Our old office looked like a cave and the new one has bright lighting and windows everywhere. I vastly prefer the old one, but most people prefer the new.
Totally agree. I have been at my current job for 5 years now and I feel that the lack of light is impacting my mental and physical health. This is the number one reason I am starting to look for another job.
Any job where I can just have a window looks really good to me now.
We just moved into a new office and one of the best things about it is that we now have small offices and I can keep the curtains closed and the lights off all day. Why would you want more light, especially natural light ?
^ This: I don't know how people do it, I'm using my computer in the dark at the moment with the screen being projected onto the ceiling. I can't think of another way I would rather use my computer really.
In a work environment? I find it hard to believe you spend 8 hours every day lying on your back staring at the ceiling. If you do, it absolutely can't be healthy.
My bad, forgot a probably pertinent piece of information. I am quadriplegic. Whilst technically yes I am in a work environment because I run my own company from home, you are quite correct that I am not in a work environment with other people.
I know, right? But I really, truly do forget sometimes. It's been over 10 years since I became quadriplegic, and I am old now so I'm allowed to forget things I think. :-)
We already spend 8 hours "lying on our back" every day -- sleeping, and we have evolved for it. It also puts little pressure in our body compared to sitting for hours on end.
It actually quite a hard thing to quantify, if I sit up in my wheelchair for too long you end up with pressure sores but on the other side lying down for too long can affect lung function and muscle tone which can make it difficult to eat which leads to all sorts of terrible ickyness.*
I think once you become quadriplegic you have bigger problems than your position when using your computer, but overall user on your back is definitely better for me than sitting up in my chair.
Using a computer screen in a lit room is far better for your eyes than using it in dark room. Natural light is a necessity for preventing myopia in developing eyes.
Not sure about the science here, but I have found the opposite to be true for me. I love natural light and crave it while I work. However, I have found that if the room is just a little too bright I will end up with severe eye strain and headaches after a day of work. Ambient light is the unfortunate cause.
And I can't get enough natural light. I hate artificial light, and require windows anywhere I work. When the temperature is right, I even sit on my back porch to work.
I feel much better in a dimly lit room. Not pitch black but a twilight kind of darkness.
However, I am autistic so that may have something to do with it. I only recently realised this. Ever since I've lived on my own I kept my curtains closed and my room dimly lit, but I never made the link to my autism or sensory issues. It seems kind of obvious in hindsight.
For some reason things that make 'normal' people happy have the opposite effect on me, and vice versa. For example, socialising makes me feel depressed while the more time I spend alone the happier I am. I don't think I've ever felt lonely either.
In some civilized countries natural light is actually a requirement, by law. Not in the server closet etc, but in your office it is. You can, of course, adjust the curtains or whatever to get the exact amount you prefer (which typically changes throughout the day, as the sun passes)
It has been illegal to stuff people into room with no natural light in Denmark for at least 40 years. It can just be a skylight if you're in warehouse or factory.
I believe that office workers are required to have actual windows and honestly I don't think even the employers think it's right to have windowless offices
Yup, the Danish Working Environment Authority is pretty clear about it.
There has to be a source of natural daylight and there must be clear windows that you can see through. Of course there are always exceptions, but they are just that.
Well, you can close a curtain, you can't usually get a sledgehammer and knock a hole in the wall if your office doesn't have a window and you want one.
Could you explain why? Do you just prefer a dark room or are you distracted by activities outside your window?
I can't really imagine not being look out a windows during the day. Also I think I'd feel trapped without windows, not that I can just jump out my 3rd. floor window.
Not your parent poster, but for me the external variable light is mostly a nuisance. It can be too bright and cause glare, or it's not enough and I need artificial lighting anyway. So I just blot it out, I work from home and I do the same across my entire home, blinds block external light and I use artificial light all day.
Sunlight is nice if I'm going to be outside admiring nature, but it's crap for reading, playing video games, any number of activities I want to do at home.
The cheap place I'll be staying on vacation in a couple of weeks offered a "free upgrade" to a room with a window and I was like "I don't understand - what would I in theory see out of this window?" because it's in a city centre, and obviously as a tourist I shall go out and look at museums and galleries and stuff, I shan't be sat there all day looking out the window, so it seems pointless. The other person I'm going with likes windows, so they'd already paid a little bit extra to have a window anyway. Crazy.
Thanks, that makes sense. It's not for me personally, I really like being able to look out and see the light change during the day. There's nothing worse that going outside after work and not having realized that it's gotten dark without me noticing.
On a side note I don't think I'd stay in a hotel/motel room without windows, that just seems creepy. For the same reason I don't book room on ferries without windows, even though I'd just see the water.
While probably true (not checking the real law right now), that list is weirdly misleading. For example it's not forbidden to drill on a sunday or tune your piano at night, you are simply not allowed to disturb other people too much at certain quiet times (e.g. Sunday or the night, so not totally unreasonable either). If you live remotely and nobody hears you, just go ahead.
Side note: why would anyone consider it weird to actually have laws in place to protect workers from abusive employers? That's how it seems to be worded on that page...
3: pillows may be considered passive weapons but that is irrelevant unless it is used as such or carried in a context where it is likely intended to be used as such (e.g. while participating in a demonstration). That said, assaulting random people in public with a pillow is probably still illegal because it involves assaulting random people (albeit with a weapon that's less likely to cause permanent injuries directly).
5: Both drilling and throwing bottles into containers cause noise pollution. It's not the act itself that's verboten, it's the noise it causes.
6: This is the same thing as 5. The law doesn't give an exhaustive list of activities that might be too damn noisy so I have no idea where these come from.
