My first job, I can only describe as 12 people crammed into a 2-bedroom apartment. If I moved my head to the left, I would make eye contact with a person 3 ft away, 2ft beside me was another developer and 2 ft behind me were the servers. I once backed into the server and accidentally hit the keyboard triggering a copy.
My second job was in a larger building, but they never had enough room so they kept moving us around. In the few years I was there, I think I changed desks 4 – 5 times.
Then I went back to a small company where we were crammed in together once more, barely enough elbow room for everyone – but what we accomplished and the speed with which we accomplished it would blow your mind.
And then back to larger spaces with bigger clients.
I had already been shifting to remote work with clients only because it significantly helped my schedule. I have a standup desk and great big monitors, and everything is within my elbow’s reach.
I go to a customer site and I spend about 30 minutes figuring out where everyone is and what we are doing.
But when we were crammed into the elbows? I never thought about the place I was at, I only ever thought about the work I was doing, the people I was beside, and what we were accomplishing. We had no fancy monitors, or laptops, big old desktops that sometimes got noisy.
That, in itself, should be the sole focus of any workspace you are creating for your team – what they need to accomplish the most and who they are accomplishing it with.
