It's my experience that there's a hugely bimodal distribution in people's feelings on this issue. Some folks like Spolsky just eat it up. Thinking about office space and design turns them on, and it feeds back into being happier with everything (or conversely, working in a gray-carpetted drywall office drives them nuts). That's fine. To each his own.
But for a lot of the rest of us, it's just not a big deal. The mechanics of the work environment (good location, quiet, offices with doors, etc...) certainly matter. But the look? Meh. To us, no matter what the physical space is, it's the coworkers who really define the work environment. Just bear that in mind before you decide that you have to write that huge check to the interior designer.
At best, pretty space is going to help retain people on the margin: maybe it's a tiebreaker between you and google, etc... But it's never much more than a tiebreaker.
I have a lot of respect and admiration for people willing to do big things and take flak for intangible benefits. Probably my favorite character trait in other people.
I'd want to work there merely because he's inclined to do things like this, even if I didn't care about the office.
Kind of sad that you have to attract programmers with glass walls, marble floors and shiny objects. Give me a connection to the 'net, nothing else, and I'm there.
No one disputes that humans can live and work in slummy conditions, but that doesn't mean we should. We could also raise families in one-room homes with seven ft. ceilings. That would suck though.
A desire to shape our environment to be aesthetically pleasing is not a human defect that needs to be transcended: it's a natural desire that fulfilled improves our lives. (Example: it's been shown that higher ceilings increase creative problem solving: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/519146)
You speak as if you've taken the better side in the case of form vs. function. But just like we're wary of people obsessed with form over function I think we should be wary of praising function and degrading the importance form.
I personally don't agree, I think my working environment is directly related to productivity. Maybe you do only need a internet connection, but for me having whiteboards/glass, natural light and music is important. Also, sharing office space with bright people is always a plus as you can bounce ideas and you don't need to answer too many dump questions.
I don't get it. Why does Joel Spolsky spend so much time on the look and beauty of his office, but allow his websites and products to be so horribly ugly?
It appears he treats his programmers like royalty, but where are the UI designers? This is painfully evident in the look of FogBugz and other software from Fog Creek.
He's making a killing with his "ugly" products and had 17x revenue growth in 5 years. I'm sure if he could charge an extra $100 per license, he'd make the software prettier. As it is, he primarily sells bug tracking software to Windows programmers. It's not exactly a sexy, design driven business.
It doesn't matter that the target audience works on Windows. That's no excuse to make hideous looking software.
The argument he uses for creating a great environment for his programmers works the same way regarding his software-- creating a really nice place for his customers to work will hopefully make them happier.
