Twitter vs. Facebook: Who's Got the Most Superficially Cool Offices?

Photography Lounge wondered which of Silicon Valley's two hottest startups had the coolest office. A better question: If Twitter and Facebook are such game-changers, why do their staff work in such depressingly old-fashioned conditions?

Sure, both offices offer the self-consciously hip common areas that have been endemic to internet companies since the late 1990s. Witness the pictures of video games, couches and even mattresses in some of the pictures below (via Photography Lounge).

But it's been 20 years since the publication of Peopleware, the popular software productivity bible that showed how quiet, private offices made programmers more productive. Some software entrepreneurs, most notably New York-based Joel Spolsky, have managed to implement this humane, practical idea on a startup's budget. At Twitter in Facebook, the staff are smushed together in crowded, open-plan offices. And one of these pictures makes it look like Twitter has people working in the basement or something? For all the superficial nods to the sensibilities of their workers, neither Facebook nor Twitter appears to have invested much in the spaces where these people spend the lion's share of their days.

Sure, these companies are growing fast. But Facebook just moved into a new HQ and is supposedly doing $500 million per year in revenue. Which just goes to show that while Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are constantly changing their game, like for the Valley's office drones remains all too similar, boom after boom. At least at these two companies some of the staff have a decent shot at earning a windfall off their stock options — and saying goodbye to Valley programmer pens forever.