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Joel on Software: The new Fog Creek Office
- Mistone 18y agoseriously nice diggs, cant imagine how much that place costs but they've got the cash and have a great outlook on getting ROI via recruiting and client WOW, certainly offers a differnt perspective to just getting bought. Why not built a super cool company that you love to work at instead?
- jd 18y agoI doubt it has a good ROI via recruiting, etc. Joel mentioned he spent more than a million on improving the interior design. No recruiting is going to make up for that, any time soon#. And in a few years Fog Creek will move to a different location again - at which point they'll have to build a new high end office. So really, this seems to be a case of spending money to improve quality of life. The other benefits, such as for recruiting and PR are just a nice side effect. #) Assuming 50 employees, over 5 years, the costs are roughly $4000 per employee per year. That's maybe 15% of their salary, probably less. Given the choice, I would probably give up 15% of my salary to work in a nice place with good food, a good view, good equipment, and so on.
- tptacek 18y agoI agree, but then of course, spending a shit ton of money just to make yourself feel better is one of the luxuries of not being beholden to outside investors. Between ludicrous offices and the 37s "4 days a week" plan, I'd probably go with 37s.
- webwright 18y agoHeh, you just won't let go of that "beholden to outside investor" thing, will you? Are you suggesting that investors keep startups from getting ludicrous office space? From my experience with well-funded dotcom startups, they all tend to spend staggering amounts on sexy office space. We're lightly funded, so we sure as hell didn't. In any case, Joel isn't spending a shit ton-- he's spending ~4-6% of revenue, as he said. Decent investors would only involve themselves if you were spending an unreasonable amount of money. Joel could be up to his armpits in Series D financing and not have an investor blink at this expenditure. (if it isn't obvious, I think it's a dumb expenditure for an unprofitable startup, and a fine expenditure for Joel)
- tptacek 18y agoHm. You're right. I'm wrong. (Although I'm unlikely to "let go" of the outside investor thing; I help run a bootstrapped company, and had a bad VC experience).
- timf 18y agoBetween ludicrous offices and the 37s "4 days a week" plan, I'd probably go with 37s. Or I was idly thinking once of a plan where you sprint for 3 weeks (still with weekends off) and then everyone has an entire week off. Over and over, ~13 weeks of vacation a year. I wonder if a refreshed, happy, and likely less compensated team like that could keep up with a full time one.
- mechanical_fish 18y agothe costs are roughly $4000 per employee per year. That's maybe 15% of their salary, probably less. You think that top software engineering graduates in New York City make $26k per year? Recalibrate! Recalibrate! I think the number you're looking for is "less than 4%". Remember that the office-construction expenses can be massaged by accountants to reduce taxes on them, and that an employee's (e.g.) $80k salary costs the employer considerably more than $80k, thanks to the employer share of things like Social Security and health insurance. To say nothing of the costs of recruiting a single employee. Note that a headhunter will charge you a cool $30k to recruit an employee with a $100k salary: http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/basics2.htm http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/basics2.htm ...and who knows what kind of stiff that headhunter is going to try to foist off on you? The chances that the $4k per employee per year is paying off for Fog Creek are much, much better than you think.
- spolsky 18y agoBy the time we left the old office, it was costing us 2% of revenue. The new office is not full yet and is somewhat more expensive, but I expect that in the long run our real estate costs will be around 4%-6% of revenue, which is the norm for office-based workforces. The specific upgrades we paid cash for will probably end up costing 1% of an employee's salary, averaged out over everything, over the lifetime of the lease.
- robertk 18y agoJust curious, how come your profile is written in 3rd person? Is this really Joel Spolsky, or a representative?
- immad 18y agospolsky gives way too many interesting comments to be just a representative.
- captainobvious 18y agowait a minute, are you spolsky?
- njharman 18y agoThat's like 3-5% of their salary or at least I hope so. Just how little do you think they earn?
