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Comment by eli_gottlieb | Hacker News Reader

I kind of object to #6. Not every company can afford to rent or purchase the nicest wonderfulest offices ever. Plenty can only get offices out in some godawful office park where everyone has to, GASP, bring their own lunches or buy one off a local shop or food truck. That doesn't mean your company is bad, it means you've got fewer hipster pretensions -- though I would ask companies to please locate nearer to downtown centers rather than out in the exurbs.

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I don't think his post was saying 'if you do any of these things your company is shit', he's just enumerating lots of common mistakes companies make. I've seen companies make all of them, and usually the bad ones make something like 20-40% of those mistakes all at once.

For a good gig it's pretty easy to overlook one or two problems; if you see half that list you head for the door.

I think that's reasonable, but note I didn't say expensive real estate. I've seen some pretty nice office space in converted warehouses and repurposed industrial areas. What I'm talking about is putting devs in a cube farm and stuff like that. I also don't think it's absolutely essential that you cater lunch (if you're in a city with lots of dining options and off-site opportunities for employees to eat together), but if you're in the exurbs it probably is at this point. Top devs expect these things, even if they might be willing to work without them for a certain startup.

> "I've seen some pretty nice office space in converted warehouses and repurposed industrial areas. "

I've looked into these spaces before - they are surprisingly expensive. Even if you can find an empty disused warehouse, it takes a truckload of money to bring it up-to-spec for office use. Brand new plumbing, brand new wiring, TONS of interior work...

Repurposed industrial buildings look and feel great, and have a lot of soul, but they are counterintuitive frequently more expensive than a boring highrise office tower with drop ceilings.

I had to pick up a contract from a mobile gaming startup yesterday. 30 grim cubicles crammed together, shit literally everywhere on the floor like piles of cables, papers, discarded hardware...

There was even a gargantuan flatscreen that looped their product commercials and one of the guys sitting beside it I could see the flashing, seizure inducing graphics reflecting off his 2 screens and glasses. No windows, and unbearably hot from all the machines. How do you not go mad in that environment

i'd be worried about occupational health and safety in an environment like that. In fact, you can sue the employer for such an environment as unsafe. and if it turns out that they didn't do their due diligence to provide a good env, they might even have to cough up compensation. Food for thought!

You shouldn't say Class B in that case, it's more than adequate quality real estate (how you subdivide it has nothing to do with the class, and for that matter if the interior is nice enough I'm generally happy with Class C if I can get to it, but I'll agree its generally a step too far).

And ... well, I used to work at an organization where the crazy executive director killed it by moving us from Class B, which we could barely afford at that point, to Class A space (and of course, somehow there was only one office for all three techies at the end of the move). Ran out of money real fast when her marketing and sales plans didn't manage to flog sales of our obsolete current product and seriously hindered the project to develop the new one.

Taken to an extreme, there's the Edifice Complex, when a company that's "made it" has their own custom building made. Almost always a sign to sell.

Well I dunno. I just noticed it because I've never worked anywhere with catered lunches and have simply never come to expect them. Right now, I go out to a food truck or a local place every day and get my own damn lunch. It doesn't feel deprived or bad at all, and in fact I'd feel a little spoiled if the company started buying Thai food or health salads every day for us.

Mind, the company does have snacks, tea and coffee, so I basically eat breakfast from those on a lot of days, but still.

Agreed - I've never expected that ever (of course, some may object to referring to me as a 'top dev'). I may be too much of a picky eater to even want 'catered lunches'. Snacks/drinks are nice - even just subsidized (25c sodas, etc).

I wouldn't expect catered lunches except in the case someone calls a lunch meeting, then its on them to supply lunch. This attitude could be a result of where I grew up as it is considered an insult to not feed people you invited to a lunch meeting.

I consider low rent a plus. It tells me that the owners are perhaps managing their cash flow to be maintainable, and take seriously the fact that people just handed them a heck of a lot of cash. (there is a lot of nuance I am not covering - of course a catered lunch can be a low cost way to get a bit more productivity out of a person, and so on, and things like bad chairs is just penny wise, pound foolish).

Those company do not have a right to exists then. It's a privilege.

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