Office Space

Pablo Mercado — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 12:00:00 -0500

Last year Handwire had a good kind of crisis: We loved our office space (downtown, hardwood floors, big windows in a historic building), but we had simply outgrown it. What to do? We knew that we had to find another space, but we feared that it would be difficult to duplicate the atmosphere that we had come to love, and, in my case, almost require. I recall thinking: if Handwire moves to some office outside of town in a nondescript building with buzzing flourescent lights and a huge parking lot, I’m outta here!

How could I have come to think such a thing? Was I considering quitting a fantastic job just because the office space might not be ideal?

Well, in my defense I probably would not have quit my job if Handwire had moved to some crappy office somewhere—and luckily, as it turned out, I did not have to; but this episode made me realize something: office atmosphere is very important.

This is, of course, obvious. But this little episode helped me understand why. Another obvious observation: we spend more time in our office than we do at home. It follows then that we should be just as concerned with being comfortable at the office as we are about being comfortable at home. It is true that we often do not have control over where we work, or what our office is like. But if you are in a position to have influence over these decisions, then exercise this influence! You will be happier for it!

So what happened with Handwire? Well, one of the reasons I love working at Handwire is that we all seem to share certain lifestyle values, and to Handwire’s credit, those values are of paramount importance in almost all decisions. So we searched and searched and searched until we finally found our current location, a beautifully renovated space right downtown overlooking Congress avenue. It really is a nice office, and being in a nice office really helps—especially at 2 a.m. on a Wednesday night when crunch-time is on.

Atmosphere is important. This obvious point was proven once again by Handwire when we moved into our new space. But we learned another lesson from this episode, a lesson that Joel (of joelonsoftware.com) applies over at FogCreek. He writes:

our goal was simply to build the kind of software company where we would want to work, one in which programmers and software developers are the stars and everything else serves only to make them productive and happy

Simply put: after working until 2 a.m on a Wednesday, I am happy to come into work the next day because I like my office and because my company cares enough to provide an office that I like.

Handwriting: Tag office

Office Space