Currently working alone in my own windowless office in an almost completely windowless building. Compared to the previous 'open-plan' gig where I sat opposite opposite Jill-from-Comms and Sales-bro Bryan, it rules so hard.

So yeah,"the #1 office perk" for me is not getting interrupted with inane shit every ten minutes.

If I don't get enough sun I fall in to depression. It's why I moved to California -- every winter I'd get really down; I'd self diagnosed as having seasonal affective disorder. Since being in California for five winters this hasn't happened yet. I also spent a summer working in a windowless office while my company was preparing for a classified DoD project (we lost the bid, but one of the requirements was "no windows."). That was easily one of the worst summers of my life. Point being, at least for some people sunlight is a key component to mental health.

You're probably well aware of this, but Vitamin D supplements have been life changing for me. There was an article a while back pleading to the FDA to fix the recommended daily limit, suggesting it might be 10x too low. I take 10,000 IU a day and the difference is very noticeable.

That seems to be almost too high. Vitamin D is fat soluble and you're taking way more than the RDA of 600 IU. Even at 6000 IU, which you suggest is optimal, you're taking 2x.

I'm not a doctor either but have you consulted your doctor about this (or is this a short time frame for you to get back up to a health level?).

It was actually my doctor who recommended this after a blood test showing I had a Vitamin D deficiency, and initially I was taking 15000 IU for a short period. I have been doing this for at least 6 months now with no ill affects, and many positives ones ( better mood, better sleep, better energy, etc...)

Do any testing of your Vit D blood levels after taking increasingly large doses? Seems like once you hit the normal levels in your blood taking more is a waste of money?

I haven't had blood work done recently tho I do notice the difference if I'm away or forget and don't take the supplements regularly.

Cost isn't really an issue, I pay 15 dollars on Amazon for 360 5000 IU softgels.

Should note that I work in a windowless office room and almost definitely get less sunlight then the average person.

Apparently we synthesize ~10,000 IU just from being outdoors on a sunny day for a couple hours.

For a healthy dose of skepticism, check out the New York Times article "Vitamin D, the Sunshine Supplement, Has Shadowy Money Behind It". It points out, among other things, that a 2010 National Academy of Medicine (then known as the Institute of Medicine) report found that most Americans get enough vitamin D, and that "the evidence supports a role for vitamin D and calcium in bone health but not in other health conditions" http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/Reports/2010/Dietary-Re... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/18/business/vitamin-d-michae...

On a related note about sunshine, Sam Altman recommends a full spectrum LED light in the morning as his most beneficial productivity booster. http://blog.samaltman.com/productivity

I get pretty significant SAD and 5000 IUs of Vitamin D helps a lot, but it's not enough for me. I'm planning to move to somewhere else in a year or two, maybe Seattle.

I'm a Seattle native and love it here. Unfortunately it is not a good place to get sunlight. We are very far north (for an American city) and overcast for most of the year. Seattle averages about 5.5 hours of sun per day. San Francisco averages nearly 8.5.

Why would you use avg sunlight per day? Thats takes the avg sunlight per year and maps it onto a daily avg, which is useless as a metric.

You want sunny days per year. Which Seattle gets less than 90. Most cities in California get over 200.

That's a good point and a better metric, but it's not meaningless. Very long summer days are worth something! They're just not helpful with SAD.

Climate change is here -- summers in Seattle are much sunnier than they used to be, I think this year we had nearly 90 sunny days just in June-August, September has started off with nice sunny days as well.

Last year was unusually warm and sunny in the summer as too, though I guess a couple years isn't really a climate change, it's just unusual weather.

On the flip side, people that got along without air conditioners 5 or 10 years ago are revisiting that decision, I called around a few places to get a quote for a split unit to be installed, and they were booked up through August.

I live in Seattle too. I would say the summer is hotter, but the sun still doesn't come out regularly until July.

Not to mention the week of smoke we've had the last 2 summers. ;)

Denver/Boulder area gets 300!

Came here to say, CO is sunny as all get out. Spent the last year in the San Luis Valley, which gets 350! Although it’s really rural, so you make some tradeoffs. I could probably live there forever :)

Denver/Boulder is the sunniest spot in the USA that actually has a decent job market for everything. Even more sunny days than Los Angeles.

Seattle is North enough that the sun sinks too low for your skin to be able to produce vitamin D between mid-September and mid-March!

The May-August period has very few clouds and a not-too-hot sun, so that is a fine season from the point of view of spending time outdoors and letting your skin work for your body.

