As you guys know, one of my favorite thing is to take tours of new spaces and share some pics.
Sol gave me a quick tour of his new gig, Nerd Wallet. In short, it reminded me of Droxbox, but a little more organized. Nerd Wallet just moved recently, so it’s probably not a fair comparison. ^_^
Nerd Wallet is located in heart of the Market St. It’s a pretty hot space, with tons of activity, food, and crazy people.
If you go down a few blocks, you’ll be in the “bad” part of town, so I was warned not to wander around too far.
So when you first enter the office, you see balloons everywhere, celebrating a big release.
At first, glance, their office doesn’t look like much until you turn right and everything opens up. This is a photo of Sol offering all their swag, stored behind the reception area.
For the most part, the office is completely open, with offices in the center, open desks on the outside, and then lounging areas against the windows.
All desks are fully electronically adjustable desks. The desks themselves are tiny, but Nerd Wallet hooks everyone up with apple cinema displays.
I’m guessing that less than 20% of their employees actually stand… but it’s a cool bragging right. Which makes me start to ask, “where does all this money come from”. Those desks, monitors and chairs are not cheap! I know, since we tried pricing them out at AddThis at one point.
For those of you that are curious, here’s Sol’s new desk. How he’s able to fit 2 apple cinema displays and a laptop boggles me. But boy, that’s cool.
Notice how the desks are on the left, while there’s tons of lounging areas on the outside perimeter, next to the windows. I love the use of funky furniture.
Here’s a close up of one of the lounging areas. There’s a pretty cool feel to it.
There is certainly a variety of seating areas. I like it, but at some points, it looks almost like a furniture warehouse. Heheh.
Seriously, there is a ton of variety. This is definitely a theme.
The amount of people in the office is mind blowing. I’m sure it gets noisy in there, but they’ve added sound panels to the high ceilings and carpets virtually everywhere.
Moving towards the center of the office, they have conference rooms of different shapes, sizes and styles. The conference room pictured above, has been commandeered by their design team.
On a side note, it sounds like their design team works somewhat separately from their engineering team. I’d probably recommend that they at least have a design lead working with a team of engineers on major features and initiatives, while a shared design division supports the rest of the org.
And yes, they have telephone booths as well. Pretty upscale and comfy. Well done.
And medium sized conference rooms.
And there’s actually a couple kitchens on this floor.
And tech vending machines.
And bottle service.
But wait, there’s more… Another full floor of Nerd Wallet.
With nooks and crannies.
More work stations.
More seating around the perimeter.
A full size gym. I mean this is massive.
And for the grand finale, the café area. Look at all those projections, screens, tables, etc. Food catered all day, every day.
And a full size bar. I mean, open bar all day. This is bonkers. I mean, this is bad ass. It takes balls to put a full size bar in an office. It’s definitely a bragging right… and I guess that keeps employees happy. This my friend, is called “F-U money”.
There’s ping pong and foosball too. For the record, I made a bet with Sol… if I won, he would come back to AddThis… and if he won, I would work at Nerd Wallet. And of course I won, so Sol owes me. ^_^
Anyways, look at that kitchen. This is a whole new level of ganster.
Bathrooms and showers with fresh towels, resort style.
Bunk beds, for quick naps.
Sol, thanks for the tour. Nerd Wallet is a pretty dope place. My mind is blown. What an incredible challenge, in terms of designing a space. I’m digging some of the things they’ve started there—it definitely gives me some ideas.
