
Joel on Software: The new Fog Creek Office - twampss
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/12/29.html
======
bbither
This is a seriously awesome office space that any developer looking for the
urban lifestyle that NYC offers would be nuts to not want to work at. But
Joel, you already have a fantastic reputation and should be able to recruit
top talent based on your location, reputation, and because because you employ
other smart people. That 500K of your own cash you put into that space
depreciates over 39 years. You basically can't write it off until you move! I
got stuck with over 200K in our last build-out that I'm still sitting on 3
years later. However if 500K is all you spent in addition to your lease with a
standard buildout allowance, you got a great deal.

Like Joel, I bootstrapped a software company to similar size (25 employees). I
did a calculation and we spend about 1.4% of our revenue today on 5,000 sqft
of office space, but have outgrown it and it's no longer the nice spacious
office we started with. 10,000 sqft of space in the best class A space in
Western MA will cost about 3% of our 2009 expected revenue, with modest but
nice build-out included. Given that this would be our 4th move in 6 years, I
tend to be careful about long leases and lease buildouts.

I'd rather invest in paying good salaries, offering the best equipment and a
nice (but not extravagant) work environment. Then I can afford to launch new
products without being beholden to investors.

I really like the glass walls though...

~~~
j_b_f
Where do you work in Western MA? I'm a software CEO as well and do a lot of
work out there. We should get together sometime.

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Mistone
seriously nice diggs, cant imagine how much that place costs but they've got
the cash and have a great outlook on getting ROI via recruiting and client
WOW, certainly offers a differnt perspective to just getting bought. Why not
built a super cool company that you love to work at instead?

~~~
jd
I doubt it has a good ROI via recruiting, etc. Joel mentioned he spent more
than a million on improving the interior design. No recruiting is going to
make up for that, any time soon#. And in a few years Fog Creek will move to a
different location again - at which point they'll have to build a new high end
office.

So really, this seems to be a case of spending money to improve quality of
life. The other benefits, such as for recruiting and PR are just a nice side
effect.

#) Assuming 50 employees, over 5 years, the costs are roughly $4000 per
employee per year. That's maybe 15% of their salary, probably less. Given the
choice, I would probably give up 15% of my salary to work in a nice place with
good food, a good view, good equipment, and so on.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_the costs are roughly $4000 per employee per year. That's maybe 15% of their
salary, probably less._

You think that top software engineering graduates in _New York City_ make $26k
per year? Recalibrate! Recalibrate!

I think the number you're looking for is "less than 4%". Remember that the
office-construction expenses can be massaged by accountants to reduce taxes on
them, and that an employee's (e.g.) $80k salary costs the employer
considerably more than $80k, thanks to the employer share of things like
Social Security and health insurance. To say nothing of the costs of
_recruiting_ a single employee. Note that a headhunter will charge you a cool
$30k to recruit an employee with a $100k salary:

<http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/basics2.htm>

...and who knows what kind of stiff that headhunter is going to try to foist
off on you?

The chances that the $4k per employee per year is paying off for Fog Creek are
much, much better than you think.

~~~
spolsky
By the time we left the old office, it was costing us 2% of revenue. The new
office is not full yet and is somewhat more expensive, but I expect that in
the long run our real estate costs will be around 4%-6% of revenue, which is
the norm for office-based workforces.

The specific upgrades we paid cash for will probably end up costing 1% of an
employee's salary, averaged out over everything, over the lifetime of the
lease.

~~~
robertk
Just curious, how come your profile is written in 3rd person? Is this really
Joel Spolsky, or a representative?

~~~
immad
spolsky gives way too many interesting comments to be just a representative.

~~~
iamelgringo
Joel hang out here on a pretty regular basis.

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bonaldi
My envy on this place is mighty (and all this from a bug tracker?), but is
tempered by more annoyance at the Javascript nightmare that is Picasa. Why
can't I middle-click to open pictures in new windows? Because Google Breaks
The Browser. Top.

~~~
shiranaihito
If you were using _The_ Browser, Opera, here's how you could open those
pictures effortlessly in new tabs:

1) Right-click on top of a picture, keep the button down.

2) Flick your mouse slightly downwards.

3) Release the right mouse button.

And there you go. Now, after checking out a picture, you'd want to close the
newly opened tab, and get back to where you were:

1) Right-click, and hold

2) Move the mouse slightly downwards, and slightly to the right.

3) Release the mouse button

And there you go again. It doesn't take long to get comfortable with Opera's
Mouse Gestures, and you'll realize they're very handy.

