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Comment by frisco | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't want to work in Zappos's office. It just doesn't look appealing to me at all. On the other hand, the 37s offices feel cool. The Zappos offices are Office Space-like cubicles covered in random crap. The 37s offices send a very different message; if you're going to work in an office (hopefully, not all the time), I'd much rather be in that environment.

I think it comes down to this: the style of the 37s offices (like many other designed offices) is more like what I see when I think of the "future". And I'd much rather be living and working in the future than cubes covered in random crap.

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It's all relative. The office tends to conform to your culture and employees.

The Zappos style is "do whatever it takes to make you and your customer happy". The chaotic, haphazard office style befits a company that once drove to a B&M store to buy a pair of shoes that they didn't have in stock and then delivered the shoes personally to the customer (all for free btw). Absolute bloody madness that earns them over a billion dollars in revenue in a niche of a niche of e-commerce that even the big boys tried (and failed) to compete.

37signals, with sparse digs and even more spartan design decisions, keeps their decision-making more minimalistic and cold (we will not implement a feature before its time). Meetings are death, build less, leaner and more flexible. All this results in an environment where they could pack up and move the entire office within the same day that they push out a beautifully useful new major feature in their software.

Someone commented about Pixar's offices[1], which seems more a testament to their employees' penchant for exacting design and aesthetic perfection, with no pixel out of place and no colors clashing. Their workspace keeps their employees making films that gross billions worldwide and which are universally praised as classics in film and storytelling. Pure, exacting entertainment.

[1] http://www.officesnapshots.com/2007/07/16/pixar-hq/

I'd also imagine the people who work at 37s are generally introverted developer/designers while Zappos is packed full of extroverts.

I'd expect different environments for both.

Does the Zappos engineering dept look the same?

Also notice the different gender makeup:

* only men are in the 37signals pics

* only women are in the Zappos pics

Also notice that Zappos is in Las Vegas. Big local culture difference.

Yes - the entire office is covered in decorations, themes and general craziness.

I've been to the Zappos office - don't mistake the random crap for anything other than an extremely motivated, tight run ship - those guys are killer business people - top to bottom.

That said, my personal taste leans more towards the 37 offices.

I agree. I do not like this idea that lots of zany shit = fun and comfort. Having worked in a number of different office cultures, the people with all the crazy junk all over their desks are almost always the sad ones -- people who go home alone after work and cry in their apartments, surrounded by cats with various illnesses. It's actually a red flag for me whenever I interview. It says, "I'm doing my best to cope."

I looked at the pictures and immediately thought that Zappos looks like a place where people chat (customer service) and 37Signals looks like a place where people think (programming).

Agreed. It looks like you can't work at zappos without at least 15 pieces of flair. You want to have flair, don't you?

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