Vancouver Island isn't far from Seattle, and I had no sun at all all winter, be sure to check it out in the winter before you move there.

It might not be that sunny in the winter, but it'll be warm enough that you're not completely bundled up away from the sunlight you do get if it's not actually raining.

Winnipeg might be much sunnier in the winter, but I'm not sure you'd get much more sun exposure given things like wind chill.

BTW, where on VI are you? Quadra here.

Thanks, I hear Vancouver is beautiful. I'm planning on taking a west coast trip next summer so hopefully I'll be able to check Seattle out, along with Portland and SF, though I don't want to have to choose SF.

I'd think Seattle would not be my first choice for a city with a lot of Sunshine. Something in California would be better, especially SoCal. (I think the Silicon Valley area gets plenty of sun too, the Bay Area can be quite cloudy)

The west half of SF starting Fillmore Street-ish down to Daly City and Pacifica (all the lands alongside the Ocean) basically are known for fog issues, but most of the Peninsula, South Bay, and East Bay are super sunny.

Seattle will get you SAD during winter. The summers are great, but winters for the past few years have been unrelentingly overcast. I was also heavily warned to buy those bulbs to put in the office by a coworker who suffered from it.

Seattle might have a decent yearly average of sunlight hours/day, but during the winter there are often weeks to months of almost no direct sunlight due to the overcast.

Moved from Seattle to California, in large part because I realized how much happier I am when it's sunny.

Was a great choice for me.

Seattle is cloudy a lot of the year. I'd reconsider that.

I will never work in an open plan building again. It left me absolutely brain dead and begging the clock to go faster because I couldn't think at work anyway.

I'm with you, it's like my brain turns off when I'm there, no amount of noise-cancelling headphones can stop me noticing movements in my periphery or the feeling of possible immediate jarring interruptions if I have my back to the room.

I get all my day-work done in the evening, when I'm in the office I just browse reddit or read HN because; unless I'm in a meeting or talking to a colleague- I cannot possibly be productive.

(I _really_ did try to avoid Reddit/HN but after 2 years of doing basically nothing above a 10 minute task I couldn't do it anymore, I was bored.)

And my company still trucks on with an open office policy. :(

> no amount of noise-cancelling headphones can stop me noticing movements in my periphery

Or the shaking of the floor. I worked in a "modern" high-rise of a well known company with open offices and the floor felt like it was made of Ikea particle board skin of an under-floor giant African drum.

People have different priorities. Having worked in both environments, if I had to choose between a private windowless cave with no sunlight and an open bullpen fishbowl with ample natural light, I’m picking the fishbowl every time. You can wear headphones to block out the noise, but it doesn’t work to just hang a picture of the sun on your wall.

I think this entire thread boils down to choice.

I don't have an option, the fishbowl is thrust on me and has been for many years over many jobs.

Similarly; I actually prefer the dark, but were I in a situation where I walked into a dark room in the middle of a building- I would probably not like it.

I feel the same way, but I'm just not sure I'm to the point where I can demand to not work for an open plan company; it's how it is pretty much everywhere I've interviewed. I'd be curious to see percentages in terms of tech companies that still have office rooms for their engineers.

I’d be curious how the valley compares to other places. Fog Creek (in NYC) famously trumpets their strict “offices have doors” policy. Here at Esri in Redlands (SoCal, 80mi out of LA) we have individual offices with sliding glass doors — an idea which I think we got from Microsoft in the ‘90s (also non-valley).

Admittedly, I'm in something of a hybrid situation at the moment, and I have the benefit of being a chemist, not a programmer. My lab has a few desks in it, and technically it's "open", but since we're constantly moving in and out of the office and I can always go for a walk outside to think during the day, it works for me. Look for compromises and suss out the absolute most important point. For me, that's not having people moving around behind me. I have a large set of shelves behind me, and you can only enter my desk area from ahead-left of me.

I (previously) had the worst of both worlds, sharing a windowless closet with 5 other people.

Sounds like our offices! No natural light, but open seating, but it is only 'open' in the sense that the workspace is in an open area, so we have assigned seats. My assigned seat happens to be about 6 feet from the men's bathroom... Also, the managers and high ups do have private offices, private office with glass walls that face into the open work area so they can watch everyone work all day. It is pretty sketchy!

Questions : What programming language tech stack do you use ? Is it a better gig than previous one ? Can you hear people farting and shitting in the bathroom ? How do you decompress after work and are you currently searching for another job?

