Joel spolsky tells us how he designed his dream office. I'm not crazy about the colors, but he details some very important points to look out for when designing office space, especially if you want people to be able to do pair programming. One of my favorites books, PeopleWare, also has a chapter about office space. I think it's called “return the door!” or something. One of the most insperational things I've ever read. It made me close my office door on the first job I ever had. (it caused some problems with some of the managers so I had to cave in and keep it open.. but it was a very fun and quite week for those of us inside that office while it lasted)
On a different note, I was in two interviews this afternoon. Both went well. Here's an observation though. If you're an HR manager, and want to know if the people doing the interviewing are doing their job well, one thing to look out for is to take a look at the paperwork the candidates fill in when they first arrive. You know, the one where you repeat all the details you already wrote on your CV anyway?
Why is looking at it important? Well, if you see a large amount of doodling on the paper (those little drawings you do when you're bored out of your skull), you can take a wild guess and know that these people waited a long time to be interviewed, meaning they came in, sat down, and then waited for at least 20 minutes before actually taking the interview. It happened to me today. I waited half an hour to be interviewed. Other than the fact that it's pretty rude (I had other things to do you know?) it makes the candidate feel like they are not being respected as a person. If a work place can't even have a decent interviewing process, where people actually care that you're waiting a lot of time, how is that organization taking care of other stuff?
OK, I'm gonna do the dishes, listening to the new .Net rocks show. (Ah, the joys of unemployment..)
Update:
Listening to the new .Net rocks show is a total bomb. Too much background noise folks! Too bad. I liked the idea of doing it in a tavern, but I really can't hear anything :(