elliot winard

Since I moved to NYC almost a year ago I’ve worked in a few different environments -

• on-site helping out an engineering group at an advertising agency
• on-site consulting on optimizing code at job-search site like to dice.com, monster.com
• remotely in LA at my dad’s office for 2 weeks
• NY public libraries. I couldn’t do any conference calls when working at the library.
• Cafes. When it was warm and I sat outside I was comfortable on conference calls in cafes. When it got colder I refused to be “that guy who talks really loud” on a cell-phone in a cafe.
• at a buddy’s house in Brooklyn ostensibly “coworking” informally
• at home in my tiny NYC apartment, cat on my lap
• at Not An Alternative, a coworking space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
• at Jelly at House 2.0, a cooperative living space in Manhattan

The largest chunk of time was the working at home. In the past month I became the lonely telecommuter and started checking out NY coworking digs. I found Jelly and liked the environment but we had some connectivity problems so ended up at a beautiful (but very quiet) public library in midtown. The tone was very informal. Initially, folks there (mostly guys) talked aloud about the tools & technology they used at various start-ups in the NY area. Obviously the talking toned down when we hit the library.

I’m working in a Brooklyn coworking space now and able to get more real development work done than I did while working at home for the last month. I’m still figuring out how many days a week I want to cowork and how many days I want to work solo at home and take care of things around the house. (like laundry, having time to cook a full dinner,etc.)

Joel Spolsky mentions office
space calculations that he’s making as he moves Fog Creek
Software into a larger space. Being in the middle of a search for
a new apartment to move into when we have to move out of our current
digs in July, I understand a lot of the calculations that he’s making
- size versus location, landlord/realtor versus tenant, office space
versus common space - with price always a factor.

Joel also talked about the requirements of making his office space a cool hang out. Since I started doing tech work in the late 90s in San Francisco, tech companies have been trying to make offices cool places to hang out. I always liked the folks that I worked with but always was too busy outside of work - playing and listening to music, baking bread, reading books, hanging out with the cat, visiting with friends - to spend extra time at the office. I understand where he’s coming from, though. Although I take pride in the work I do, I never thought of my place of employment as a one-stop-shop for work, play & life.

I rarely watch TV, play video games or pool, need to listen to music particularly loud at work. It sounds like Joel’s space is pretty cool, but I probably wouldn’t take advantage of most of the frills except for the ease of pair-programming. Plus I’ve never really liked the fit of those Aeron chairs.