I can understand not wanting to work under fluorescent light all day, but having had offices of all types, from window offices with great views to interior offices with and without windows into the hall, to a basement dungeon that was actually supposed to be a telecom closet, there is a simple, magical transformative thing you can do to your office to make the lighting less soul-crushingly artificial: Get a desk lamp. Dead serious; try it.

Ever since I figured this out, I really couldn't give a shit if I had a window or not. Ok, getting a window is a status symbol, which is nice, but whatever. Give me the option of a corner office shared with two other people or a telecom closet, and I'll take the closet, so long as I can have my lamp. [jesus, i sound like the guy with the stapler]

  and I'll take the closet, so long as I can have my lamp. 

Absolutely! Spending $50 (total) on some lamps and warm CFL/LED bulbs and turning off the soul-crushing fluorescent lights was huuuuge for me.

I got a lot of slightly puzzled (but mostly complimentary) comments for it but whatever, programmers are already seen as a little weird.

Also, it's not like I turned my office into some kind of stereotypical hacker's cave, with nothing but pale and sickly monitor light. I now have one of the few offices in the building that looks like a nice, warm, inviting place.

Not to get into nit picky details, but have you found if color spectrum of your lamp matters?

I'm a fan of warmer lightbulb colors, even though they don't quite match the cooler tone of natural sunlight.

I'm sure it has some effect, but I've never really put any effort into comparisons. I currently have a cheapo LED bulb, but it's under one of those standard yellowish brown lampshades, so it still feels nice and "warm" to me.

A lot of open floor plans don't address natural light at all, in that there still isn't any or most seats are too far in to really benefit and most of your light still comes from florescent bulbs.

I'd take a private office over natural light any day, the natural light thing is mostly fixable, just buy a couple of floor lamps and put full-spectrum lightbulbs in them, then turn off the overhead florescents. This isn't exactly like natural light, but is close enough in terms of how it looks and proper full-spectrum lighting has been shown to be effective against seasonal affective disorder (I don't suffer from this, but the fact that they work here suggests they are psychologically a good match for people who need natural light).

There's no real fix for open offices though. Headphones introduce a whole host of other problems and don't detract from the visual distractions or constant barrage of people trying to pull you out of flow.

My current job is an open plan office (one that is at least flexible in allowing for a lot of work from home). My next job will absolutely not be in an open office. I've finally decided this is a dealbreaker in terms of any future employment.

Amen. Bad lighting is one of the things about my current job that make it likely I'm going to quit sooner rather than later. It's at the point where I'm often more productive using just my laptop (no secondary monitors) at home in controlled conditions.

Of course, if you don't have an open floorplan, it's easier to adjust your lighting conditions.

I love real sun as well. But, no need to suffer under fluorescent glare. Desk lamps and even white xmas lights are what I use in the evening, similar to a lack of windows. Coworkers may be an impediment, unfortunately.

I wish more buildings embraced skylights. My gym for instance has its own roof and was recently remodeled. Still, I've got to work out in the daytime under fluorescent lights... sigh. At least they're warmer than in the past.

why wouldn't a private office have natural light?

Because most buildings have a large footprint, and only the offices on the parameter have windows. I am typing from a windowless, interior, private office. It is pretty depressing, but I prefer it to open space (which I could easily get here). Others, of course, like the person we are replying to, would feel differently.

One of Spolsky's articles pointed out that hotels are also large buildings that manage to get an outside window on every room...

If you think about it, that analogy doesn't really work. The rooms that guests stay in are almost all along the outside because guests are paying customers. The janitor's storage rooms, room service kitchens, elevator shafts, mechanical access corridors and other such workspaces are located on the inside in the less valuable parts of the building. Not every room has an outside window - only the rooms for VIP's, which is oddly similar to the situation in most office buildings.

Offices also have janitor storage rooms, elevator shafts, dining rooms, et cetera. They also have meeting rooms, labs, server rooms that can be located in the centre.

You can do a lot by varying the shape of a building. The office building that I work in is a giant H. I'm next to a window pretty much anywhere I go.

As desirable as windows are, they're also conductors of heat/cold. I'll bet that office is uncomfortable and very expensive to run.

Except many of those are new construction that are designed to be long and narrow. Most existing office buildings were not designed that way.

I think that was Spolsky's point. Why weren't they designed that way? They should be.

I guess I will just email the architect of my building and tell them they did it wrong. I should have sunlight when?

edit: longer answer - I work in Mountain View, where there is huge competition for buildings thanks to Google. Small companies get the leftovers, and beggers can't be choosers.

Hotels also tend to have extremely long hallways, lots of relatively small floors, and few rooms larger than a bedroom.

A bit of a tangent, but this is the reason why there are no real high-rise buildings in Europe (The tallest building in the EU is only 1004 ft high). There are laws that determine the minimum amount of natural light an office should have. Since taller buildings have a larger footprint, at some point the interior offices no longer get the required amount of natural light, meaning they can no longer be used as a work-area, thus making the building uneconomical.

This doesn't make sense or I am missing something. If you find a floorplan and it has enough light, and then repeat it upwards, won't every floor have similar amounts of light? In that way high-rises are a GREAT way to have many people working in a single large building with everyone seeing light.

Yes, but higher buildings require a larger footprint. You cannot build a spire the height of the Burj Khalifa (828 m or 2,717 ft) with a floorplan that offers natural light everywhere all the way from the bottom to the top floors.

wat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_Eu...

I'm starting to think it's a cultural thing. Why do you and other people think that not having natural light is depressing? When I see people from US or some other countries talking about lighting, they seem to almost worship natural light.

Science says otherwise:

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy02osti/30769.pdf

I'm living in Sweden, and at least in the northern parts some people do get clinically depressed during the very long and dark winters. Maybe if you live in e.g. India, southern Europe or Australia, you have enough sun to never really miss it. But when sunlight is scarce, it definitely affect you.

Well, sunlight has a big impact on people.

The the extreme example of this is seasonal depression, which is the reasons Scandinavian countries have very high rates of suicide.

But good scientific studies show most people are effected by lack of sunlight, and it impacts mood and alertness.

Windows in offices is an expensive problem to solve, but as sunlight frequency strip lighting is the same price as the yellow stuff normally seen in offices, I'm surprised we don't use it.

Because some private offices are more like dungeons buried in the bowels of a soulless building than the happy home of Fog Creek. :)

I totally agree. But I like the cave idea so I would prefer caves along the perimeter of the floor. (Though you might not call them caves anymore.)

At the same time I've known (more?) programmers that prefer the dark. And I also know programmers that prefer a constant buzz of activity in the background (e.g. leading them to coffee shops). I fall into this category on some days. So my dream office would have dark caves, light caves, and some open plan. I'd have a home desk, but there'd be enough surplus that I could visit any other area if the mood suits me.

And I am just the opposite. Every time I get a new job I pray to be in a windowless place, specially if it's a small room in a corner.

There's no price for the peace it brings.