

The Office Matters - coffee
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/09/the-office-matters.html

======
wccrawford
"When you are less than ten people, it is hard to invest in stuff like this."

True, but if you have the right 10 people, you won't have to 'invest' in it,
it'll just happen. If an environment that small is created by the 'company'
and forced on the 10 employees, they probably won't like it anyhow. If they
design it themselves, and put their backs into it, they'll almost always love
it.

~~~
sudonim
Part of a good culture at startups is allowing the employees to evolve it
themselves.

Our company is 5 people right now. Our lead engineer started buying friday
beers for the team. Then I asked our CEO to have the company pay for it, and
he did. We now have a beer and snack budget

One of the Junior engineers brought in a PS3. We destroy each other a couple
of times a week playing Soul Calibur.

We've got a big long list of things we want to do to make our office a better
place to spend time. It's empowering to be able to change your situation.

~~~
mcfunley
I agree. I have been at Etsy since the (relatively) early days and despite
what the post says the office was pretty much the same, except in a crappier
Brooklyn neighborhood. It didn't take more employees or more money to have a
great DIY space.

------
mattgratt
Dick Costolo (Twitter COO, Feedburner founder) wrote a great article about the
organizational impact of the office lay-out back in 2007 -
[http://www.burningdoor.com/askthewizard/2007/09/no_offices.h...](http://www.burningdoor.com/askthewizard/2007/09/no_offices.html)
\- he's for Open Plan offices. He says they increase interdepartmental
communication, which is true in my experience.

~~~
jordanb
I cringed when he described engineering "being able" to listen to support
people talk with clients all day long.

There is _nothing_ worse than hearing one side of phone conversations when I'm
trying to concentrate; it's like having a power drill grinding into my temple.

It seems like a lot of management types love open-plan offices because of the
opportunities for serendipitous communication. I understand that, and can see
the value if you're a CEO and your job is to be on top of things.

But a programmer's job is to be on the bottom of things. Hearing about some
change to some component through the office chatter is completely immaterial
to me and my day unless I'm actually working on that specific piece of code at
that moment. All "being on top of things" means is that I'm distracted from
the stuff I need to focus on.

~~~
mattgratt
This is the chief argument against open plan offices - it can be difficult for
people involved in intense mental work to concentrate.

Would headphones w/ noise cancellation help? Even if you didn't play music
through them?

~~~
cma
>Would headphones w/ noise cancellation help? Even if you didn't play music
through them?

KISS; sounds like some really expensive ear plugs.

~~~
stuartm
Earplugs are definitely a simple solution, but have the drawback of not being
highly visible to people around you.

When I need to concentrate, I wear my big Sennheiser headphones - often not
even plugged into an audio source.

They are very comfortable for long periods, block out most of the noise, and
(best of all) they send a clear "do not disturb" message to anyone thinking of
interrupting.

------
maigret
I think I should reuse that idea of the weekly waffle meeting (mentioned in
the comments) in our team :)

Anyway, I'm happy to see someone argument that: office matters, as do building
architecture. Office arrangement clearly influence the way folks work
together, when, how they eat etc. Evidently the business results are
influenced by the office arrangement amongst others.

------
mkramlich
I'm of two minds about offices. We should make them as great as possible. But
we should also try to eliminate them entirely. Office/commute/cubicle culture
is the cause of much waste, pollution, inefficiency, parasitism and
distraction, reduced productivity and meta/make-work. Are there situations
where a company office is a net win? Probably. But I'm sure there are lots of
cases where it's a net negative.

------
ryanwaggoner
This reminds me of something I've been curious about: is an office essential
for a startup? Through my consulting, I've seen lots of companies embracing
the remote thing, but few startups. Does it just not work? Why not?

Are there any examples of startups that have had most or all of their team
remote that were successful and built a strong culture and identity?

