First, realize that you can't create an environment that will please everyone. Then, consider these criteria, which have slowly risen to the top of my list.

• Quiet. An effective work environment needs to be quiet. To the point where you can concentrate, but not to the level where you feel like you're isolated. It's hard to strike that balance, but this is the single most important criterion, imho.
• A "water cooler". I put that in quotes, because you don't need a physical water cooler, but a place where people can nosh and talk, separately from the quiet place above. It serves as an informal discussion area. Almost as good as the monastery. ;-)
• Aesthetic "non-computer" art. Really. It makes a difference when you can look at a nice painting or sculpture that has nothing to do with computers to remind you that the bug you've been working on is not the be-all and end-all of your life.

Good luck.

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.