- bootload 18y ago"... I doubt it has a good ROI via recruiting, etc. Joel mentioned he spent more than a million on improving the interior design. No recruiting is going to make up for that, any time soon# ..." The key is to spend capital to get the best programmers to create profit. This idea isn't something Joel made up it's an idea by Phil Greenspun, "Building and keeping a good software engineering team" ~ http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/managing-software-engineers http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/managing-softwar... So what's your idea?
- kragen 18y agoTo have "a good ROI via recruiting," never mind the etc., he just has to improve his profits by more than 40k per year, by making better products than he would have otherwise, by hiring better people than he would have otherwise --- or by having to pay 40k less per year in salary, although that seems less likely. Although the chain of causality here has a lot of randomness attached to it, if he has a few million dollars in revenue per year, such an improvement hardly seems implausible. The flip side is that spending a lot of money on something apparently unnecessary might incline you to spend more money on things that are actually unnecessary. (I'm assuming "a good ROI" means 4% per year.)
- swilliams 18y agoThat looks like a pretty impressive office. It sounds like a successful recruiting tool; I would definitely like working in that environment. What other companies put that much attention towards work environment? I know that a lot of popular startups tend to favor communal environments, but seeing actual offices is pretty rare. All of the places I've worked at tend to fall somewhere between decent to hellish cube nightmare.
- iron_ball 18y agoHow do we resolve "offices with doors that close" with "communal work environment" anyway? Are they just diametrically opposed office philosphies?
- mechanical_fish 18y agoHere's the suggestion from Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn: The best adaptation I've seen of the open-office idea is a partial retreat from it. People crave acoustic privacy so they can talk on the telephone, but visual privacy is not as important -- they like being able to see what's going on. This has led to a very satisfactory compromise called "cave and commons". Each office worker has a private office, often small, which opens into a generous open area surrounded by many other private offices. The open area has a kitchen, some couches, sometimes tables for sitting around informally, and sometimes a working library, or at least a rack of current periodicals. You can shut the door of your cave and concentrate, or you can leave your door open and keep an eye and ear on who's coming and going in the commons, and whether the meeting or presentation going on there might be worth leaning in on. The feeling is congenial and homey, and it encourages the casual encounters which, research keeps showing, are at the heart of creativity in offices. I lived in a dorm designed like this for four years of college. I'm not sure I've ever been as productive since. ;) I would not be surprised to learn that Spolsky has read Brand's book. He's certainly got the idea. Note the emphasis on glass in the Fog Creek offices, providing acoustic privacy but not visual isolation.
- pmorici 18y agoInteresting Stewart Brand documentary on the utility of buildings. http://smashingtelly.com/2008/08/04/how-buildings-learn-uploaded-by-stewart-brand-himself/ http://smashingtelly.com/2008/08/04/how-buildings-learn-uplo...
- dbrush 18y agoPeople at Fog Creek read Hacker News. edit: Other than just Joel. http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#5285319432080206370 http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#52853...
- jcapote 18y agodroool
- brm 18y agoBetter recruiting tool: Make an office that female developers want to work in, the male developers will follow.
- DavidMcLaughlin 18y agoI'm not sure recruiting desperate and socially akward dudes who are going to get all creepy weirdo on the female staff is the best recruitment strategy I've ever heard.
- spolsky 18y agoI have to keep reminding them that women usually do NOT want to hear about the problems they were having with their barcode scanner scanning in their comic book collections
- newyorkcitywest 18y agoUm...yeah. I think the biggest draw of any office is the pussy. That's what I care about. But I don't think you'd want female developers. Female sales staff, female secretaries, etc. Nice office, but without nice pussy, what's the point?
- river_styx 18y agoReddit is that way ---->
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- anthonyrubin 18y agoWhy do the admins have to sit in a closet?
- johns 18y agoHave to? Almost all the admins I've known love to sit in closets :) (I was an admin for a few years so this is somewhat self-deprecating)
- anthonyrubin 18y agoI have been an admin in the past and I wouldn't have minded a window.
- staunch 18y agoApparently Joel doesn't know that all good sysadmins are also good programmers.