~~~
kragen
The issue isn't with the absence of mouse gestures; it's with the absence of
link targets.

~~~
shiranaihito
Suspecting that might be the case, I tried opening some pictures before
posting, and it all worked for me.

~~~
kragen
Since that's the case, the Opera feature to mention is something about
successfully opening JavaScript links in new windows, not mouse gestures;
talking about the mouse gestures just confused me.

~~~
shiranaihito
Only if the Firefox middle-click thing was only about opening JavaScript links
too, I guess.

In any case, mouse gestures are a good thing and make your browsing more
efficient.

~~~
kragen
Oh, I think the complaint was that normally middle-click opens things in a new
tab (which it does, and has since Mosaic 1.0, except that before we had tabs
they were windows) but that doesn't work with Picasa or whatever, because
they're JavaScript links.

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dbrush
People at Fog Creek read Hacker News. edit: Other than just Joel.

[http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#52853...](http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#5285319432080206370)

~~~
babakian
Actually, that's a shot of Joel's office. But, yeah, Fog Creeker's other than
Joel do read Hacker News.

------
swilliams
That looks like a pretty impressive office. It sounds like a successful
recruiting tool; I would definitely like working in that environment.

What other companies put that much attention towards work environment? I know
that a lot of popular startups tend to favor communal environments, but seeing
actual offices is pretty rare. All of the places I've worked at tend to fall
somewhere between decent to hellish cube nightmare.

~~~
iron_ball
How do we resolve "offices with doors that close" with "communal work
environment" anyway? Are they just diametrically opposed office philosphies?

~~~
mechanical_fish
Here's the suggestion from Stewart Brand's _How Buildings Learn_ :

 _The best adaptation I've seen of the open-office idea is a partial retreat
from it. People crave acoustic privacy so they can talk on the telephone, but
visual privacy is not as important -- they like being able to see what's going
on. This has led to a very satisfactory compromise called "cave and commons".
Each office worker has a private office, often small, which opens into a
generous open area surrounded by many other private offices. The open area has
a kitchen, some couches, sometimes tables for sitting around informally, and
sometimes a working library, or at least a rack of current periodicals. You
can shut the door of your cave and concentrate, or you can leave your door
open and keep an eye and ear on who's coming and going in the commons, and
whether the meeting or presentation going on there might be worth leaning in
on. The feeling is congenial and homey, and it encourages the casual
encounters which, research keeps showing, are at the heart of creativity in
offices._

I lived in a _dorm_ designed like this for four years of college. I'm not sure
I've ever been as productive since. ;)

I would not be surprised to learn that Spolsky has read Brand's book. He's
certainly got the idea. Note the emphasis on glass in the Fog Creek offices,
providing acoustic privacy but not visual isolation.

~~~
pmorici
Interesting Stewart Brand documentary on the utility of buildings.

[http://smashingtelly.com/2008/08/04/how-buildings-learn-
uplo...](http://smashingtelly.com/2008/08/04/how-buildings-learn-uploaded-by-
stewart-brand-himself/)

~~~
mechanical_fish
Good god, I've got to forget that exists immediately so I can keep working. ;)
Thanks for the link!

------
mynameishere
Having my back to glass would drive me insane, and evidently all of the
offices are like that:

[http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#52853...](http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#5285319734508515010)

Check out all of the famous series 7 chairs:

[http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#52853...](http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#5285319577602349138)

It's got that not-quite-a-prison institutional look to it. That's great if
you're running a high school in the poorest district in Mississippi, but given
his budget [1] you'd think it would look nice.

I've got a private office, and the landlord charged my company nothing to
throw up walls and doors in the empty space we rented. Maybe it's impossible
to avoid Veblen goods in NYC, though.

[1] <http://www.gibraltarfurniture.com/malik-mc-c-2201.html> That's right.
It's 300 dollars.

~~~
d-rex
Actually only the two interior offices have that layout. All the other offices
have the desk facing a real wall with another behind it, and glass on the left
and right.