> What programming language tech stack do you use ?

CUDA, C++14, Python.

> Is it a better gig than previous one ?

It is! The office conditions are terrible, but my coworkers are freaking amazing, and I am genuinely excited about the work we do, which is the main reason I'm still there.

> Can you hear people farting and shitting in the bathroom ?

Only if the door is open and my headphones are off. :O

> How do you decompress after work

I hit the gym.

> are you currently searching for another job?

Actively, although the office conditions are mainly a symptom of utterly terrible management, which is my main reason for job hunting.

This, the "fishbowl", is still better than an open office plan.

My solution was to buy a pair of headphones with good sound isolation. The building could be burning down and I'd wouldn't give a shit.

I find it difficult to work while wearing headphones. Music is very distracting.

I just spent two and a half years working from home, where I could leave the tv on in the background. That was awesome. A little motion out of the corner of my eye, some noise, but nothing structured in a way I cared about. Loud reality shows about mechanical stuff were my noise-companion. I could just ignore them.

Music is full of structure. I love it far too much to work with it.

On the positive side, the "open office" I'm in now has some restaurant-style booths set up with glass doors. They're lifesavers.

Yes, music is more distracting than people think. Its effects can be subtle: it engages your creative brain, so you end up working like crazy, only to notice afterwards that the work was not needed at all (there was a better solution, but your creative abilities were busy processing music).

Don't listen to music while doing creative work. Use noise, like sounds of the sea (I use an app called "Naturespace" for high-quality audio).

I'm a musician, so I find most music to be almost ridiculously interesting. Leads me to thinking about the music rather than the work I should be doing. And I find headphones to be physically uncomfortable very quickly.

I also cannot simply "listen to music in the background" while I'm doing something else. I almost immediately start focusing on the rhythms and chords instead of whatever I'm supposed to be working on! I studied music all through K-12 so maybe that has something to do with it going by some of the other comments here.

Haha same! Any melody at all totally refocuses me into the song, how the fingering and chords would be played on a guitar , what riffs they are reusing and Which audio effect pedals are being used for the music (mostly rock / indie / pop )

Double same! Doesn't matter whether I like the music or not: it must be dissected layer by layer. Some of my non-musician friends wonder why I never have "background" music on at home.

I'm more likely to pick up a guitar and play something myself than to put someone else's recordings on at home.

"Don't listen to music while doing creative work. Use noise, like sounds of the sea (I use an app called "Naturespace" for high-quality audio)."

This simply doesn't work for me. I understand it probably works for you: We are all a bit different. I find much of the "noise" (rain, seascapes, and so on) grating and annoying to the point that I don't want to finish anything creative. (I don't mind the real thing: I enjoy falling asleep when it is raining outside, for example, or hearing birds singing).

I'm also easily distracted by small sounds. A "quiet" library is full of shuffling, people dropping things, whispers, and so on.

However, drawing and painting to music of my choosing? Absolutely fantastic. I tend to choose things that are either instrumental or that actually use lyrics as part of the music instead of the music highlighting the lyrics. I'll even pick music depending on how I want to move when I draw or paint. If I want to create ideas or think? Stick on headphones and tune the world out. Perhaps go for a walk while doing so.

I tune in and out of the music, and that's fine. It tunes out basic noises: car and apartment doors and so on.

that's an overly hard and fast rule. i find that instrumental electronic music is amazing for work. it focuses rather than distracts, providing nice mental bumpers. i actually can't stand unnatural or played back sounds of the sea or nature and other such sounds, as i find it too distracting. it doesn't provide any focusing structure and allows my mind to wonder and relax.

and people complaining about headphones don't buy the right ones. i use beyerdynamic headphones and could wear them all day.

I can't wear even the Beyerdynamics for more than a couple of hours (I've owned them for years, they're excellent). My ears get too warm.

Wearing earphones for long periods also increase bacteria breeding ground potential in hot crevices of ear . Yum

I find music to work best when I'm doing a semi-repetitive task, or if I've already designed the system, and I'm just writing it down. I've definitely noticed that it results in sub-optimal code if this is not the case.

Yes! That was exactly my point. It works great for non-creative tasks, but can impact creativity and problem solving skills significantly, without you noticing.

Depends on what you listen to, I listen to ambient or house music without any vocals or lyrics, it tunes out quite nicely.

A pair of headphones with good sound isolation doesn't need to play music.