8: Calling a police officer "du" is a sign of disrespect. If you're new to the language and struggling with the distinction, the police officer will likely correct you or ignore it. Treating police officers disrespectfully is a misdemeanor and addressing them as "du" is one way to be disrespectful.
9: This is a widely held misconception. The "Deutschlandlied" is not illegal. The national anthem only has one verse and that's the third verse of the Deutschlandlied (or actually "Lied der Deutschen"). You can still sing the entire song but if you were going for singing the national anthem, you'll spend two verses singing something that isn't the national anthem. The reason people will still look at you in disgust is the same reason the anthem only uses the third verse: we don't take to jingoism too kindly after WW2.
10: I'm pretty sure it's not a law that you can't drink Export or non-Munich beer at the Oktoberfest, considering the Oktoberfest is in essence just a private event, but it's Bavaria so I'm not sure of this one.
>Treating police officers disrespectfully is a misdemeanor
This sounds like an Weimar Republic quality law... it could be worse, of course, in the US they can just kill you if they feel like it and you're sufficiently black or poor...
Note that a "passive weapon" is not a weapon. It's odd legalese for defensive equipment, including helmets, gas masks amongst other things. So a passive weapon is not a weapon at all, and pillows might be included because of their property to shield yourself, not because of the damage they can cause others.
"Passive weapons" are not illegal; it is illegal to bring them to a demonstration with the intent to use them to avoid police interventions.
So it's illegal to bring things that help you defend yourself to a situation where you, without personally doing anything wrong, may be attacked? Sounds great. /s
Yes, because the assumption is that the police protects you against any aggressors (i.e. criminals) that might attack you. In Germany (and most Western nations) the state has the monopoly of violence, so it's responsible for protecting you and you aren't allowed to do violence except as a self-defense (i.e. as a last resort and only within reason).
If you bring a shield to a demonstration it means you're expecting to be attacked, which either means you don't trust the police to protect you from aggressive counter-demonstrators (which presumably shouldn't be a reasonable concern) or you intend to start a fight.
I wouldn't say the worry is entirely misplaced, but the general idea is that if you were allowed to bring equipment that protects you from police violence the police would have to apply more violence to subdue you and nobody wants that.
IMO police violence and negligence should be prosecuted more thoroughly (see G20 vs the failure of police to uphold the law during nazi demonstrations in Chemnitz recently) but I don't disagree with the idea in general because at least it means we don't have stand-offs between white supremacists and black activists carrying (semi-automatic) assault rifles like recently in Texas, or shield formations like in Charlottesville.
EDIT: It's the same thing as with gun ownership, really: if guns are so widespread that you have to assume every suspect packs heat, you have to treat every suspect as a potential shooter and be ready to shoot first. If a cop stops your car in Germany, there's almost no chance a weapon will be involved.
A lot of European countries, as far as I know. Not sure if it's all of them. But others have replied, so we know about Denmark (and it's the same in the other Scandinavian countries, probably all the Nordic countries, i.e. Scandinavia + Finland and Iceland), Germany, possibly Spain (not sure), Netherlands, ..
I did an internship last year which consisted in writing unit tests for a raytracing library that was among other things - I was told - used to determine if buildings were on paper getting enough sunlight according to european standards.
I'm not sure whether they were talking about EU regulations or about the regulations of specific european countries.
Is it an old building? There are some basement offices in London, and presumably other countries, with either no windows or pointlessly small/ineffective ones (like those little glass blocks you see on the pavement occasionally). I wonder if light regulations would have to have exclusions for old buildings that are impractical to change (a bit like minimum platform widths at train stations don't apply to some old stations).
I think there are at least two separate issues here; some countries have health and safety laws requiring natural light, while others require natural light in newly-built offices (as a condition of planning etc). Can you build an office in London these days that doesn't have natural light in the main spaces? I'd be sceptical.
8.1.
Workplaces must as far as possible receive sufficient natural light and be equipped with artificial lighting adequate for the protection of workers' safety and health.
[…]
10. Windows and skylights
10.1. It must be possible for workers to open, close, adjust or secure windows, skylights and ventilators in a safe manner. When open, they must not be positioned so as to constitute a hazard to workers.”
Effective since December 31, 1992 (two years later for Greece)
I wonder how that is interpreted? Does that exclude buildings older than the code? Does it prevent new buildings from being constructed without these features? It would always be "possible" if enough money was spent on it (and you ignore other considerations, like historical values)...
* If the nature of what goes on inside a room conflicts with the presence of windows -- e.g. labs (say, a laser lab)
* if the room isn't meant to be used by humans (e.g. storage closets, server rooms) -- If humans sometimes enter such rooms that's OK, but it can't be their "assigned workplace".
It’s the EU, so you can count on it being reasonable.
The example I know of where it isn’t enforced is of people working inside a refrigerator. I can imagine security conscious jobs and radiology departments also may be exceptions.
It also doesn’t mean all rooms need windows or even natural light. Toilet rooms often don’t, for example, and storage rooms often only have windows high in the walls or in the ceiling (typically way more than in “a room with a view” in Cupertino :-) )
It essentially means that you have to have a real reason not to have windows, not just "it was slightly cheaper". So new buildings would get them, intentionally windowless spaces (darkrooms, freezers) are allowed for a purpose, and adapted historical buildings are allowed.
In Finland the building code requires that all office spaces and apartments have a window.
It's possible to circumvent this by putting an office into space that was designed as storage or as factory. But you will then usually also lack toilets, kitchen and decent air condition. If you do the renovation to get those things and abide by the law, you will have to arrange a window too.
In practice some individuals in overstaffed offices will work from a space that was originally storage, then negotiation room and now a shitty office room.
