

New Twitter office: fabulous design by Sara Morishige Williams - swombat
http://blog.michellekaufmann.com/?p=2594

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pg
Uh oh. Irrational as it seems, seeing this decreased my estimate of Twitter's
prospects. It has same kind of overdoneness you used to see during the Bubble
in the late 90s.

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orionlogic
i don't see any overdose in this office. Some colorful walls, bird
vinyls(except embedded ones) and ikea inspired simple furnishing shouldn't be
such expensive.

I remember reading about ID software's office ( or j. carmakcs) back in bubble
days where gigantic marbles allover the place, but i might be wrong with the
company.

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rms
Rather than Ikea inspired, it's more like they have the type of furniture that
Ikea cheaply copies.

Those stools pictured cost $550. Which I guess isn't bad when you compare it
to a new Aeron for $999, but you can probably get Ikea's nicest stool for
$100.

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bonaldi
Twitter is earning bupkis, which means that all this is being paid for by
investors. How are they justifying this?

There's an argument that perception matters, I suppose. For instance, banks
spend a lot on making their public buildings seem solid and impressive to
bolster confidence in them, when so many of their products are built on air.

Twitter is similarly intangible, so perhaps they're trying to say that they're
an impressive company by having an impressive building. If that's the case, I
think this backfires, by saying the opposite. It all looks and smells (er, in
a non-toxin fashion) of the Aerons of the late 1990s. Even Fog Creek held off
on their developer-focused space until they could afford it.

Is there really no better return that could have been made on that cash?
(Could it perhaps have bought a "Remember Me" checkbox that remembers me?)

~~~
rcoder
> It all looks and smells...of the Aerons of the late 1990s.

I'll admit that ragged on all the Aeron-acquiring startups back in '97-99,
too. Then I bought one (second-hand, of course) for my home office last year,
and discovered that, much to my surprise, Joel's arguments are actually sound:
I can work for more hours, with better focus/less discomfort, in a really nice
office chair.

Ergonomics aren't just faddish indulgence -- they can really make a
difference.

Now, a DJ booth, and hand-rolled rattan bench cushions... _those_ are faddish
indulgence. (I'm still jealous, of course.)

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tybris
Hm, at Amazon.com we had desks made out of door plates in brown cubicles.
Also, we made money.

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revorad
And before desks, they had... errr concrete floors
(<http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/bez0int-4>)

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bumblebird
>> "And how many offices have their own DJ booth?"

What? I can't quite see why you would need a DJ booth in a twitter office.

Looks like a good place for people to talk about how important they are. Not
sure about being a good place for people to work and actually make stuff
though.

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alaskamiller
The DJ stuff was left over from the previous tenant.

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lpgauth
Who would leave that! Aw.

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hop
Myself and employees would be working on doors on cinder blocks if we were a
billion dollar company burning money with no revenue. Karosene lamps, servers
run by hampster wheels...

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revorad
This kind of thing is bound to make people like the 37signals guys angry. It
is truly sad that a non-business can afford to spend money like this.

Life is unfair. Time to work.

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dschobel
What does fairness have to do with capital markets?

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pchristensen
Unfairness is a signal of inefficiency in capital markets?

Sure this office might help them hire great workers and it might make them
more productive at work, or it might be a boondoggle funneled to the founder's
wife because they've raised over $100M. If you were an investor in Twitter,
would this office make you feel good about how your money is being used?

~~~
dschobel
I agree with you that this is a discretionary cost which they have justified
to themselves and the people whose money they are spending.

My objection was his claim of "unfair!". Invocations of fairness are the
resort of people who don't understand a system.

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swombat
I'm not sure why everyone's assuming that this office cost fabulous amounts of
money. Good designers can make tight budgets go far. The only really expensive
piece I see in this office is the stone table - but if they spent wisely on
the rest, why not allow themselves one big expense?

I mean, their desks are from Ikea for crap's sake! If they were looking to
throw money out the window, they wouldn't have bought desks from Ikea.

~~~
bumblebird
It also shows they're spending more energy/thought into what people think,
rather than putting that effort into their product.

How many new features has twitter added in the last year?

How about they spend the effort adding [share video] [share picture] on the
web interface to twitter? How about allowing more than 140 characters and
creating a trimmed version for the 7 people using SMS (Or send as multiple
messages).

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krschultz
Cool technology ..... Check

Sweet office space .. Check

Revenue plan ........

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GiraffeNecktie
It all seems a bit precious to me and doesn't seem like a space where people
actually do anything significant or challenging, other than send out tweets. I
guess you've got to spend your VC money somehow.

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brown9-2
Are these the workspaces for "regular" Twitter employees?

[http://blog.michellekaufmann.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/11/...](http://blog.michellekaufmann.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/11/twitter8.jpg)

Seems like you'd be right on top of each other.

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elai
The dark colours and lack of lighting would make that a depressing office to
work in.

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kellishaver
What a waste of money for a company that isn't making any. Also, from the
photos, it seems way too dark. I think I'd be depressed by about the 2nd week
of working there.

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trefn
I think I would quickly tire of working in that space.

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smiler
Looks absolutely horrible. What a waste of money.

