I’ve always been in agreement on Joel’s stance on developer productivity in relation to private offices. It’s yet another reason I love our model, we all work in private offices. When Joel designed their new office he went to town and private offices were only part of the story.

As with most things in corporate culture, I do my best to at least spend some time contemplating why something I disagree with exists. For example, cubicles. If you believe that, for the most part, the world’s filled with people who are trying their best and have decent intentions, then there must be a reason offices are filled with cubicles. Or maybe Joel and his ilk are the only one’s who’ve taken the time to make something unique happen?

Well in this case I think Joel’s learned the hard way why cubicles exist and it’s pretty interesting. Ok, technically it’s boring tax stuff but it’s interesting to see an idea that makes sense, to me at least, in theory be put into practice and then run headlong into financial reality. If you’re a CFO at a tech company then you may want to bookmark Joel’s post. One thing to note is that if not for their own success and growth this problem wouldn’t exist and they’d still be sitting cozy in their bionic offices.

Joel’s now looking for middle ground in the form of moveable walls. Be careful man, I’ve had movable walls before and there was little, to no, noticeable difference between them and a cube.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 8:56 am and is filed under Office Gossip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.