Location, Location, Location
At the beginning of this week, my company moved offices for the third time. The company has just finished its fourth accounting year and we’re looking to have a great fifth year. Four years ago, I was hoping I’d get this far but had no idea whether I would or not.
It’s been pointed out to me that this final move is the most significant move yet for me personally. I didn’t notice because I’ve been so busy actually organising the move, but they’re right - the past five years of my live have revolved around the University of Hertfordshire campus, first as a student then a tenant in their offices.
If I’d realised that before the move I’d have probably been a bit apprehensive about it. We’re all resistant to change and this marks the end of the biggest chapter of my life so far - I started it as a kid fresh out of 6th form and I’ve come out an adult with more responsibilities than most ((Man, that comment’s an invitation to get flamed, isn’t it?)) pretty well equipped to deal with the real world. Whatever that is.
I thought it’d be interesting to give a little history to where I’ve been (physically) with KennettNet Software, and why I went where I did.
2004: Working from Home
This doesn’t really count as a location for the company, since I moved into a proper office pretty much as soon as the company was formed. Still, it’s where I started! I built this desk (not very well) myself - favourite feature was the inbuilt backlighting and power sockets for charging stuff.
2005: St. Albans
In 2005, I took a year out from my Uni course (Computer Science) that was supposed to be a year’s industrial placement. Unfortunately, running my own company didn’t count, since the University “doesn’t like it when students work for members of their own family” and, no matter how much I argued, I’m a member of my own family. Bummer.
This was the first time KennettNet Software and its sole product - Music Rescue (then called PodUtil) - would be properly put to the test as a commercial venture. Still under the protective wing of University and student loans, I could spend a whole year working in an office as I would when running a “proper” company - one with rent bills and employees to pay. I ended up on the second floor of a serviced office in St. Albans.
2006: University
The year working in an office proved that this shit was real. I’d written and released PodUtil/Music Rescue 3.0, which was doing really well and had a fairly large customer base. Nobody was more surprised than me, and I really enjoyed doing what I did and decided that this was the future. Unfortunately, I had a degree to finish, and the final year is obviously the one you need to commit to the most. However, I had a company that couldn’t just languish while I studied, so I ended up moving to a second floor (again) office on campus which put me within seconds of my lecture halls. It worked out perfectly - I’d go to work every morning and nip out to lectures as needed.
2009: Chicksands
(yes, next to the Defence College of Intelligence/British Army Intelligence Corps HQ)
Working at Uni worked out really well. Music Rescue did suffer slightly as a result of the study work I was doing, but I managed to get a few updates out to keep it current with the latest iPods while I wrote my kickass project in Cocoa, which netted me a 1st Class (Hons) in Computer Science. After I completed my degree, the company switched gears - I employed another programmer and together we rewrote Music Rescue from scratch and released version 4.0 in the middle of 2008. During this time I moved north to Bedfordshire, making the trip to work 25 miles each way. Things had to change!
It was over a year between completing my degree and moving, but I finally moved out of the Hatfield office and now work within walking distance of home. We moved this week just gone, and are now just about settled in. In the photo below, the office stretches from the archway to just before the door at the right. Finally, no stairs!
On Monday, before we packed up the old office and moved the stuff to the new one, it looked like this:
This is the first office I’ve been in that isn’t serviced. That means that the rent is much, much cheaper but you don’t get the perks of a built-in networking infrastructure or a cleaning lady. To accommodate all the computers, I mounted network sockets to the wall and wired them all up to a patch panel in a little cabinet that houses our internal test server - a PPC Mac Mini - and the network switches and router. Here’s me wiring it all up:
As of Friday afternoon, the office looks like this:
Now the office is so close to where everyone lives, I’ve decided to change the way we work. As it took nearly an hour to get to work before, we pretty much worked fixed hours with a fixed lunch break - much like typical offices. However, that isn’t the most productive way to write programs, in my opinion - sometimes I can’t get into it at all and have a useless day, and other times I get stuck in and work well into the night. Now, we decide what we’re all going to do each Monday, then for the rest of the week we can come and go as we please - as long as the work gets done, the hours don’t matter. The only strict rule is work computers are for work stuff only. The little back room has a computer dedicated to Facebook and forums and whatever else people want to muck around with, as well as a big leather sofa with a drinks fridge, TV and Playstation 2 to relax with.
This is how I’ve wanted to work for a long long time. For a month or so I was actually working from home - I adopted Chester in January and couldn’t take him to work with me. It was unfair to leave him alone all day, so I decided to work half days - which ended up as a half day on Monday then working at home all day for the rest of the week. Quite often I’d not get stuck in to work until early afternoon but would end up engrossed until around 10pm. I’m really, really happy to be able to work like this in a proper working environment.