It converts it all into crystalline white noise. You can practically perceive the sound waves convert into a low pass filter, as soon as you turn the noise cancelling on.

You must have quiet co-workers.

Here I feel the need to share what I feel like is my ultimate setup: put in earplugs first, then cover with sound deadening/isolating headphones, finally play white noise. I don't hear shit.

Added bonus: put your chair and feet on a mat with vibration deadening material such as sorbothane, so you don't even feel people walk by.

Next I am planning on experimenting putting up a tri-fold poster board to block out visual distractions, too.

It seems absolutely ridiculous that we have been forced to such lengths just to get some quiet working space.

It absolutely is, but I am a firm believer in not worrying about things I cannot change, and focusing on things I can change, I guess. If I think about how absurd it is, I just get mad and can't focus.

You can change it by finding a workplace that respects you.

My workplace, as I am sure almost all workplaces, does a lot of things that are inefficient, but it's not a matter of respect to me. They respect me by paying me a good wage, giving me opportunities to learn new things and solve interesting challenges, and grow my career (promotions + wages).

Call me crazy If my workplace decides they want continue to pay a developer salary and have it be at 20% efficiency, then that's on them to figure it out as long as it isn't effecting my outcomes. At the end of the day, I am there for the exchange of my time for their money. If my workspace begins to interfere with that, then I'll start looking for a new place.

I've been dreaming of putting an E-Z Up with 3 side walls around my desk. Maybe build a 4th wall and a door out of cardboard on the last side.

the fire marshal would frown upon that, unfortunately... even though they might think it's a fun idea.

Those dang fire marshalls always ruining a good time. They're the reason i'm not allowed to have the 16 outlet PDU bars as power strips on my desk any more. Now I have to have two 8 outlet ones "for safety".

I tried this, but unfortunately it doesn't work if your coworkers don't respect your desire to be uninterrupted. I've told everyone around me, "When I put on my headphones I'm in focus mode, please leave me alone." But people still shout across desks to get my attention or tap me on the shoulder, which means I have to take off my headphones to figure out what they want.

New job has me sitting next to a 20U rack cabinet with my network "lab" humming away all day long in an office I share with one other person (plenty of space for the two of us). Support is right down the hall. I don't hear a thing except every now and then someone running the ice maker but it's well buffered by the three Dell blade servers lol.

It's awesome.

Your setup may not be very noisy, but if it were at 88 dB, I would consider earplug headphones to reduce the risk of NIHL or tinnitus.

I still wear headphones (because much like coffee, I gotta get my morning sports talk radio fix), but the tinnitus is already raging thanks to a past job that involved blowing things up in a distant part of the world.

Measured, it's right around ~60dB.

Careful with that. I ended up with tinnitus (ringing in the ears).

I think most of us are aware that this solution exists. This just shouldn't even be a problem that requires solving.

It also doesn't solve having an actual conversation with someone else, which can be hard when you're competing with Sales-bro Bryan.

This always comes up as a solution, but what about those of us that hate wearing headphones?

How long have you been in the new office?

I felt the same for about 6 months. It's been a couple years now, and I am getting incredibly lonely and bored. Which is weird because I've never been a "social" person.

Even though my office is huge, it feels like hiding in a closet.

I often wonder why I even come in instead of working from home. All my collaboration with co-workers happens over email and screen sharing programs anyway.

Also have a (huge) windowless office to myself and it's awesome.

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.

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.

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.

Why don't you exchange cubes with one of your colleagues who values natural light more?

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.

Designers are probably dealing with white balance issues. Daylight changes colour throughout the day.

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.

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.

So, shouldn't the business put them in an office where they can control the light?

I get near daily migraines from an open office layout with excessive glare from natural light. Polarized sunglasses help a bit, but not enough.

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.

I'm right there with you. Natural light and computer screens don't mix for me at all.

Then there is the uneven heating that natural light brings with it since it is blazingly hot where I live.

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.

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.

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.

I think given you are getting light, natural > artificial. However I can see why some people would prefer no light at all!

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.

Yes, this is why I try and get WFH gigs over winter so I can do a lunch-time run. Getting up at 6AM in winter for a run isn't going to happen ;-)

My personal experience/preference is merely that a "change of scenery" is a highly favorable perk. I have a private office with a window, and after struggling against code for long enough it is so nice to turn my gaze outside and watch the dog park next door.