Of all the thing that make me thing "there ought to be a law" natural light seems like it should be way down the priority list.
edit: And yes, I've worked in places with and without natural light, both white collar jobs and near minimum wage jobs. Comfortable temperature for the amount of physical activity I'm being asked to do and a comfortable amount of space in which to work are both a million times more important and the former only requires pushing some buttons or turning a dial, not cutting a hole in the side of a building. If someone asked me what would make work suck less back when I worked in one of those jobs where I didn't get to any outdoor light (some of those jobs didn't even suck) natural light wouldn't have even been on my radar as an issue.
There are laws for way sillier things. Something that has strong health benefits (see the research cited) for such a low cost strikes me as an obvious thing to legislate, if you're going to legislate worker protection at all.
This wouldn't be regulated if this wasn't a problem. There are a lot of "silly" things in workplace regulations precisely because employers tried to take them away.
There's a fair bit of evidence that not seeing natural light has health effects, AIUI. In that sense, it's just like any other workplace health and safety rule.
Whatever it takes for the architect to be able to sleep at night. Then during construction, the client can tell the builder to obscure the whole wall of windows with conference rooms and managers' offices.
Natural light or artificial light that recreates the natural light spectrum is good. Everything else is bad.
There is an overabundance of sharp blue light in most modern light sources. I highly recommend either using tinted computer glasses when working or something like f.lux
Even worse are flickering lights. Even at a high (nearly imperceptible) frequency, I have seen so many colleagues(myself included) suffer from headaches due to them.
What should be done? Either invest in better smoother lighting for your workers or let plenty of natural light inside.
You may be the minority at least, but you also have to see it as having options. There's a big difference between having a room with a window and opting to close the curtains, and have no window at all. Most likely you also don't get depressed by working in a bright room, while others actually suffer if they have to little light.
I would guess that all Scandinavia countries have similar rules, and there's actually a minimum amount of light you're legally allowed to have in a room. The law in Denmark for instance actually require a room to be insanely bright.
My preference is nearly a dark cave and people think I'm odd. I also use a plugin to make FF have dark backgrounds and light text. I don't enjoy squinting all the time.
In at least one case, it wasn't just me. I used to work editing photos on California's central coast and after we moved to a building with loads and loads of skylights, and got a bunch of new glossy-screen iMacs, it was really hard to get color accuracy if you wore anything but a black or white shirt. It was like staring at a mirror all day long. Eventually we got umbrellas to blot out the sun and that helped.
I have just been using stylus and using dark themes for sites I use often, but would love a more automated approach, especially for sites I don't use that often.
Our office recently installed dimmers on all the lights and if you walk around, every single group has it set to the lowest it'll go. We also have our blinds down - they darken, but are semi transparent, so you can see outside, but it cuts the light by a ton.
Natural light is good, but the office isn't the place I crave it the most. And as other have alluded to, I'd much rather have a dingy personal cave than a bright but shared space.
So #1 perk for me: enough schedule flexibility that I can ensure I can have some outdoor time during daylight hours every day, even in winter.
You know we human should use more natural light in our office but their is no hard and fast rule for the same. People are so busy in their rut routine that they cant even handle a day off outside with family.
Yep, I've never worked in a room with windows. It leads to what I call coal miner syndrome: go in before the sun rises, leave after it sets. Bums me out, particularly during the winter. :(
Luckily, where I work now, we're getting a new office, and when the manager presented the plans, one of the first questions was, "Who gets the window seats!?"
I think their point was it's so obvious that it shouln't be considered a perk.
"I've worked in an office without getting paid, really takes a toll on you." Sounds ridiculous. Why would you work without getting paid? Same for natural light.
Likewise. It's insidious if you don't realise that's what's causing you to feel horrible. You start to think you hate your job, but it's just the workspace that's causing you to feel trapped and anxious.
Like some other people have mentioned, you start wondering if you might prefer to work construction or in a food truck or just anything so long as it's outside. But really you can get most of the way outside with a good office space and you may find you enjoy your job a whole lot more.
My favorite work site (outside of my home) was an interior office that I usually kept dark with the door closed. Time would fade away and I could focus on the problem at hand. I didn't keep a clock visible on my screen, and so sometimes I'd come out after 9pm. Other times, I'd be around 1pm or 2pm. I'd go take a walk if I wanted natural light or non-textual conversation. I would love for a similar setup at a future job.
If an employer doesn't offer remote work or a door, my rate goes up a lot.
That might be fine for a single person but having someone in your life means the monastic office thing isn't going to work out. You both need to get home at a decent hour, ideally coming and going at the same time everyday to keep schedules lined up if you want to spend any time at all during the week.
The satellite control rooms do indeed not have natural light. But all the people working there have another office with natural light they can use when their presence is not required in the control room (which is most of the time).
Depends on who you ask. Just a few days ago there was a comment in a thread about Microsoft requiring its suppliers to offer paid parental leave that called it a "fad benefit".
Well, you already have "ping pong tables", "snacks", "disrupting the world" and "open space floor plan" listed as perks quite often, so why not. It is a perk as opposed to no breathing air, so...
I would not read a job advert for a company with "ping pong tables" and think that's a company I would like to work for. I don't wake up in the morning to go play ping pong! No more ping pong please ! :)
I would like that, my previous assignment was in a very old (>50 years) office building with broken HVAC, temperatures were always at least 25 degrees (C), also in winter. And of course those at the windows would leave them closed to avoid the draft, so us scrubs at the far end would have nothing.
I worked for a large department in a huge corporation about 3 years ago. Around half the department sat in a large cube-farm room. Around the edges of that room were managers' offices and a meeting room, which entirely cut off natural light.
It was like a vegas casino in there, perpetual half light, no concept of time of day. Really depressing. I was glad I got to sit upstairs by a window.
