Joel Spolsky and Fog Creek just moved to new office space. These were the 'system requirements' for the offices for the developers:

1. Private offices with doors that close were absolutely required and not open to negotiation.
2. Programmers need lots of power outlets. They should be able to plug new gizmos in at desk height without crawling on the floor. We need to be able to rewire any data lines (phone, LAN, cable TV, alarms, etc.) easily without opening any walls, ever.
3. It should be possible to do pair programming.
4. When you're working with a monitor all day, you need to rest your eyes by looking at something far away, so monitors should not be up against walls.
5. The office should be a hang out: a pleasant place to spend time. If you're meeting your friends for dinner after work you should want to meet at the office. As Philip Greenspun bluntly puts it: "Your business success will depend on the extent to which programmers essentially live at your office. For this to be a common choice, your office had better be nicer than the average programmer's home. There are two ways to achieve this result. One is to hire programmers who live in extremely shabby apartments. The other is to create a nice office."

Looks like nice work if you can get it....

...via Windley's Enterprise Computing

Posted by dcoates at October 13, 2003 02:04 PM