It's amazing when you look at software engineers' value in dollars. If you measured our value in square feet of local real estate, it would be blindingly obvious.

A tech company in a prosperous city can buy you all the 4k Dell Ultrasharps and Macbook Pros a person could want without breaking a sweat. Another couple feet of desk, on the other hand, could turn you from a net creator of value to a net destroyer of value. It's as unaffordable to the company as the salary bump that could put homeownership within reach.

I'd love it if someone would offer me a private office, parking space, and ability to live in a market with closer to median home prices, but the industry is very clearly trending in the opposite direction.

Really, citation please?

I see companies was so much money all over the place that it's a bit hard to believe that assigned desks would be such a hardship for them.

Don't know of anything public. At my company, we have ~5' slices of long communal tables. The figure I got from one of our facilities people two years ago was that these cost $20,000/year each. I'm sure the market is up since then, but I don't know how far.

I think you could fit about four of these workstations into one of our conference rooms. So giving people private offices the size of our conference rooms (any smaller would probably be a code violation, and at least inhumane) would cost about $60k/head extra. Maybe less, since some fixed costs like bathrooms and kitchens wouldn't necessarily grow.

Regardless of how the fixed costs play out, it looks like each 3-5 offices could buy a whole additional programmer. We chose the extra headcount rather than the offices.

That value would put the price per square foot (5" by 5", or 25"sq) at somewhere around $800 annually, around 10x the general office prices for SF or NY. I'm guessing the $20,000 figure is the up-front cost of the entire office, plus furniture, technology, and any building out they did, divided by the number of employees. Which is misleading, since that cost is usually amortized over 5-8 years.

Or your company is really getting screwed.

Office pods seem to be less than $10k, why can't we get those rather than five-foot slices of purgatory?

Probably because the area to pull out your chair wouldn't double as a hallway to access other people's desks anymore. The walls aren't what's at a premium, the floor space is.

I'm lazy today, so I just grabbed this article which describes office space in the bay area for startups [0]. Their talking all the way up to about $70 per square foot. Peopleware says 100 sq ft per person, so that's up to about $700 per month per employee (or $8400).

I honestly don't think that's crazy money, but you also have to plan for growth. This makes things a lot harder. If you think you are going to grow from 4 developers to 20 in the next couple of years, then you need to make sure you have access to space. Moving offices is usually traumatic, so it's a cost you need to balance.

TBH, I've only ever experienced that much space once in my career. Normally I've had about 60 sq ft and I've had much less in some jobs. My experience is that the extra space is definitely worth it. There shouldn't even be a question about it.

I think the problem is more that it is hard for the people-with-purchasing-power to understand that productivity in knowledge workers can very dramatically. Spending $10K per year on working conditions can easily save you $100K in salary (given current SV salaries) -- you can go with a lower head count and achieve the same amount of work.

But it's not just that. I'm a big proponent of small head count. The communication overhead for large teams can be crippling. When you look at trying to increase production by improving code quality -- it's practically impossible with large teams. If you never speak to half your team mates, there is no way to reach consensus on design approaches. There are ways to mitigate these kinds of problems, but I have to stress that I have never seen successful mitigation strategies in non-open source projects. In fact I've never even seen them attempted because the overwhelming bias is that more programmers == more productivity (amongst people-with-purchasing-power).

But even as I type this, I can see how it is scary to spend money on working conditions. Let's say you are bleeding cash (like most startups), or you are eeking out low single digit percent profit (like most establish companies). You've got some cash to invest and so you think, "We need to raise revenue. To do that, we need the product to have more capability". It's a pretty gigantic leap of faith to conclude "Instead of growing the dev staff by 10%, I'm going to spend that money on improving working conditions". And even if you do, you have to repress the very next thought, "Hmmm... dev staff comprises 10% of my workforce. WTF am I going to do when the sales people demand the same working conditions? If I refuse, all the best ones are likely to quit in a huff".

[0] - https://medium.com/initialized-capital/the-outlook-for-bay-a...

> Their [sic] talking all the way up to about $70 per square foot. Peopleware says 100 sq ft per person, so that's up to about $700 per month per employee (or $8400).

$7000 per month, not $700. $84k/year.