I was going to write that as well. I worked at a place that had automatic curtains which covered the windows when it was sunny out. It immediately felt like a prison when they went down and that was a standing joke among employees.
I can't even imagine working in a place like that 8 hours a day. I would probably rather live in the woods or something.
With that openspace crap it hard to get the daylight even though the building has large windows. You sit somewhere in the middle of the raw, closer to the other end from the window and your colleagues close blinds because it apparently too bright for their dank dark color schemes in their editors.
That's why buildings with a large footprint are generally bad. But many levels is also bad because it creates division between people who work at different levels. A good compromise is a building with a large hollow area in the middle to let sunlight into the "inner" walls, and with not too many levels.
Multiple small-ish buildings on a campus can be good too, especially if you can manage some green space between them. The offices-in-cities trend seems to have put an end to this kind of setup, though.
Seriously? I complain about not having windows to let natural light in and the fluorescent lights and people look at me like I’m crazy for being sensitive to artificial light.
It is for me. I’ve been working in an office that resembles a bunker with absolutely no natural light and it takes a toll on your mood, mental health and my latest blood work shows deficiency in vitamin D, which can lead to many diseases.
We've got nice big windows and lots of natural light (most of the time) but we had to lobby our facilities manager to put in a switch so we could turn off the overhead fluorescent lighting.
I hate office aircon. There always seems to be a lag between hot weather starting and the ac getting ramped up, and the other way around, hot weather over, AC still on full blast.
I keep 2 different jackets in my office locker to wear at my desk in the middle of summer, because I don't know how hot or not it will be at my desk.
At least in offices without it, I know to dress appropiately based on the weather outside.
Have you tried open windows + a light breeze + background sound from outside + natural light with the inside lights dimmed a bit? That's the good stuff, whether it's 60 or 90F.
Every day I am the first to show up at my company, and I get maybe ~ 1 hour of nice, quiet work time with low lighting from the windows with overhead lights off.
Then the second person who comes in every day shows up and flips all the overhead lights on every god damn day.
When I’m working and the lights flip, I get a sense of rage and depression. I think it will be the reason why I quit this job.
Then I’m just the whiny asshole or primadonna or something. It’s not possible to have these preferences treated in an adult way in modern corporations, and anyone the issue got escalated to will just see it as whining.
You have to keep your head down and act like it’s Candide: whatever your company currently does is the best possible thing they could ever do.
"Then I’m just the whiny asshole or primadonna or something."
The way you approach doing this goes a long, long way toward how you're perceived.
"It’s not possible to have these preferences treated in an adult way in modern corporations, and anyone the issue got escalated to will just see it as whining."
I imagine you think this is the case because you see others asking for similar types of things as also being "whining". All you have to do is ask politely and calmly, and things should be fine. You might not get your way, but asking for something isn't automatically seen as "whining" by most people.
Why do you think I perceive other askers as whiny? I don’t. I think corporate culture is sorely anti-humane, and we need better sociological solutions in dev teams and orgs, closer to what is described in Peopleware.
I take other peoples’ preferences very seriously and treat them with respect. People should at least be heard and compromises attempted.
Management and capricious brogrammer types in every company I’ve ever worked for across 12 years however do not act this way at all, and reasonable requests will only be used against you. This has been outwardly and definitively proven time after time.
It has been the case in all the companies I’ve heard about from peers as well, which includes several of the “big four” tech companies, prominent startups, finance companies, etc.
It sounds like your working experience has been wildly unrepresentative of the reality of modern corporations.
I always have all the blinds closed in my apartment and I work from home. I get very little natural light. Any reason I should force myself to get more?
If you don't care for your health, no. In any case, the ill effects will only show up after decades of such a habit (and they wouldn't be directly and easily attributed to it), so no need to be concerned with it now.
I don't seriously suggest that anyone not brush her teeth. However, it's a fact that many people don't take care of their teeth for decades before suffering the consequences. If one lost one tooth every three years, one would probably improve one's oral care. However, with periodontal problems, the teeth often hang on for a really long time, before all failing at pretty much the same time.
Since lots of people don't take care of their teeth even though they know they should, some people will avoid all sunlight.
Not a perk. I fired an employer for failing to provide natural sunlight for a reasonable amount of time throughout the day. I’ve also rejected offers involving lack of sunlight. One place adjusted to this requirement quite well. Apparently I was the first candidate to even bring this up when I asked about the working environment.
when our teams office got moved from another city into the basement of the main office, i threatened to quit unless i got a desk by the window. the building was on a hill, so the basement did have an open side out to the back with windows by the entrance. space was a bit small but they managed to custom-fit a desk so that i could sit there.
Well it’s called a job interview for a reason. Inter+view. Prepare for interviews as if you’re hiring them and you’ll have plenty of questions. Your employer needs to deliver as much as you do. Negotiate!
I know it’s a different mindset. Do it long enough and you realise you might as well work for yourself. Or work on contracts and sub out what you can’t directly do but are willing to manage.
My old mindset when I started out was that employers know everything and are all powerful. In reality they had better have more experience than you in multiple ways or they’re going to be fired either by the market or when you have to quit (which is obviously you firing them).
At some point I the worst of both worlds — a desk directly underneath a corner frosted glass skylight/window combination, meaning impossibly bright light in the early afternoon (making my display quite hard to read), and no effective nearby artificial lighting when it started getting darker. Took me maybe a month to find another job after my boss insisted I couldn't move my desk elsewhere.
Maybe natural light is a perk because it is nice to have (sometimes), but a door/actual office with a lock and soundproofing would then be a minimum baseline requirement.