- dcurtis 18y agoWhy do the UI designers have to... wait a minute, there aren't any! If he spent half the amount of money he spent on this amazing office for a kick ass UI team, he would increase sales by an enormous amount for Fogbugz. I know so many people who would switch if it wasn't so damn ugly and difficult to use. I don't think people use Lighthouse because it has better features. Joel's priorities seem very odd to me.
- MrRage 18y agoCould you quantify "ugly" and "difficult to use"? I use FogBugz, and while it's not the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, it's far from ugly. But then beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so it's said. I don't find it hard to use at all. I just use it for bug tracking and to-do reminder. I don't use any advanced features. What exactly do you find difficult to do?
- jon_dahl 18y agoWe use Fogbugz too and like it (though Pivotal Tracker is calling our names...). In my anecdotal experience, many of the people who think it's ugly and unusable got this impression from earlier versions. It's improved a bit over the last few years. Not to say that it doesn't have room to go, but it's not that bad anymore.
- henning 18y agoDope office is dope!
- bonaldi 18y agoMy envy on this place is mighty (and all this from a bug tracker?), but is tempered by more annoyance at the Javascript nightmare that is Picasa. Why can't I middle-click to open pictures in new windows? Because Google Breaks The Browser. Top.
- shiranaihito 18y agoIf you were using The Browser, Opera, here's how you could open those pictures effortlessly in new tabs: 1) Right-click on top of a picture, keep the button down. 2) Flick your mouse slightly downwards. 3) Release the right mouse button. And there you go. Now, after checking out a picture, you'd want to close the newly opened tab, and get back to where you were: 1) Right-click, and hold 2) Move the mouse slightly downwards, and slightly to the right. 3) Release the mouse button And there you go again. It doesn't take long to get comfortable with Opera's Mouse Gestures, and you'll realize they're very handy.
- kragen 18y agoThe issue isn't with the absence of mouse gestures; it's with the absence of link targets.
- shiranaihito 18y agoSuspecting that might be the case, I tried opening some pictures before posting, and it all worked for me.
- kragen 18y agoSince that's the case, the Opera feature to mention is something about successfully opening JavaScript links in new windows, not mouse gestures; talking about the mouse gestures just confused me.
- shiranaihito 18y agoOnly if the Firefox middle-click thing was only about opening JavaScript links too, I guess. In any case, mouse gestures are a good thing and make your browsing more efficient.
- huhtenberg 18y agoGlass whiteboard ! http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#5285319604805018674 http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#52853...
- mynameishere 18y agoHaving my back to glass would drive me insane, and evidently all of the offices are like that: http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#5285319734508515010 http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#52853... Check out all of the famous series 7 chairs: http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#5285319577602349138 http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#52853... It's got that not-quite-a-prison institutional look to it. That's great if you're running a high school in the poorest district in Mississippi, but given his budget [1] you'd think it would look nice. I've got a private office, and the landlord charged my company nothing to throw up walls and doors in the empty space we rented. Maybe it's impossible to avoid Veblen goods in NYC, though. [1] http://www.gibraltarfurniture.com/malik-mc-c-2201.html http://www.gibraltarfurniture.com/malik-mc-c-2201.html That's right. It's 300 dollars.
- jonknee 18y ago> That's great if you're running a high school in the poorest district in Mississippi That's just an absurd statement. The design is very high-end, perhaps you just don't like the modern look?
- mynameishere 18y agoMaybe it's "high end". But all of these are better: http://www.flickr.com/photos/doctony/2486595834/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/doctony/2486595834/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/stewiedewie/2377292918/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/stewiedewie/2377292918/ http://la.eater.com/uploads/2008_02_mcdonalds-thumb.jpg http://la.eater.com/uploads/2008_02_mcdonalds-thumb.jpg http://www.flickr.com/photos/meteorry/17414425/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/meteorry/17414425/ There's a McDonald's down the street from me similarly superior to Joel's lunchroom, which resembles none of the above. It was clearly patterned after a high-school cafeteria.
