Part 2 in a series. See also A Day at the Office (Part 1: History).
Opera Software has offices all around the world. Our headquarters is in Oslo, Norway, where work began on Opera ten years ago. Since then, we've opened offices in Linköping, Sweden; Göteburg, Sweden; Tokyo, Japan; San Diego, California, USA; and Beijing, China. The Oslo office, home to over two-thirds of our employees, remains the hub of Opera development.
The Opera Software headquarters is located in a group of non-descript office buildings a bit north of downtown Oslo. We take up large parts of the fourth and fifth floor of our five-story buildings. Incidentally, Trolltech, a significant contributor to KHTHL, shares some of the fourth floor with us (some of us used to say that 50% of the popular rendering engines (Presto and KHTML, leaving out Trident and Gecko) in the world were made in our building), but I digress. The trip up to our floors used to be via a great old elevator (made by "Stahl", no less), but alas it was recently replaced.
The headquarters is spread out across several connected office buildings. From Reception, the offices spread out like spider legs. Directly ahead after entering the front door are offices for our Executives and Human Resources, along with a door to the Sales hallway. To the left is a spiraling staircase down to Marketing, Information Systems, and System Administration. Just beyond the door is a short hallway to Accounting. To the right of the front door is a hallway leading around to the Canteen. Through the Canteen are the Development offices, where Engineering and Quality Assurance turn out release after release.
The walls in Reception are covered by years of awards and articles about Opera. Around the corner toward the Canteen are three clocks representing Opera, Netscape, and Internet Explorer. Opera is ahead of the times, of course. Also in Reception, are letters from users wishing Jon luck on his swim across the Atlantic, as well as the registration fee for a user who didn't give any return address or contact information.
Since I started working for Opera, we've more than doubled in size. Consequently, I've moved offices at least four times. As more and more employees join our ranks, we take over more of our buildings and shuffle people around so departments stay together. At least I never get tired of my office space.
Most development offices sport posters for random Norwegian operas, marker boards, and dying plants. There are usually a couple employees per office, though some large offices have half a dozen or more. All offices have windows, about half with a good view of the city. The furniture is almost entirely from Ikea. The walls are white and the offices usually have windows out into the hallway. It's very light and airy, making it easy to relax and work.
Smack in the middle of the upstairs Development hall is the Pillar of Prefs. After the release of Opera 7, one of the Core QA superstars wanted to show just how complicated the preferences for Opera were, so he plastered screenshots of every part of the preferences dialog over a column in the middle of the Development hall. Each day, most of the Development team walks past the pillar. The Pillar is currently covered with the Opera 8 preferences.
Between 11:30am and 1:00pm, we all pack into the Canteen for lunch. Three times a week, we have warm meals of waffles, spaghetti, chicken and rice, etc. There's also plenty of salad supplies and lunch meats. From the Canteen, you can access the veranda, which wraps around the fifth floor of one of our buildings. During the Summer, many of us sit outside during lunch to soak up some rays. The veranda has a great view of the city too. Every other month or so, a couple employees will make everyone lunch from their country. Jon von Tetzchner (you know, the CEO) even made us an authentic Icelandic Christmas meal last December.
One of the great things about working at Opera is the diversity of the employees. For instance, I share an office with a Norwegian and an Englishman (I keep waiting for someone to come up with a joke about us: "A Norwegian, an Englishman, and an American walk into a..."). I probably never would have met such a diverse group of people if it weren't for Opera. I've learned about last name customs in Spain (children take both their mother and father's last name), chatted with sauna loving Finns, and continually joke with my British friends about the differences between British English and American English (aerials vs. antennas, hosepipes vs. hoses, lifts vs. elevators, etc.).
That about wraps up our trip around the offices. We're expanding again this Winter and redesigning our Canteen, but we're used to changes in the offices about as often as we have Desktop releases, so it's nothing new.