(I’d honestly prefer windowless to a window I couldn’t control, too. Windows with effective shades are nice, particularly if they can be opened for fresh air, but I’d be completely fine with a windowless office with a substantial door, great artificial full spectrum lighting, and HVAC under my control 24x7. Especially if my door and lock had a security rating.
I also read you can't fake it with a picture of a sunny day or whatever. I have no windows so I make sure to at least walk past one on the way to the printer and back.
Oh yes please. I work as a games programmer at a massive studio and it looks like 90% of people here prefer complete darkness during the day, to the point where they have these umbrella-like covers above their desks to cover any light from the lamps that somehow miraculously are still on. Me and few other people occupy a little corner next to a window that we stubbornly refuse to close the blinds on, despite bi-weekly requests to do so from our artists. If I had to work in the darkness I'd genuinely consider leaving - it gives me a headache.
I think it's interesting that the comments here seem almost universally in favour of bright natural lighting, when clearly there are plenty of people (at least in gamedev) who feel otherwise. I tend to prefer a dimly lit room and am perfectly happy with the only light being from my monitors. Then again as an ex-gamedev troglodyte I'm also happiest working from 3pm-1am...
One fairly universal current I've observed though is a dislike for strong artificial lighting, particularly overhead lighting. I can work very productively in an abundance of natural light or in a basically dark room lit only by the glow of monitors and RGB accessories, but put me in a room without windows and with supermarket-style lighting and I'll be miserable.
In my home office, I'm fortunate to have both a large window and a simple IKEA floor lamp (something like this: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/10394129/). I alternate between the two, but never turn on the overhead lighting on the ceiling fan.
Part of that might be the harsh nature of fluorescent lighting used in a lot of offices. Natural light is broad spectrum, but typical fluorescent lighting is a few sharp peaks. Combined with the 120 Hz flicker common in many I find them pretty unpleasant, especially for long periods of time.
I find I don't mind higher CRI and higher frequency lighting nearly as much. You can get that in fluorescent lights and they're not as bad as they used to be, but the really good ones are expensive.
I'm the same way, I currently sit near a huge window and I find that it is way too bright. I've had to put up shades to block the sun. My last job I sat in a dim room with only a small amount of ambient light and I loved it.
Interesting to see that this seems like it might be a theme at game dev places. I remember reading in Masters of Doom about developers constructing similar makeshift structures to shield their workspaces from light at John Romero's company, Ion Storm.
Id and Ion Storm are/were both in Texas. There’s a lot of sun there. Enough that you can afford to hide from it.
Anecdotally, I was a lot more nocturnal when I lived in New Orleans than when I lived in Boston and Seattle. It’s impossible to get too much sun up here, but down in the tropics, that’s a definite problem.
Also, weren't they on the top floor with a glass ceiling? Direct sunlight glaring down on me is very annoying, but sunlight that has reflected off of the grass or filtered through the trees outside my window is fine. It not all coming from the same direction, and all the infrared has been absorbed.
I'm not a game dev, but a dev in a different industry and I am like your coworkers. I yearn for an office with no light but I am stuck in this awful open office with tons of light everywhere. My coworkers refuse to close the blinds and my desk looks right at the window. I hate it.
I did some contract work with some mushroom people. I was in the minority of staff that wanted sunlight. We got a large office for the four of us, the other 30 were in almost complete darkness in a sea of cubicles. They actually blacked out their spaces with material.
We had plenty of plants, fishtank and my customary giant Pac-Man. Good times.
I also encountered this at a company I worked for long ago. Found it so bizarre—they’d turn off as many lights as they could and hang black curtains around their PCs to maintain as dark a space as they could. I chalked it up as “weird dudes at weird company” but have encountered this behavior a few times since, and am now reading about it here in the comments! Different strokes for different folks I guess.
I like natural light at a medium level (eg, blinds 1/2 closed). I despise bright artificial light.
When I went to work at Google, in a large windowless room, I was one of those people with a cover over their cube. Without the cover, one of the rows of artificial light would shine right in my eyes.
Same when I worked at Rackspace. I was in a football-field-size windows-less room (there were actual windows at the periphery but I was so far away it didn't matter) right under a fluorescent light fixture shining right in my eyes. Most of us had these gigantic plastic leaf shades we found in the kids section of Ikea blocking the light. Some folks went as far to drape their cube in surplus camo netting.
Now I'm in an office sitting right next to a 10x10-foot east facing window with lots of light and views outside. But I nearly always have the shade down since the sun shines right in and blinds me every morning.
All this could be solved with private offices. I just hope I live to see the day when our line of work reverts back to private offices from this open space insanity.
It won't. Open offices are a lot cheaper and managers are almost universally too stupid to realize that the adverse effect they have on productivity costs them anything.
What kind of lights are they blocking? If it's a super bright fluorescent light, those have a very blue and electric color, compared to natural light or a warmer, softer light, I hate those fluorescent tubes.
Are you sure the lights aren't reflecting on their monitors? My monitors face the windows in our high rise and around 3pm I can barely see my screens and have to adjust everything to reflect less, and these are matte monitors.
They might be working on games that are very dark (mostly black screens) so that is the only way to see any contrast. P.S. I hate those games, my room is not going to be midnight dark to play a game.
At the last game studio I worked at the artists formed a “no windows or florescent lights” room full of dimmed lamps and Wacom monitors on the lowest brightness. Deep down I wish I could have had that and strolled into the coffee room for sunlight every hour.
And the health nuts. Or just anti-night propaganda. I love working at night when it's super dark regardless of windows and the only light is from my screens.
I really wish it was possible to somehow use my laptop outside when it's sunny. It's a shame to spend the prime hours of the day inside, and then spend all your spare time in the dark at night.
