spaces. Here's a couple photos of the workstations:

- https://foursquare.com/v/dropbox-hq/4f3970aee4b08f009b927739...

Thanks!

Those look like totally standard "startup with long rows of desks", although lower density than I've seen elsewhere. Trying to get work done in what is essentially an aisle off of a walkway would suck.

I wish there were a list of companies somewhere which sorted them into private offices, shared offices (2-3 people), team rooms (3-15 people), high cubes, low cubes, work areas for teams in rows in bigger rooms, and "one huge room full of every desk, all in long rows".

Yeah, from what I can tell, startups are stuck in a weird place where they can grow incredibly fast and might need to add a hundred employees in a matter of months. Construction doesn't really scale that fast, so it seems like this is just the best option until employee grown slows.

I'll shoot you a quick note with some details of a new feature I'm working on that you might enjoy based on what you described.

The cynic in me suggests that it has nothing to do with that, that the primary benefit of open plan offices is that it looks "cool" especially when you're an executive who thinks the whole Management By Walking Around thing is the way to run a software company and gets a slight ego boost by walking around saying "Good Job, keep it up."

Actually it's not entirely cynicism, its backed up by experiences I have had.

You are 100% correct. If it was just scaling, you wouldn't have companies like Paypal switching to a "cool" open plan layout that the employees hate but the managers get a thrill from.

Open plan = less productivity, higher stress and more sick days. Yet, it remains the new hotness. Drives me nuts.

Thank you to whoever update the link to point to officesnapshots.com. I wish I would have linked there to begin with.

Well you saw more than me, all i get to see is "Service Temporarily Unavailable". That's a pretty sensitive area for startups, besides. Stars like Joel say offices and quiet are worth the costs many times over, but startups are usually too cash starved and self punishing to actually do it. One startup I was at for a while, Noom, even lied and checked the boxes on the Joel test in job ads for quiet working environment being a huge priority when in actuality everyone was stuffed back to back in open rooms and noisy as heck. The CTO said it was fine to lie as long as interviewees saw the reality once they got there and that fewer people would apply if they told the truth, ha.

My ideal office remains something like Pioneer Way in MV where you can get a 20-30k sf dedicated standalone building for $1/mo NNN, and then have 4 parking spots per 1000 feet in a gated lot. If you put 25-75 people in a place like that, you could have a lot of dedicated function areas (various labs, datacenter, kitchen, presentation/theater, etc.), meeting areas, open work areas, and private offices. Throw in subscribing to bauer employee bus services for the minority without cars, and having on-site quality food (or walking 10 minutes to Castro St), and it'd be pretty ideal.

Dealing with Mountain View rather than SF government is a big win, too.

Downside would be "crappy view".

same thought, cool common areas, but where are the workspaces?

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