Joel Spolsky designs the Bionic office for his company. “There’s a lot of evidence that the right kind of office space can improve programmer productivity, especially private offices…Having drop-dead gorgeous, private, windowed offices makes it a lot easier to recruit the kinds of superstars that produce ten times as much as the merely brilliant software developers. If I have to compete at New York salaries against Bangalore salaries, I’m going to need those superstars, so when people come in for an interview, I need to see jaws on the floor. It’s about drama.”
The final word: “The monthly rent for our offices, when fully occupied, will run about $700 per employee…I suspect that $700 per person is on the high side for software developers throughout the world, but if it means we can hire from the 99.9 percentile instead of the 99 percentile, it’ll be worth it.”