I get really jealous of the construction workers when it's a nice sunny day outside. I've worked a few different outdoor jobs, and there's nothing quite like working on a sunny day, it really lifts the spirit.
I've bought an Amazon Kindle Paperwhite recently, and spent a few hours under the mid day sun in the riverside reading some books. It's worth it just for that!
Shame there is no e-ink laptop sometimes soon, most likely...
When it's really bright outside, switch to a monochrome, black on white terminal theme with a huge font. You'll be able to work anywhere without noticing dust or greasy fingerprints on your screen. Plus it's an exercise in minimalism.
I have a shade for my laptop I made out of black illustration board and tape. It sticks to the magnets in my Mac’s lid. I have done a lot of work outside in the park.
There are commercially made shades too. Look around.
I think some comments are missing the point. I used to work in an office that definitely had "natural light" because it did have windows, but the view from the windows was basically just other grey buildings about 10 metres away. I now work in an office where I can look out and see grass, trees, and the sky, and it's much nicer.
Trees and greenery in general take a space from "concrete wasteland" to "human living space" for me. I have no idea why we build plazas as big concrete slabs. Who thought that was what people wanted?
Who has every thought to themselves, gee, I sure wish there was more flat concrete to look at.
You don't have to pay someone to mow the concrete slab, I guess. (And in the winter, don't shovel the snow, just make a sign that says: "warning, slippery!")
It's supposedly so that events are easier to setup as "it's a more free form space". IMO it doesn't really make it all that much easier, and looks like shit when an event isn't going on.
Maybe bad modernist design or the out-of-favor brutalist design. Modernist design does not favor large slabs of flat concrete. Really, no form of design does. So, it's really just bad design.
Even brutalism wasn't for big empty slabs for a plaza.
I've heard that cities are going that way to make pop up events easier. I don't think it really makes it that much easier though, and it looks like shit when an event isn't going on.
How much does it improve your work experience? I have the same view, but we have all the window blinds closed because it's too much light, causes glare on people's monitors, etc.
Personally I'd much rather have free lunches or unlimited PTO.
It's hard to say because there are many other things that are better any my current office. Having the nice view outside certainly isn't a bad thing. At home I work in classic geek style darkness, though.
I luckily currently work in a place with a good view and natural light (though the ceiling light is on all the time too). I worked at many places where the engineers worked next to a clean room so everything was surrounded by closed off walls. I like to call it the dungeon. It really sucked during the winter since we do not notice how much snow accumulated until we left.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 272 ms ] threadAny job where I can just have a window looks really good to me now.
I never open my curtains at home either.
Mea culpa, Mea maxima culpa.
Compared to what, sitting?
We already spend 8 hours "lying on our back" every day -- sleeping, and we have evolved for it. It also puts little pressure in our body compared to sitting for hours on end.
I think once you become quadriplegic you have bigger problems than your position when using your computer, but overall user on your back is definitely better for me than sitting up in my chair.
* Yes, that is the correct medical term.
For me, sitting in the dark is depressing.
I feel much better in a dimly lit room. Not pitch black but a twilight kind of darkness.
However, I am autistic so that may have something to do with it. I only recently realised this. Ever since I've lived on my own I kept my curtains closed and my room dimly lit, but I never made the link to my autism or sensory issues. It seems kind of obvious in hindsight.
For some reason things that make 'normal' people happy have the opposite effect on me, and vice versa. For example, socialising makes me feel depressed while the more time I spend alone the happier I am. I don't think I've ever felt lonely either.
To many people NOT socializing doesn't compute.
I believe that office workers are required to have actual windows and honestly I don't think even the employers think it's right to have windowless offices
There has to be a source of natural daylight and there must be clear windows that you can see through. Of course there are always exceptions, but they are just that.
https://arbejdstilsynet.dk/da/regler/indeklima/belysning-og-...
As an employee, I hate this rule and would love a windowless office. Right now, I just keep the curtains closed all day.
I can't really imagine not being look out a windows during the day. Also I think I'd feel trapped without windows, not that I can just jump out my 3rd. floor window.
Sunlight is nice if I'm going to be outside admiring nature, but it's crap for reading, playing video games, any number of activities I want to do at home.
The cheap place I'll be staying on vacation in a couple of weeks offered a "free upgrade" to a room with a window and I was like "I don't understand - what would I in theory see out of this window?" because it's in a city centre, and obviously as a tourist I shall go out and look at museums and galleries and stuff, I shan't be sat there all day looking out the window, so it seems pointless. The other person I'm going with likes windows, so they'd already paid a little bit extra to have a window anyway. Crazy.
On a side note I don't think I'd stay in a hotel/motel room without windows, that just seems creepy. For the same reason I don't book room on ferries without windows, even though I'd just see the water.
3: pillows may be considered passive weapons but that is irrelevant unless it is used as such or carried in a context where it is likely intended to be used as such (e.g. while participating in a demonstration). That said, assaulting random people in public with a pillow is probably still illegal because it involves assaulting random people (albeit with a weapon that's less likely to cause permanent injuries directly).
5: Both drilling and throwing bottles into containers cause noise pollution. It's not the act itself that's verboten, it's the noise it causes.
6: This is the same thing as 5. The law doesn't give an exhaustive list of activities that might be too damn noisy so I have no idea where these come from.
8: Calling a police officer "du" is a sign of disrespect. If you're new to the language and struggling with the distinction, the police officer will likely correct you or ignore it. Treating police officers disrespectfully is a misdemeanor and addressing them as "du" is one way to be disrespectful.