But I say scenery change, because one of my favorite things about my job is that I work off site frequently at industrial plants, agricultural facilities and the like. Its like a moderate vacation to just be away from a desk, even though my laptop is attached to me the entire time. Working in a dingy concrete bunker can be as much of a perk as it is to look out my window.

Mostly just monotonous environments tend to be what bothers me most I think. My last job was at a business attached to a mall (you could walk out the doors into the mall food court on the second level). Coffee breaks were often just walking around the downtown core or through the attached public buildings over walkways. Changing your environment is such a massive thing for me to help the day/week/month/years not feel like one long slog

There was a tweet going around yesterday with around 500k likes about how we all secretly love to rearrange our rooms to get a "new me" feeling. I think a constant change of scenery is really important for us to not get stuck in negative mindsets.

I've always thought it would be cool to be a dev who goes onsite or at least has a job that's physical in some capacity. How'd you end up in your role, if you don't mind me asking?

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.

> Who thought that was what people wanted?

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.

Skateboarders do, but then we can't even use the space because of hostile design.

It's modernist design. And it sucks.

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.

Every place I worked, I optimized for a window seat. I would volunteer to sit next to the loudest and stinkiest people if that's what it took, because those things didn't bother me (noise cancelling headphones and my nose doesn't really work anyway). I would sit far away from all the other amenities, or close to them, whichever was worse, just to get a window.

Somehow I got really lucky, and in 16 years of working in offices, I spent about 12 of them near a window (thanks in part to large suburban offices of Silicon Valley that offered lots of window seats). And for the most part I didn't have to deal with loud or stinky people or being far/close to other amenities.

Now I work from home, where I can see trees out my window. Sadly, Apple cut some of them down to make room for the offramp to their spaceship, so now I also see lights and power lines, but still tree too.

My office recently knocked down a dorm room so that the team sitting in the corner could get some sunlight. Made the area so much more pleasant to work in.

Ironically, apple trees don't grow all that well near Apple. What they cut down were 80 year old redwoods.

Am I the only one here who actually likes it dark? It might be healthier with natural light, but my personal preferences has always been darkness.

I wonder if it is related to coming from a northern country (Scandinavia) where ~1/4 of the year is really dark.

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.

What plugin are you using in firefox?

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.

I use this addon called "Dark Reader" for Chrome and it's amazing! I can't live without it. Eye strain is a very real problem for me without it. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-reader/eimadp...

Just this - hope it works for you! https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dark-backgrou...

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.

As a counter point, I guess, I'm also from there and I don't like dark offices.

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.

I'm from a bright sunny tropical country and I prefer working in dimly lit windowless offices. i think this cuts across all ethnic groups!

Is this really considered a perk? It is a bit like getting paid is a perk.

I work in Germany where direct access to natural sunlight is part of our OH&S policies.

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.

At least there are big windows in the room with open offices. This is one of the reasons I prefer them.

Now that I think about it, I suppose I almost never open my own blinds at home.

Next perk they gonna get is "breathable air"

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 get crappy air conditioning which blows slightly-too-warm air directly into my face and dries out my contact lens.

I've resorted to sticking a takeaway menu into the vent to stop it blowing in my direction.

Not sure if sarcasm, but that is a perk in some places: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmn7tjSNyAA&feature=youtu.be

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.

I’ve worked in an office without windows, really takes a toll on you.

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.

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.

Always. Do cleared work (defense contracting) and you will never see the sun. I have to take regular walks outside during the day to say sane(-ish).

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.

Eh. I don't get much light in my office which is in a basement. I haven't noticed much.

Have they also taken away your stapler?

Thank you, I wanted to point this out too. Awkward how other countries think about work environments.

In some offices, yes.

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.

" Around the edges of that room were managers' offices and a meeting room, which entirely cut off natural light."

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.

These days having an actual office is considered a perk, so...

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.

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".

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.

In places where I don't have access to the light switch I just unscrew the bulbs nearest my desk.

hah we did that in our old office. IN this space, the fixtures make it more difficult to do that.

I'm sure there are exceptions. What if the worker is in an office handling German classified materials all day?

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).

OK then, how about the navy? Germany has 6 submarines.

Then they are entitled to more frequent breaks and/or extra leave days as part of their contract.

