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A Peek Inside Dropbox’s Company-Wide Hack Week At Its Big New SF Offices
- nodesocket 15y agoAwesome, that's how a hack-a-thon is done.
- harshreality 15y agoSure... now if only they cared about security and privacy as much as spideroak. As long as Dropbox sees de-dup as a competitive advantage, they will never offer client-side encryption.
- lawnchair_larry 15y agoShame that the "big new office" is "open concept". What a waste.
- goronbjorn 15y agoWhy are open-concept offices a waste?
- bri3d 15y agoThis one's been beaten ad-nauseum: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2270424 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2270424 (HN developers prefer private space) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3729302 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3729302 (A good summary discussion and a blog post about why open plan offices suck) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2876261 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2876261 (Another discussion and article summarizing research into the negative effects of open plan offices). It's very, very hard to get any kind of real creative work done in an open-plan office with more than a few people in it. The open office plan generates a vast quantity of distractions and doesn't scale.
- wcarss 15y agoHaving worked in open concept and closed office spaces, I've found pros and cons of each. It's a lot easier to collaborate with your team if it's as easy as saying "let's talk a sec" on IM and then turning around. It's also on average louder, and there's more people moving around. A lot of places don't have enough money to put one person in each office. So they stick 2-3 people in each office. That, for me, is actually worse than open space. In an open space, you can lean back for a moment, go for a walk, look around - your motions don't affect the space itself. In a room with 2 people, if you stop typing and spin around on your chair for a moment, you're being a distraction. In an open space, two coworkers nearby talking doesn't rise above the din -- whereas if someone comes and knocks on your door and has a conversation in your office, it can be very difficult to focus. But obviously, different strokes. edit: to sum this up: I'd rather be alone than in a big group, but I'd rather be in a big group than stuck permanently with 1 or 2 other people.
- thesis 15y agoOne thing I noticed was all of the Dell hardware. I'll never understand why some companies state that they are basically a Mac only company.
- bengl3rt 15y agoOr they have Apple laptops but they hook them up to ugly, flimsy-looking Dell displays that are about 3x fatter than they need to be.
- risratorn 15y agoI'm also using a Dell monitor connected to my macbook and am very pleased with it, of course it's nothing like a cinema display but it serves it's purpose perfectly so why spend $1000 on an Apple screen when a Dell works just as fine? That's my opinion.
- kooshball 15y ago>I'll never understand why some companies state that they are basically a a Mac only company. Do any companies with more than 10 people actually do this? It makes sense to offer whatever the employees want (mostly macs these days), but why limit yourself to only macs?
- thesis 15y agoTwilio used to say something along those lines in their perks for their jobs pages... but it seems to be gone now. Edit: Found it on Wayback machine "We heart Apple Computers, and believe in using quality products to build quality products. Hence, all of our employee boxen are Macbooks or iMacs (or both)."