9: This is a widely held misconception. The "Deutschlandlied" is not illegal. The national anthem only has one verse and that's the third verse of the Deutschlandlied (or actually "Lied der Deutschen"). You can still sing the entire song but if you were going for singing the national anthem, you'll spend two verses singing something that isn't the national anthem. The reason people will still look at you in disgust is the same reason the anthem only uses the third verse: we don't take to jingoism too kindly after WW2.
10: I'm pretty sure it's not a law that you can't drink Export or non-Munich beer at the Oktoberfest, considering the Oktoberfest is in essence just a private event, but it's Bavaria so I'm not sure of this one.
This sounds like an Weimar Republic quality law... it could be worse, of course, in the US they can just kill you if they feel like it and you're sufficiently black or poor...
"Passive weapons" are not illegal; it is illegal to bring them to a demonstration with the intent to use them to avoid police interventions.
I realize it's not the only reason possible to take body armor to a demonstration, but it is the reason for most people wearing them.
If you bring a shield to a demonstration it means you're expecting to be attacked, which either means you don't trust the police to protect you from aggressive counter-demonstrators (which presumably shouldn't be a reasonable concern) or you intend to start a fight.
I wouldn't say the worry is entirely misplaced, but the general idea is that if you were allowed to bring equipment that protects you from police violence the police would have to apply more violence to subdue you and nobody wants that.
IMO police violence and negligence should be prosecuted more thoroughly (see G20 vs the failure of police to uphold the law during nazi demonstrations in Chemnitz recently) but I don't disagree with the idea in general because at least it means we don't have stand-offs between white supremacists and black activists carrying (semi-automatic) assault rifles like recently in Texas, or shield formations like in Charlottesville.
EDIT: It's the same thing as with gun ownership, really: if guns are so widespread that you have to assume every suspect packs heat, you have to treat every suspect as a potential shooter and be ready to shoot first. If a cop stops your car in Germany, there's almost no chance a weapon will be involved.
And everywhere else, too, since “the State” is simply a label for whatever aggregate of actors exercises a monopoly on legitimate use of force.
A lot of European countries, as far as I know. Not sure if it's all of them. But others have replied, so we know about Denmark (and it's the same in the other Scandinavian countries, probably all the Nordic countries, i.e. Scandinavia + Finland and Iceland), Germany, possibly Spain (not sure), Netherlands, ..
I'm not sure whether they were talking about EU regulations or about the regulations of specific european countries.
Edit: typos
Eg http://www.right-of-light.co.uk/services/calculations-and-re...
Sounds like backdoor NIMBYism
source in French: https://www.senat.fr/questions/base/2012/qSEQ121002524.html
”8. Natural and artificial room lighting
8.1. Workplaces must as far as possible receive sufficient natural light and be equipped with artificial lighting adequate for the protection of workers' safety and health.
[…]
10. Windows and skylights
10.1. It must be possible for workers to open, close, adjust or secure windows, skylights and ventilators in a safe manner. When open, they must not be positioned so as to constitute a hazard to workers.”
Effective since December 31, 1992 (two years later for Greece)
I wonder how that is interpreted? Does that exclude buildings older than the code? Does it prevent new buildings from being constructed without these features? It would always be "possible" if enough money was spent on it (and you ignore other considerations, like historical values)...
* If the nature of what goes on inside a room conflicts with the presence of windows -- e.g. labs (say, a laser lab)
* if the room isn't meant to be used by humans (e.g. storage closets, server rooms) -- If humans sometimes enter such rooms that's OK, but it can't be their "assigned workplace".
The example I know of where it isn’t enforced is of people working inside a refrigerator. I can imagine security conscious jobs and radiology departments also may be exceptions.
It also doesn’t mean all rooms need windows or even natural light. Toilet rooms often don’t, for example, and storage rooms often only have windows high in the walls or in the ceiling (typically way more than in “a room with a view” in Cupertino :-) )
Sunlight is not only good for morale, but also good for health.
It's possible to circumvent this by putting an office into space that was designed as storage or as factory. But you will then usually also lack toilets, kitchen and decent air condition. If you do the renovation to get those things and abide by the law, you will have to arrange a window too.
In practice some individuals in overstaffed offices will work from a space that was originally storage, then negotiation room and now a shitty office room.
edit: And yes, I've worked in places with and without natural light, both white collar jobs and near minimum wage jobs. Comfortable temperature for the amount of physical activity I'm being asked to do and a comfortable amount of space in which to work are both a million times more important and the former only requires pushing some buttons or turning a dial, not cutting a hole in the side of a building. If someone asked me what would make work suck less back when I worked in one of those jobs where I didn't get to any outdoor light (some of those jobs didn't even suck) natural light wouldn't have even been on my radar as an issue.
No nationalistic swipes on HN, please. Your comment would be fine without that bit.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
There is an overabundance of sharp blue light in most modern light sources. I highly recommend either using tinted computer glasses when working or something like f.lux
Even worse are flickering lights. Even at a high (nearly imperceptible) frequency, I have seen so many colleagues(myself included) suffer from headaches due to them.
What should be done? Either invest in better smoother lighting for your workers or let plenty of natural light inside.
I wonder if it is related to coming from a northern country (Scandinavia) where ~1/4 of the year is really dark.
I would guess that all Scandinavia countries have similar rules, and there's actually a minimum amount of light you're legally allowed to have in a room. The law in Denmark for instance actually require a room to be insanely bright.
In at least one case, it wasn't just me. I used to work editing photos on California's central coast and after we moved to a building with loads and loads of skylights, and got a bunch of new glossy-screen iMacs, it was really hard to get color accuracy if you wore anything but a black or white shirt. It was like staring at a mirror all day long. Eventually we got umbrellas to blot out the sun and that helped.
I have just been using stylus and using dark themes for sites I use often, but would love a more automated approach, especially for sites I don't use that often.