- d-rex 18y agoActually only the two interior offices have that layout. All the other offices have the desk facing a real wall with another behind it, and glass on the left and right. Oh and the same room from another angle looks much less like a prison: http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#5285319755022401170 http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#52853...
- timr 18y agoI would definitely not be a whiny emo girl if I were to work in that environment. ;-)
- petercooper 18y agoAwesome! I just can't even imagine how Fog Creek makes enough money for all of this from mostly a single product. They must have tens of thousands of paying customers - which strikes me as incredibly strong for a niche as small as software development - kudos!
- iamelgringo 18y agoThe shrinkwrap software business is good.
- bbither 18y agoThis is a seriously awesome office space that any developer looking for the urban lifestyle that NYC offers would be nuts to not want to work at. But Joel, you already have a fantastic reputation and should be able to recruit top talent based on your location, reputation, and because because you employ other smart people. That 500K of your own cash you put into that space depreciates over 39 years. You basically can't write it off until you move! I got stuck with over 200K in our last build-out that I'm still sitting on 3 years later. However if 500K is all you spent in addition to your lease with a standard buildout allowance, you got a great deal. Like Joel, I bootstrapped a software company to similar size (25 employees). I did a calculation and we spend about 1.4% of our revenue today on 5,000 sqft of office space, but have outgrown it and it's no longer the nice spacious office we started with. 10,000 sqft of space in the best class A space in Western MA will cost about 3% of our 2009 expected revenue, with modest but nice build-out included. Given that this would be our 4th move in 6 years, I tend to be careful about long leases and lease buildouts. I'd rather invest in paying good salaries, offering the best equipment and a nice (but not extravagant) work environment. Then I can afford to launch new products without being beholden to investors. I really like the glass walls though...
- j_b_f 18y agoWhere do you work in Western MA? I'm a software CEO as well and do a lot of work out there. We should get together sometime.
- rams 18y agoSeriously, how does Joel make both ends meet in an expensive place like NYC ? Selling bug-tracking software ?
- jfornear 18y agoThose huge motorized desks with 20 electrical outlets sound awesome.
- Tichy 18y agoIt's cool that they have a shower in the office. Never worked in an office that has one, always wished for one.
- iamelgringo 18y agoBrilliant, Joel. I love how you're able to market your company. You just got about 14,000 top notch hackers to look and drool over your office space. It's a great recruiting tool.
- cosmok 18y agoit is surprising that a story about someone moving to a new office makes into the front page of HN! the new office might have all the fancy features, but, there are a few things that annoy me: 1. I don't really care for all those fancy features and if I were considering joining a company those fancy features will be the last thing in my mind before I make a decision. 2. If one still has the urge to know who moved where and what they have got there then they can always find that in other sites (hardly HN stuff IMHO) 3. And the most annoying bit is that this story got to the front page while a lot of other threads that I found interesting and would have helped me become a better Hacker usually get a couple of points and pretty much no discussion at all. I love HN and the community and still read a lot of interesting stuff here, but, I am beginning to feel that HN is slowly slipping away to be a site that also has a few genuine and invigorating posts/discussions about entrepreneurship and programming.
- danw 18y agoWhere do those height adjustable desks come from? I'd love to be able to work standing sometimes
- adambox 18y agosteelcase :)
- VolatileVoid 18y agoInteresting. I work about a block away from that office; I take the 4/5 to Bowling Green every morning and usually walk past 55 B'way once or twice a week. Knowing that Fog Creek is so close is tempting me to send in my resume... :)
- biohacker42 18y agoSecond best offices I've seen. At Bowdoin College the CS professors have offices with an awesome view and a shower and bathroom in each office.
- gubbersingh 18y agoI work at a big software/hardware company. We have pretty much the same perks, same height adjustable long desks, aeron chairs (or you pick one based on the one you like) etc. Only thing I don't like is that there is no windows :-((. so no big deal, but windows are nice