
The Curse of a New Building - rmason
http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2013/08/05/steve-blank-the-curse-of-a-new-building/
======
luu
This is indistinguishable from selection bias.

If you want to write the opposite article, pick any three wildly successful
companies. They've all grown enough that they've had to move into a new
building. Pick a project that went well around the time of the move; they're
big enough that there must be at least one. Now, attribute causation and come
up with some pithy bullet points. Ta-da! You've got yourself a wsj article.

~~~
tptacek
This isn't a random WSJ article; it's a Steve Blank article. That doesn't
matter except that your "ta-da!" probably doesn't generate credible Steve
Blank articles.

You also haven't contradicted Blank. He didn't say companies shouldn't ever
transition out of their startup phase; he just said that the purchase of an
optimal new building signals that transition. The implication is that you
should be sure you're ready for it.

~~~
frogpelt
At the bottom:

    
    
        Lessons Learned
    
        - New buildings are a distraction.
        - You should avoid them at all costs
        - Building upgrades can destroy a culture
    

He seems to be totally against new buildings.

~~~
tptacek
_For startups_. Not in general. It helps to have read Blank's other work about
the phases companies go through; startups to him are companies still working
on optimizing their product/market fit.

------
ignostic
Why was management involving themselves in decisions about carpets and walls?
Surely this was a poor use of time in area where they are not experts. An
architecture or interior design company would be one thing, but engineers and
management should _at most_ merely approve decisions. Surely their involving
staff sent the signal that worrying about this stuff was OK. If one assistant
or outsourced interior designer had been in charge how many problems would
have been avoided?

Every business reaches the point where everyone can no longer work in the same
room. Even if you continue renting out three floors of a building, you will
eventually lose the "everyone knows everyone" feeling unique to small
companies. When there are 500 people in the company there's no getting around
it. You lose something there, but it's a sacrifice most companies make in
order to continue growing.

There are some thing you can do to maintain your culture. You can usually
maintain a fairly flat management structure. There are large companies - eBay,
last I checked - where almost no one has an office and everyone works side-by-
side. You can continue to promote events and activities. You can continue to
promote risk taking rather than becoming risk averse as most large companies
do.

I don't know the situation, but I really doubt that "new building" is the
unavoidable root cause of the author's problems. Some loss of startup culture
may be unavoidable as a company grows, and perhaps the time-wasting could have
been managed better in this case.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _Why was management involving themselves in decisions about carpets and
> walls? Surely this was a poor use of time in area where they are not
> experts._

It's pretty much the perfect example of Bike Shedding. Most people can't build
a bike shed, but they want to put in their 2c, so they will bicker endlessly
about what colour to paint it.

