In the second installment of our new series, "Love It or Hate It? Where We Work,” we talk to Mark Kennedy, Global Tech & Operations Lead at The Motley Fool in D.C., about the best and worst offices he’s ever worked in.
What did you love most about your favorite office space?
Mark: My favorite workspace was a smallish team area that had been unused. The space had a lot of natural light because one wall was all windows. We had a team of about five people, and we each had a standing desk around the edges of the space. There was a seating area with a love seat, chairs and a coffee table where we could hash out ideas and a normal height table that could seat three or four if we needed a work surface for meetings. The wall opposite the windows was a small, open hallway that people used to get from one end of the floor to the other. I liked having that because it gave us some exposure to the rest of the company (it was nice to see people walking by), but it didn’t suffer from the problem of most open offices, where conversations from one team would bleed into our workspace.
What did you like least about the worst space you ever worked in?
Mark: The worst space I ever worked in was a round room with no windows. It was always too warm and poorly ventilated, so odors — like lunch smells — would linger. The lighting was terrible, and since it was round, the acoustics were just weird, with one spot in the middle of the room where all sound concentrated. Shudder.