As an avid consumer of office porn from officesnapshots.com, I’m always drooling over other companies’ spectacular offices with 12′ tall windows and interesting decor (blik wall decals are always a plus in my book). It gives me the motivation to keep working until the day Simande has its offices overlooking the Hudson river from the other direction, where everyone will have their own windowed private office and drab grey cubicle walls and horrible overhead fluorescent lighting are ridiculed and burned in effigy.
I think a company’s office says a lot about their priorities. A layout where the executives have private offices along the exterior, sucking up all of the natural sunlight, while the interior is for the peons in depressing cubicles filled with horrible artificial lighting would indicate to me a very closed and bureaucratic workplace where the rank and file employees are treated as second class citizens. A wide open layout with desks crammed end-to-end, where every employee is given 3 feet of space would be horrible for any task that requires concentrating because you can hear every conversation in the room.
Anyway, Simande’s International Headquarters features the world’s best computers, a spectacular view of the NYC skyline, and a Dunny toy collection. I don’t know why I’m boasting here because companies’ usually brag about their *amazing* workplace as a recruiting tactic. I should be documenting our humble beginnings so a few years down the road I can either look back and laugh at how meager these accommodations were or look back and laugh at how great these accommodations were now that I’m programming VBScript in a cubicle for a project manager that neither understands the Internet nor speaks the English language very well.
Workstation #1
Apple Mac Pro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core
NEC 30″ LCD3090WQXi
Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 Speakers
Grado SR 80 Headphones
Humanscale Liberty Chair
Close-up of Workstation #1
Linksys WRT54G w/ open-source Hyperwrt + Thibor firmware
iSight camera (now an antique!)
Field Notes “I’m not writing it down to remember later, I’m writing it down to remember it now.”
Workstation #2
24″ iMac 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo w/ 20″ Dell Monitor
I try to keep only the most used and relevant books in the office instead of a giant stack of ancient trees. Plus, who reads books anymore anyway? My most used book right now - The Rails Way by Obie Fernandez.
I love our glass whiteboard from Ikea. The messages were left after the 2008-2009 New Years party.
Your office needs better chairs.