So #1 perk for me: enough schedule flexibility that I can ensure I can have some outdoor time during daylight hours every day, even in winter.
https://www.assignmenthelp4me.com/my-assignment-help.html
I work in Germany where direct access to natural sunlight is part of our OH&S policies.
Luckily, where I work now, we're getting a new office, and when the manager presented the plans, one of the first questions was, "Who gets the window seats!?"
"I've worked in an office without getting paid, really takes a toll on you." Sounds ridiculous. Why would you work without getting paid? Same for natural light.
Like some other people have mentioned, you start wondering if you might prefer to work construction or in a food truck or just anything so long as it's outside. But really you can get most of the way outside with a good office space and you may find you enjoy your job a whole lot more.
If an employer doesn't offer remote work or a door, my rate goes up a lot.
I've resorted to sticking a takeaway menu into the vent to stop it blowing in my direction.
I worked for a large department in a huge corporation about 3 years ago. Around half the department sat in a large cube-farm room. Around the edges of that room were managers' offices and a meeting room, which entirely cut off natural light.
It was like a vegas casino in there, perpetual half light, no concept of time of day. Really depressing. I was glad I got to sit upstairs by a window.
That's pretty much my setup. It feels especially good to have managers with windows offices tell you to man up when you complain about lack of light.
I can't even imagine working in a place like that 8 hours a day. I would probably rather live in the woods or something.
I keep 2 different jackets in my office locker to wear at my desk in the middle of summer, because I don't know how hot or not it will be at my desk.
At least in offices without it, I know to dress appropiately based on the weather outside.
Then the second person who comes in every day shows up and flips all the overhead lights on every god damn day.
When I’m working and the lights flip, I get a sense of rage and depression. I think it will be the reason why I quit this job.
You have to keep your head down and act like it’s Candide: whatever your company currently does is the best possible thing they could ever do.
The way you approach doing this goes a long, long way toward how you're perceived.
"It’s not possible to have these preferences treated in an adult way in modern corporations, and anyone the issue got escalated to will just see it as whining."
I imagine you think this is the case because you see others asking for similar types of things as also being "whining". All you have to do is ask politely and calmly, and things should be fine. You might not get your way, but asking for something isn't automatically seen as "whining" by most people.
I take other peoples’ preferences very seriously and treat them with respect. People should at least be heard and compromises attempted.
Management and capricious brogrammer types in every company I’ve ever worked for across 12 years however do not act this way at all, and reasonable requests will only be used against you. This has been outwardly and definitively proven time after time.
It sounds like your working experience has been wildly unrepresentative of the reality of modern corporations.
Maybe it's not the actual light, but it's a signal that the circus has arrived and your peaceful hour is over.
Since lots of people don't take care of their teeth even though they know they should, some people will avoid all sunlight.
The cost to my health is measurable.
I like your attitude.
I'm currently gazing down a glass-ceilinged atrium so will not be firing anybody for the time being.
greetings, eMBee.
I know it’s a different mindset. Do it long enough and you realise you might as well work for yourself. Or work on contracts and sub out what you can’t directly do but are willing to manage.
My old mindset when I started out was that employers know everything and are all powerful. In reality they had better have more experience than you in multiple ways or they’re going to be fired either by the market or when you have to quit (which is obviously you firing them).
(I’d honestly prefer windowless to a window I couldn’t control, too. Windows with effective shades are nice, particularly if they can be opened for fresh air, but I’d be completely fine with a windowless office with a substantial door, great artificial full spectrum lighting, and HVAC under my control 24x7. Especially if my door and lock had a security rating.
In my home office, I'm fortunate to have both a large window and a simple IKEA floor lamp (something like this: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/10394129/). I alternate between the two, but never turn on the overhead lighting on the ceiling fan.
I find I don't mind higher CRI and higher frequency lighting nearly as much. You can get that in fluorescent lights and they're not as bad as they used to be, but the really good ones are expensive.
Anecdotally, I was a lot more nocturnal when I lived in New Orleans than when I lived in Boston and Seattle. It’s impossible to get too much sun up here, but down in the tropics, that’s a definite problem.
We had plenty of plants, fishtank and my customary giant Pac-Man. Good times.
When I went to work at Google, in a large windowless room, I was one of those people with a cover over their cube. Without the cover, one of the rows of artificial light would shine right in my eyes.
Now I'm in an office sitting right next to a 10x10-foot east facing window with lots of light and views outside. But I nearly always have the shade down since the sun shines right in and blinds me every morning.
All this could be solved with private offices. I just hope I live to see the day when our line of work reverts back to private offices from this open space insanity.
It's enough to throw off their work.
As a compromise you might try daylight balanced photography bulbs.
Consistent color but it feels like daylight.
It’s not a preference for me, it’s a disability. I love light, but glare is physically painful and results in migraines.
The strongly contrasting glare, from just a single blind being open, sounds horrible for others else in your area with sensitivities.
Then there is the uneven heating that natural light brings with it since it is blazingly hot where I live.
I get really jealous of the construction workers when it's a nice sunny day outside. I've worked a few different outdoor jobs, and there's nothing quite like working on a sunny day, it really lifts the spirit.
Shame there is no e-ink laptop sometimes soon, most likely...
There are commercially made shades too. Look around.
Who has every thought to themselves, gee, I sure wish there was more flat concrete to look at.
You don't have to pay someone to mow the concrete slab, I guess. (And in the winter, don't shovel the snow, just make a sign that says: "warning, slippery!")
I've heard that cities are going that way to make pop up events easier. I don't think it really makes it that much easier though, and it looks like shit when an event isn't going on.
Personally I'd much rather have free lunches or unlimited PTO.