The interesting thing is that too much light can take its toll on productivity as well. When I was working at another company, it was inside an essentially "all glass, modern" building on the top floor overseeing a creek which led to the Bay. Between about 10 am until 3 pm, everyone would always scramble to find whatever random objects they could to block the light because management never paid for any blinds. We'd grab task boards, company banners, and anything else we could get our hands on so we could block the sun and work. We'd have to constantly shift them, or ourselves, as the sun changed positions, which created some awkward situations when half the team began to huddle in one small, shady area in the building at peak times. Needless to say, as someone who prefers darker environments, my productivity wasn't quite as high as I would have personally liked.

My desk gets the full force of the sun after noon. I have blinds, and still build a makeshift sun-blocker out of an old box. Too much light can definitely be a negative.

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...

If they could make a 11" or larger e-ink display with a 24 Hz refresh rate, I'd buy it in an instant.

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.

Very often on TV when I see office spaces in the US, I see rarely natural lights. They often seem to be underground or inside some refurbished industrial buildings.

Here in France we all have well lit offices with natural lights and windows. Well not all but the vast majority.

To me it seems punitive to work in a blind/artificially lit office.

I'd guess the number one reason is it's easier (cheaper) to film if you don't have to fake natural light.

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.

The cost to my health is measurable.

> I fired an employer

I like your attitude.

I'm currently gazing down a glass-ceilinged atrium so will not be firing anybody for the time being.

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.

greetings, eMBee.

You're my hero. I'd like to hear about what else you consider essential before hiring an employer.

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).

That's a great excuse to keep open space floor plan. "This way all 100 of you can have windows."

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.

Is it really surprising that free beer is a popular perk?

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.

> I get a sense of rage and depression

Maybe it's not the actual light, but it's a signal that the circus has arrived and your peaceful hour is over.

Pavlovian conditioning is very real. I for one wouldn't want the light => rage connection to get fixed...

I don't want to condescend but have you tried talking to the person switching on the lights? Maybe you could come to a compromise.

It'll just be the third or fourth person then. Talk to the office manager if you want to enforce a natural light time from the top.

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.

That has not been the case in any of the jobs I've worked at over my career. You work in shitty companies.

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.

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 highly value a good view, and lucked into a lovely space on the 8th floor in a corner with large picture windows on 2 sides, and views of MIT and East Kendall Square nearby, and Central and Harvard square in the distance. The bottom half of my view is very green, mostly trees, with a few buildings nestled among them. The top half is blue sky, white clouds.

I watch the slow progress of several buildings under construction. A huge tower near Central has appeared, the stairway core apparently. Two big projects to the north also, near the cinema and Donnelly field.

Soon I'll see the first yellows, reds and oranges of fall.

I enjoy the view so much that I brought in binoculars to see more detail. I have a sort of hobby of identifying landmarks visually and then finding them on google maps. This can be surprisingly difficult to do. The relative scale of things is surprising. Things that loom large in my view don't look big on the map, and vice versa.

I can visually trace a good portion of my bike path to work, as I live near the top of a distant hill. I identify the landmarks on that route.

Despite these treasures I only remember to look up at the view a few times a week. I sometimes forget to open the blinds for days at a time. Very sad! I'm happy that this article reminded me of this great pleasure. It's trite, but life is short; enjoy the view.

I work in a SCIF. The most natural light I get at my desk is the sun peeking out of the blinds in the morning. In addition, we keep most of the lights off, for that underground bunker aesthetic I'm assuming. One of the SCIFs here doesn't even have windows.

I don't mind it that much, and I usually leave work while the sun is still out. I can see some people having an issue with it, however.

Although I could easily google it, I am surely not the only one who has no idea what a SCIF is, and would have appreciated it to be broken out. Otherwise I have no idea what your talking about.

Why would a SCIF have outside windows?

It can be hard to avoid if you're renting a space and you can't afford to be picky.

I am curious whether it is the light or the view that makes the difference. If it is the light I wonder if a technical fix is possible: a short waveguide and/or a few mirrors into a "micro sun" diffuser in the room instead of a light bulb? It should be relatively cheap if the benefits are as big as claimed.

I think it's the view - we have blinds you can see out of but darken the space by a ton, and everyone keeps em down all the time.

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.

Bright lights I don’t care for. But natural light I like.

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 ?

I never open my curtains at home either.

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.

For me, sitting in the dark is depressing.

> 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.

I understand how you feel, I do the same thing but most of my friends think someday I am going to shoot up a school or something.

To many people NOT socializing doesn't compute.

^ 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.

Mea culpa, Mea maxima culpa.

"probably pertinent piece of information" - lol, quite the understatement!

