
Ask HN: How would you start a new small office for a small team of developers? - gusbremm
If you had the opportunity to start and lead a small team of developers (5 devs) to work remotely as consultants but together in the same office, how would you do it?<p>Apart from good wages, which benefits would you use to attract the best developers in town to join your small team?<p>What kind of office appliances&#x2F;toys&#x2F;furniture would you invest on?
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carapace
Speaking as a dev, the single most exciting, motivating thing one could offer
me (assuming a baseline of e.g. knowing what you're doing, having a compelling
mission or product, etc.) is my own office with a door that closes.

Other than that: ergonomics. Don't skimp on the chairs and keyboards. Big
monitors are good but an aeron chair shows that you know what's up and give a
damn. YMMV.

~~~
Blakestr
By the way those aeron or steelcase you can usually pick up use from a
furniture liquidator. Don't go spend $1,200 on a chair when you can get one
for 1/3rd of that

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ThrowawayR2
A nap room or, if the name is not to your taste, call it a wellness room.
Yeah, you might not need it but potential hires that get migraines, have
newborns, have sleep disorders (increasingly common among devs these days) or
just plain start feeling ill during the day do need it.

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probinso
Remote first! if you are starting a small op, and intend to interact with
customers remotely, make the infrastructure prioritize the remote workflow.
This significantly increases flexibility of employees; insures that problems
in interacting with customers is first felt by you (not your customers)

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codingdave
The best developers are the ones who know how to set up their own best
environment. Give them an office, a budget, and some time to build their own
ideal space.

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dv_dt
Four day work week

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JamesBarney
Do you think people would be willing to make less on a per hour basis to have
a 4 day week?

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147
Nobody said anything about paying less... In my mind if I were to run a
company I’d do 6 hour work days with four day work weeks. Nobody actually gets
a solid 8 hours of coding done. I don’t see why people keep throwing money at
more perks/food to compete with FAANG at their own game.

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JamesBarney
It's true that no one does 8 hours of coding. And you're the the last 8
marginal hours of development aren't as personally productive as the average
hour. But personal productivity isn't organization productivity.

It's expensive to hire someone, its expensive to manage someone, it's
expensive to keep someone informed about a project through
meetings/documentation etc, it's expensive to rent office space for someone,
it's expensive to have to hire more people to get the same productivity.

And all of these expenses are weighed against the reduced productivity of
those extra two hours, and at 99% of companies they've decided it's better to
hire for 40 hours.

