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New Twitter office: fabulous design by Sara Morishige Williams
- bonaldi 17y agoTwitter is earning bupkis, which means that all this is being paid for by investors. How are they justifying this? There's an argument that perception matters, I suppose. For instance, banks spend a lot on making their public buildings seem solid and impressive to bolster confidence in them, when so many of their products are built on air. Twitter is similarly intangible, so perhaps they're trying to say that they're an impressive company by having an impressive building. If that's the case, I think this backfires, by saying the opposite. It all looks and smells (er, in a non-toxin fashion) of the Aerons of the late 1990s. Even Fog Creek held off on their developer-focused space until they could afford it. Is there really no better return that could have been made on that cash? (Could it perhaps have bought a "Remember Me" checkbox that remembers me?)
- rcoder 17y ago> It all looks and smells...of the Aerons of the late 1990s. I'll admit that ragged on all the Aeron-acquiring startups back in '97-99, too. Then I bought one (second-hand, of course) for my home office last year, and discovered that, much to my surprise, Joel's arguments are actually sound: I can work for more hours, with better focus/less discomfort, in a really nice office chair. Ergonomics aren't just faddish indulgence -- they can really make a difference. Now, a DJ booth, and hand-rolled rattan bench cushions...those are faddish indulgence. (I'm still jealous, of course.)
- thwarted 17y ago(Could it perhaps have bought a "Remember Me" checkbox that remembers me?) Cool, so I'm not the only one. I was beginning to think it was some browser configuration or that I'm on Linux and not OSX or something.
- krschultz 17y agoCool technology ..... Check Sweet office space .. Check Revenue plan ........
- tybris 17y agoHm, at Amazon.com we had desks made out of door plates in brown cubicles. Also, we made money.
- bumblebird 17y agoBut we're in Bubble 2.0!
- revorad 17y agoAnd before desks, they had... errr concrete floors (http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/bez0int-4 http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/bez0int-4)
- swombat 17y agoI'm not sure why everyone's assuming that this office cost fabulous amounts of money. Good designers can make tight budgets go far. The only really expensive piece I see in this office is the stone table - but if they spent wisely on the rest, why not allow themselves one big expense? I mean, their desks are from Ikea for crap's sake! If they were looking to throw money out the window, they wouldn't have bought desks from Ikea.
- bumblebird 17y agoIt also shows they're spending more energy/thought into what people think, rather than putting that effort into their product. How many new features has twitter added in the last year? How about they spend the effort adding [share video] [share picture] on the web interface to twitter? How about allowing more than 140 characters and creating a trimmed version for the 7 people using SMS (Or send as multiple messages).
- bonaldi 17y agoThose little stools? $1000 a piece. Extrapolate from there.
- brown9-2 17y agoAre these the workspaces for "regular" Twitter employees? http://blog.michellekaufmann.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/twitter8.jpg http://blog.michellekaufmann.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/... Seems like you'd be right on top of each other.
- trefn 17y agoI think I would quickly tire of working in that space.
- pg 17y agoUh oh. Irrational as it seems, seeing this decreased my estimate of Twitter's prospects. It has same kind of overdoneness you used to see during the Bubble in the late 90s.
- jamie 17y agoWell, they have to catch up to Facebook's overdoneness. http://www.contemporist.com/2009/10/28/facebook-headquarters-by-studio-oa/ http://www.contemporist.com/2009/10/28/facebook-headquarters...
- theblackbox 17y agoI was reminded of 24 Hour Party People and Factory Records swish designer table (somewhere around £20k iirc)
- dschobel 17y agoNo kidding. At least when Brin spent company money indulging his wife, it was on a genetics startup. Or maybe that's just my engineer's aesthetic showing how little I care for objets d'arte in the workplace.
- rms 17y ago23andMe's pitch did seem perfectly reasonable at the time and it's a pretty good area to keep a money-losing startup going. It fits in with Google's overall mission, etc.
- orionlogic 17y agoi don't see any overdose in this office. Some colorful walls, bird vinyls(except embedded ones) and ikea inspired simple furnishing shouldn't be such expensive. I remember reading about ID software's office ( or j. carmakcs) back in bubble days where gigantic marbles allover the place, but i might be wrong with the company.
- projectileboy 17y agoid Software was always pretty darn profitable; you may be thinking of Ion Storm, John Romero's infamous exercise in cash-burning.
- revorad 17y agoThis kind of thing is bound to make people like the 37signals guys angry. It is truly sad that a non-business can afford to spend money like this. Life is unfair. Time to work.
- brown9-2 17y agoNot to mention the fact that the designer is the wife of Evan Williams.
- dschobel 17y agoWhat does fairness have to do with capital markets?
- revorad 17y agoYou are right about markets, that's why I said life. What I meant was that these guys are like rich kids who get to spend daddy's (VC) money on expensive toys. Why? Because they built a "protocol". I wonder if anyone ever made money on an information protocol. As far as working there is concerned, an employer with no revenue and $150M in debt doesn't sound very promising. Sooner than later, the hollow art decor office must come to haunt some people.
- pchristensen 17y agoUnfairness is a signal of inefficiency in capital markets? Sure this office might help them hire great workers and it might make them more productive at work, or it might be a boondoggle funneled to the founder's wife because they've raised over $100M. If you were an investor in Twitter, would this office make you feel good about how your money is being used?
- dschobel 17y agoI agree with you that this is a discretionary cost which they have justified to themselves and the people whose money they are spending. My objection was his claim of "unfair!". Invocations of fairness are the resort of people who don't understand a system.
- GiraffeNecktie 17y agoIt all seems a bit precious to me and doesn't seem like a space where people actually do anything significant or challenging, other than send out tweets. I guess you've got to spend your VC money somehow.
- hop 17y agoMyself and employees would be working on doors on cinder blocks if we were a billion dollar company burning money with no revenue. Karosene lamps, servers run by hampster wheels...
- smiler 17y agoLooks absolutely horrible. What a waste of money.
- bumblebird 17y ago>> "And how many offices have their own DJ booth?" What? I can't quite see why you would need a DJ booth in a twitter office. Looks like a good place for people to talk about how important they are. Not sure about being a good place for people to work and actually make stuff though.
- alaskamiller 17y agoThe DJ stuff was left over from the previous tenant.
- lpgauth 17y agoWho would leave that! Aw.
- elai 17y agoThe dark colours and lack of lighting would make that a depressing office to work in.
- kellishaver 17y agoWhat a waste of money for a company that isn't making any. Also, from the photos, it seems way too dark. I think I'd be depressed by about the 2nd week of working there.