~~~
anigbrowl
Not really, because with an office building the people who want to put their 2
cents in are going to be working inside it and want some input on their
working conditions. They're not just arguing to feel smarter about something,
but because they're going to have to live with the outcome.

~~~
wavefunction
I've seen the attitude that drives executives to insert themselves into these
sorts of processes and it basically boils down to pretty much every human
being thinking they have a great sense of aesthetics when most of us really
don't.

In addition to (presumably) being successful business people, they want to be
also thought of as tasteful interior designers, they have some sort of pet
theories on "enhancing creativity" they want to pursue, the list goes on ad
nauseum...

Really, they should just hire somebody who is an acknowledged expert in the
field and give them their high level requests which can then be filtered
professionally into something that makes sense. Involved but not attempting to
drive the process.

------
tnorthcutt
_Besides, the grungy midtown location, perfect for startups, was starting to
get us down after five years. We had a little bit more money, so we were
looking for a place with about twice the space that cost about four times as
much._

 _Our ideal of giving every developer a private office is unusual, so it’s
almost impossible to find prebuilt office space set up that way. That means we
didn’t have much choice but to find the best raw space and then do our own
interior construction._

 _Here are a few of the features of the new office:_ _\- Gobs of well-lit
perimeter offices._ _\- Coffee bar and lunchroom._ _\- A huge salt water
aquarium_ _\- Plenty of meeting space._

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/12/29.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/12/29.html)

------
hobb0001
> While offices for everyone sound good on paper, moving everyone out of
> cubicles destroyed a culture of tight-knit interaction and communication.

Please, no, do not fall for this misconception. I've worked in several "tight-
knit" environments. Invariably, everyone starts wearing headphones to tune out
the distraction and also starts communicating via IRC/messaging so as not to
cause distraction. Completely negating any potential for the mythical
spontaneous communication.

------
adammil
Forget carpet, colors and textures. The _functional_ aspects of a new building
are critical and guaranteed to heavily affect everybody, so you cannot think
enough about them and always get tons of input.

Otherwise, you end up with nice bathrooms but outside secure areas that eat
minutes from everyone's daily routine, burning sun instead of natural light,
not enough conference rooms causing excessive environmental noise, too many
cubes next to HR but not enough for the development team, teams who are split
across floors because you planned the space poorly, unused kitchens because
they are simply in the wrong place, a lobby with standing room only, having to
escort visitors inside secure areas to use the bathroom because you forgot one
outside, only one AV-capable conference room but half of all meetings require
a projector, and a late realization that the receptionist desk should've been
at the bottom of the stairs to greet lost visitors and the fedex guy instead
of running up and down stairs all day to answer a call box, etc.

~~~
willyt
That's a pretty basic checklist that a good architect with experience of
office design would go through. Those are all design problems an architect
will be able to solve for you and often in ways you wouldn't have thought of.
Don't reinvent the wheel.

~~~
adammil
Yeah, tell that to the architect we had.

------
Maxious
I thought this would be about
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_building_syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_building_syndrome)

> In the late 1970s, it was noted that nonspecific symptoms were reported by
> tenants in newly constructed homes, offices, and nurseries. In media it was
> called "office illness”. "The term "Sick Building Syndrome" was coined by
> WHO in 1986, when they also estimated that 10-30% of newly built office
> buildings in the West had indoor air problems.

------
iclelland
This was originally posted on Steve Blank's site here:
[http://steveblank.com/2009/05/15/supermac-war-
story-11-the-c...](http://steveblank.com/2009/05/15/supermac-war-story-11-the-
curse-of-a-new-building/) \-- not sure why the WSJ chose to recycle it four
years later. This is probably the third or fourth time it's been on HN.

~~~
ams6110
Thank you. I knew I had read this somewhere before, so not surprised to see
that it's a repeat of his own blogging.

------
mml
Have to mention best buy here. They built an enormous HQ on "eminent domain"
seized land, then proceeded to shrink the headcount by 75%. An entire wing is
empty.

I've seen this happen at other companies too. It's a sure sign to run the hell
away (unless of course, you have a sweet corner office).

When the pop is no longer free, or the company is building a new HQ, get out.

------
WiseWeasel
So when you need a bigger space, make sure it's at least as poorly constructed
and ill-suited to the task as your current space?

Maybe the lesson (for tech companies) should be to postpone leasing high-rent
office space until you're confident you'll be able to afford it for a while.

~~~
wmf
A possibly-relevant anecdote from _How Buildings Learn_ :

Apparently one of the best-loved buildings at MIT was a "temporary" building
erected during WWII that stood for several decades. Due to its "temporary"
nature and cheap construction people didn't hesitate to make any ad-hoc
modifications that seemed useful at the time.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_20](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_20)
The architectural marvel of the Media Lab ended up being a lot less flexible
in exchange for better fit and finish.

------
vermontdevil
Seems to be happening to Apple?

Since the focus on that huge UFO shaped building, they been having all sorts
of problems like the developer site breech, the iPad sales coming down, the
stock price receding.

Purely anecdotal I know. But gotta wonder.