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. :-)

>If you do, it absolutely can't be healthy.

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.

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.

* Yes, that is the correct medical term.

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.

Several people in my team (sysadmins) go to reasonably extreme lengths to eliminate natural light from their working environment...

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.

Rarely discussed is the fact that professional phography lighting has high CRI and is not that expensive. There are plenty of LED panels on Amazon that can be rigged to work as desk lights.

Also, you can buy a professinal CRI meter so that you can get an idea of what you’re buying here.

Outside LED there are also high-CRI CFL lights which are easier to fit into overhead lights compared to LED. Still they need to be measured.

Can you explain what you mean? Is this similar to natural lighting somehow?

Photographers like their lighting to be as close to natural as possible for best pictures. They can tell the effect when taking pictures, they have measuring tools to understand the light before taking pictures, and they have equipment (bulbs, panels, etc) made to satisfy their use cases which they can actually evaluate for quality.

Light quality is generally measured in CRI (color rendering index), with 100 being sunlight. Best professional photo lights give you up to 97 CRI. I don't know how closely CRI reflects the biological effect of the sun light, but we sort of can judge it by proxy - CRI reflects photography requirements, which correlates with closeness to sun light spectrum, which correlates with biologically positive effects. Even being a proxy, this measuring ability is still vastly better anything we have for the "health" light which you can't really measure except in a control group study which none of us can do.

In practice I suggest going to Amazon and shopping for high-CRI lights, such as photography LED panels, about $100-$200 a pop. They're not big enough to light up a room, but they can light up your desk or maybe cubicle. I bought a few and the light is very, very pleasant. Alternatively shop for high-CRI CFL lights to replace the ceiling lights, those can light up the room. I haven't tried that yet though.

It might also be useful to buy a CRI meter so that you know where you stand. Expensive as they are, might be still worth it considering the benefits. Also maybe pool money with friends on this - you're not going to use it a whole lot.

I sometimes wonder how light fixtures that mimic natural light are not a thing yet. They exist, but somehow they remained a niche product.

Oh they do, but they are expensive and rare. http://www.coelux.com/en/products/index

I have been trying to figure out how to make my own, but it's tricky.

I initially thought "it must be pretty expensive, like $1,500"...but no, it's actually $30,000!! No wonder you're trying to build it yourself.

Even if they were used, nothing beats a window.

If a plant can't grow there, I don't wanna work there. (Grow lights & hydroponics are just The Matrix for plants)

I very much prefer natural light to artificial light. I've wondered, regarding lighting windowless areas:

Why don't buildings put natural light collectors ("windows") on exterior surfaces, and use light redirectors ("mirrors" and maybe "fiber") to shunt the light to places that otherwise lack it. The light could be output through the same fixtures that host artificial light sources. (Sensors and dimmers on artificial light sources could compensate for variations in natural light.)

It would be much more pleasant than artificial light and it would save energy. Perhaps the ROI isn't high enough.

This is an unpopular opinion. You can train yourself to work in relatively noisy environments. The mind is plastic and adaptable. It is not going to happen right away. The first step is to not plug in your headphones when you go to a coffee shop. Enjoy the ambient chatter. Don't try to do any work. After a while, you may try reading a book or a newspaper. It is my belief that headphones can breed dependency on them to focus. Kind of like you may be anchoring your flow state to the simple act of donning your headphones. It might not work for you. Especially if you pre-decide it won't work. Remember the mind is a powerful tool. It may work for you if you start trying out life without headphones.

I'm a mechanical engineer. Engineering workplaces are notorious for poor sunlight exposure. Even the big tech companies develop their products in windowless rooms. And forget it if you have to go anywhere near a factory floor, it feels like you're in a cave.

#1 Office perk: Not being required to be in the office.

Wouldn't that be #0 ?

+1

Natural or not, the most important for me is not to get on my eyes or reflecting on the screen.

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.

For the most part I agree with the sentiment of this article. However, I am currently in my office with sunglasses on because of the abundance of 'natural light'.. It can definitely be a hindrance at certain times, but overall it is a perk.

or CO2 concentration under 1000 ... in our building they somehow trying to save money on air conditioning so we don't consider air in the office to be 'fresh' as there's usually ~1500ppm - 2000ppm CO2 concentration.

For others who may be curious, outdoor mean CO2 concentration is currently 410 ppm.

CO2 concentrations under 1000 ppm are described as having 'good air exchange'. CO2 between 1500-2000 is unpleasant, causes drowsiness and feels stale and gross. 5000 ppm is the typical workplace health limit.