Oh and the same room from another angle looks much less like a prison:

[http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#52853...](http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#5285319755022401170)

~~~
mynameishere
Yeah, the view is sweet, but even the pigeons get it.

------
anthonyrubin
Why do the admins have to sit in a closet?

~~~
dcurtis
Why do the UI designers have to... wait a minute, there aren't any!

If he spent half the amount of money he spent on this amazing office for a
kick ass UI team, he would increase sales by an enormous amount for Fogbugz. I
know so many people who would switch if it wasn't so damn ugly and difficult
to use. I don't think people use Lighthouse because it has better features.

Joel's priorities seem very odd to me.

~~~
MrRage
Could you quantify "ugly" and "difficult to use"? I use FogBugz, and while
it's not the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, it's far from ugly. But then
beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so it's said. I don't find it hard to
use at all. I just use it for bug tracking and to-do reminder. I don't use any
advanced features. What exactly do you find difficult to do?

~~~
fallentimes
We used to use Fogbugz then switched to Lighthouse because it was much
cleaner, more intuitive and had near seamless Github integration.

It's not that Fogbugz is necessarily difficult, it's that Lighthouse is
easier.

------
timr
I would definitely _not_ be a whiny emo girl if I were to work in that
environment. ;-)

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brm
Better recruiting tool: Make an office that female developers want to work in,
the male developers will follow.

~~~
newyorkcitywest
Um...yeah. I think the biggest draw of any office is the pussy. That's what I
care about.

But I don't think you'd want female developers. Female sales staff, female
secretaries, etc.

Nice office, but without nice pussy, what's the point?

~~~
river_styx
Reddit is that way ---->

------
rams
Seriously, how does Joel make both ends meet in an expensive place like NYC ?
Selling bug-tracking software ?

~~~
johns
I would bet Copilot is pretty profitable too

------
biohacker42
Second best offices I've seen.

At Bowdoin College the CS professors have offices with an awesome view and a
shower and bathroom in each office.

------
petercooper
Awesome! I just can't even imagine how Fog Creek makes enough money for all of
this from mostly a single product. They must have tens of thousands of paying
customers - which strikes me as incredibly strong for a niche as small as
software development - kudos!

~~~
iamelgringo
The shrinkwrap software business is good.

------
cosmok
it is surprising that a story about someone moving to a new office makes into
the front page of HN! the new office might have all the fancy features, but,
there are a few things that annoy me: 1\. I don't really care for all those
fancy features and if I were considering joining a company those fancy
features will be the last thing in my mind before I make a decision. 2\. If
one still has the urge to know who moved where and what they have got there
then they can always find that in other sites (hardly HN stuff IMHO) 3\. And
the most annoying bit is that this story got to the front page while a lot of
other threads that I found interesting and would have helped me become a
better Hacker usually get a couple of points and pretty much no discussion at
all.

I love HN and the community and still read a lot of interesting stuff here,
but, I am beginning to feel that HN is slowly slipping away to be a site that
also has a few genuine and invigorating posts/discussions about
entrepreneurship and programming.

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gubbersingh
I work at a big software/hardware company. We have pretty much the same perks,
same height adjustable long desks, aeron chairs (or you pick one based on the
one you like) etc. Only thing I don't like is that there is no windows :-((.

so no big deal, but windows are nice

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VolatileVoid
Interesting. I work about a block away from that office; I take the 4/5 to
Bowling Green every morning and usually walk past 55 B'way once or twice a
week.

Knowing that Fog Creek is so close is tempting me to send in my resume... :)

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huhtenberg
Glass whiteboard !
[http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#52853...](http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#5285319604805018674)

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iamelgringo
Brilliant, Joel.

I love how you're able to market your company. You just got about 14,000 top
notch hackers to look and drool over your office space. It's a great
recruiting tool.

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Tichy
It's cool that they have a shower in the office. Never worked in an office
that has one, always wished for one.

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danw
Where do those height adjustable desks come from? I'd love to be able to work
standing sometimes

~~~
adambox
steelcase :)

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jfornear
Those huge motorized desks with 20 electrical outlets sound awesome.

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jcapote
_droool_

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henning
Dope office is dope!