$70 is an annualized price

Either way my math is clearly wrong :-) I should be less lazy when I post!

Office space real estate isnot about money. It signals status

Some more traditional companies allocate offices according to the need to have confidential conversations, which usually means management/authority/involved in other people's problems, yes.

I've been at my current company (satellite of a larger company) for a year and a half, we have 8 people in the office, max, every day. There are a couple people who usually work from home, some days it's only one or two people in the office. Our office is 4,200 sq ft and it's an "open office." We're not growing, we didn't just shrink from a massive size -- the company just picked an office and that was that.

I get paid well above market rate, I own a home just outside Boston, my macbook pro had an issue a few months ago and the company just issued me a new one without blinking. The company just doesn't give a crap. Open offices are cool and just what programmers do these days, right?

My last company was very similar. 5 people, > 2,000 sq ft, great salaries, open office. The CEO talked about how awesome it was all the time, and actually said he wanted MORE talking in the office. Annoying as hell.

I don't think it's a money issue. I really think it's a culture issue. The only company I ever worked at that had cubicles was my first job out of college and they were actually relatively strapped for cash. The difference is the founder was in his 60's and they were in business consulting, not software specifically.

I basically live your last paragraph right now. Home prices are lower here than in the rest of the country, but I probably also get paid a lot less than you. So yes, all of the perks, affordable housing, private parking, but lower wages.

It's funny how you classify "space to get into the zone" as an employee benefit, while all that does is increase your productivity. But I guess that could mean going home earlier...

It's an employee benefit because it makes work more enjoyable. Being stuck in a problem that you can normally tackle with relative ease when "in the zone" is extremely frustrating.

Even when you hate the work, getting in the zone and coding makes the time pass quicker.

Sure, but to the employer the primary benefit of this is that people don't get stuck in problems that they can normally tackle with relative ease; the main effect (to the employer) is the fact that they're much more productive, not that they're a bit more happier.

"Enjoying your job" is a perk most people don't get. To them, larger monitors, better laptops, offices with doors, etc are simply tools people use to feel better than you.

Software engineers get to enjoy their jobs, at least in 2017. Until humanity either produces way more developers or makes us obsolete, we're basically free to enjoy our position of demanding work be enjoyable.

How is this relevant?

> "space to get into the zone" as an employee benefit.

A thing that used to be standard is now a benefit. Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

Well, some people do like the work they do. Doing work you enjoy is even better when you can focus on it without distractions, and frustrating when you can't.

A laptop is a great substitute for a desktop if you have a dock. I just place my laptop on the dock, it clicks into place and I have a couple of big screens, a full size keyboard and a mouse on my desk. No different than a desktop.

The article is discussing mobile desks, so to get the benefit you are describing you'd have to have docks, monitors, and peripherals at every workstation.

I'd bring my own keyboard and mouse. I'd probably also spend the first few minutes of my day cleaning the screen and the desk. The last thing I want to do is use somebody else's nasty keyboard and stare at fingerprints on the screen.

The office I work in, everybody gets a door. With all the arguments about economics, I think some people don't experience the same value to closing the door and working uninterrupted for three or four hours every day. I'm certain whatever the walls cost here, it's small compared to the productivity gains.

Some offices do exactly that. Thinkpad docks everywhere.

This will get even better with USB-C and/or Thunderbolt. Just sit down and with a single cable, get monitor, power, network and peripherals. (Almost) regardless of laptop make & model.

No it won't get better. On a dock, you have to connect exactly zero cables. Just place the laptop on the dock. That's it. No cables. No connectors. The bottom of the laptop has a connection which touches the pins on the top of the dock surface.

Yup, same at my office.

A large screen typically isn't a problem.

The office I work in has a number of the options mentioned - privacy pods, and a mixture of zoning and some dedicated desks. All the work spaces have nice monitors but you'll need to bring your own ergonomic keyboard and mouse.

That sounds incredibly unfriendly to differently abled employees. What if you need a desk that is significantly taller or shorter than normal? What if you need a non-traditional keyboard while recovering from surgery?

The desks can adjust in height. Also everyone is welcome to have a permanent desk if they prefer which can be customized to their desires. People bring their own keyboard.