~~~
trimbo
> Since the focus on that huge UFO shaped building, they been having all sorts
> of problems

Unless that UFO building killed Steve Jobs, I doubt there is an association.

~~~
javert
Maybe Steve just went home.

------
wisty
I bet part of the problem is, execs often use floorplans as a way to help
create silos.

Every sane manager wants silos. There's no way they want to risk their
employees getting too chummy with the enemy. They might jump ship for a new
team, or worse, help the other team out while still having the salary budgeted
to their real boss.

------
patmcguire
Sounds a lot like:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_Illustrated_cover_jinx](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_Illustrated_cover_jinx)

Might just be that breakout companies tend to regress towards the mean after a
big breakout. Or the new building is a giant ego project like Sears tower or
moving the company to a CEO's hometown.

------
cocoflunchy
Relevant video of OMGPOP circa 2011: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97M5FoZ-
SlQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97M5FoZ-SlQ)

~~~
rwg
That looks like a _slightly_ less hellish version of Ksplice's working
environment circa 2010: [https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/resource/ksplice-
iap-14.jpg](https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/resource/ksplice-iap-14.jpg)

(I hope they at least got more office space out of Oracle post-acquisition...)

------
lucisferre
Anecdotes like this bother me. Specifically that one can really draw
conclusions like this based on them:

> \- New buildings are a distraction.

> \- You should avoid them at all costs

> \- Building upgrades can destroy a culture

Would this have happened anyways? Did it really had anything to do with a new
building at all or more to do with a company that failed in it's transition?
All _successful_ companies have to grow up at some point, is not moving into a
new building isn't going to fix that problem just create different problems
for you to deal with.

~~~
tlb
Unfortunately, there is no way to test the theory rigorously with a double-
blind randomized controlled study. But Steve has seen it happen many times,
and I've seen it happen a few times myself, and I think it's advice worth
heeding.

~~~
staunch
Isn't YC moving into a new building? _cue dramatic music_

Edit: Now I remember where I read that:
[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/332975930962239488](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/332975930962239488)

------
at-fates-hands
>>>>> The new building telegraphed to our employees, “We’ve arrived. We’re no
longer a small struggling startup. You can stop working like a startup and
start working like a big company.”

What does this mean? Does the author not think successful large companies work
just as hard and put in just as many hours as a startup? I just finished a
contract with a large public company and during the release cycles we were
putting in 11 and 14 hour days.

~~~
lmm
Statistically speaking, large companies are far less economically productive.
And frankly if you were working 11-14 hours a day I wouldn't be surprised if
you were less productive than someone working 4-6.

------
livestyle
I'm thankful for Steve's wisdom. I know that it's not a popular stance but
let's give the guy the benefit of the doubt.

------
bsmith
The article advocates an idea with which I am inclined to agree. But, how does
the cultural impact of rapidly hiring employees compare to the 'new building'
impact discussed here? I have a strong suspicion that hiring too many too fast
is just as effective at destroying the startup culture as moving into a more
professional (read: corporate) office.

------
Gormo
This article reminded me of an old quotation I read at some point in the past,
but don't remember the exact wording or attribution. It was something to the
effect of:

"The beginning of an organization's decline can usually be traced to when it
moves into a building built for the purpose."

Anyone know the exact quotation I'm thinking of and who said it?

------
Pro_bity
The contrary position is that if a company stays in its rundown office space,
it will stagnate, morale will suffer, people will leave and the rest of the
operation will shrivel up and die. New space is a reward for ambition, and one
of many steps to becoming bigger and better operation.

------
antitrust
This is one of the best articles I've read on HN.

How to stay hungry, in other words. Or, why opulence can crush you.

I wonder how these lessons apply to us personally and as a society. Does
getting rich make us fat and lazy? Or decadent?

------
JoeAltmaier
Done a dozen startups. Its a joke with my colleagues (been thru several
together): when they buy/build a new headquarters, its the beginning of the
end. Been true more than once.