Some guidelines are based on 1950s air quality, which had 250-350 ppm CO2. Today, you need more circulation to maintain acceptable CO2 levels than you did 50 years ago because the outdoor air has a higher concentration.

+1. I sit next to a window and enjoy it very much. I used to sit in a middle of the hall and it was so freaking depressing - no daylight at all, always lamps that I needed to ask a guy who didn't care to swap with me.

Ugh, no. My eyes ask for a place as dark as possible, so I can use a white-on-black theme and lower my monitor's brightness all the way down.

The #1 office perk for me is silence. Game sudios are so noisy, holly cow!

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.

I you doubt the benefits of natural light, here is a story from a good friend of mine. Few years back when he was in college, he took an appointment with a doctor because started to feel depressed with no obvious reason (no family drama, health issues whatsoever...). Very quickly the doc asked him where he was spending most of his time, answer: in a classroom with tiny windows, curtain closed and artificial lights.

Bright full-spectrum lamps help. There are some sold as therapeutic devices.

Can you attest to that personally? I looked into them for treating SAD and none of the Amazon top-reviewed ones seemed consistent, and I couldn't find much well-regarded literature either.

I never had a SAD but I put full-spectrum lamps around my apartment, and my entire family approved of that. I think I feel better under that light than under the typical yellow-glow "warm" CFL light, I fell less tired.

The lamps are CRI 90-95, a mix of 5500K and 4000K; they produce pretty bright light (4500 lumen in smaller rooms, 6000 lumen in the bigger room, 3000+ lumen in the bathroom), and it's pretty comparable with the light from the window in the summer.

Note that I live in a NYC apartment which is not exactly spacious; in a typical house, I'd use 1.5 to 2x the amount of light. One of my friends who happens to have particularly large rooms uses 4 to 6 T8 tubes to light them; the tubes are full-spectrum ones used to light movie sets, something like KinoFlo.

I think this is a testament to how bad flourescent and much LED and Halogen lighting actually is. This is not a limit of engineering, it's a consequence of trying to save money on lighting and energy without any consideration for the ergonomics of the light output. Staring at flicker all day is highly unpleasant (but so is trying to see a screen when natural sunlight glare is shining on it).

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.

While my room in the office (with 7 cubes in it) does have 4 windows, they are blocked with strong black metal mesh for security reasons. Also, most of the desks in the room face away from the window, so none of us are actually looking towards windows. It's not ideal, but I use breaks and lunch to just quickly walk around the block and get some perspective on obstacles I'm facing.

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.

This is amusing to me, because when I was at Pixar, many of the shader writers and lighting TDs wanted an internal office, where they could control exactly the amount and type of light in their workspace. Many had nearly pitch black offices, so they could better see subtle differences in changes to their lighting and shading code.

Natural Light is a big thing, but the #1 Office Perk is not working in an open office. I would trade the open office I work in, which has a ton of windows and natural light, for a regular office, even just cubicles in a heartbeat.

I love the natural light, but I hate the noise and visual distraction 10 times more than I love natural light.

Haha, where I live we have no natural light even outside half of the year (near the arctic circle). And we are most productive during the dark season because there isn't anything else to do, or any distractions nagging on your mind (like going to the beach etc) :)

I used to sit in a cubicle next to a window in a high rise. I would always get sun shining in my eyes and my face would get red sometimes. I usually ended up with strained eyes and later found out the uvb radiation can cause skin cancer. So I'm not convinced.

This wasn't the "natural light" I was expecting. I thought this was going to be about a office with free cheap beer.

I know of a few workplaces in the US that do feature free alcohol at work, but many times out of 10 someone gets way too drunk and ruins the fun for everyone.

I have my first-ever desk by a window. Naturally, other coworkers jockeyed to also sit near the windows, so they could promptly complain it's too bright and insist on lowering the shades.

I love natural light, and our office has huge windows and is at the top floor, but unfortunately many developers prefer working in the dark. It's a bit depressing sometimes.

I was at a company once where they were out of cubical space. There was an available office that had windows so they put some people in there and boarded up the windows.

I work remote and I lease a private office. I looked at 3 different options and ended up choosing the smallest one because it had the most natural light.

Working in a beautiful glass building with very much natural light i still have to claim our bar/free booze is what gets me to work every day.

Isn’t having a good boss the #1 office perk?

That's not a perk, it's a requirement.