[KennyCason]

At Datarank we spent our first two years living together. The first year was four of us in one big house, and the second year we lived in two neighboring two-bedroom apartments. While at times you can definitely feel cramped, 99% of the time it's pretty awesome. I do believe that living/working together increased our productivity a lot. It also made brainstorming ideas much easier as we would often times spend late nights in the kitchen/living room talking about our company, whereas in a traditional office setting that may have ended at 5-6pm everyday. Props to Meta for making it work with 24 people, that seems intense. :)

[not_paul_graham]

This seems like a good solution when all your employees are young males without spouses/kids. Also works if most of the folks living together are founders (vs early employees).

Personally I'd probably not want to be part of a young company where there was so much peer pressure [1] to stay with the founders and other team members in a cramped up apartment. But then again maybe I'm not the target hire anyway. Also, I'm not claiming to speak for all females on the planet, but most of "my" female friends would probably avoid working at such a company.

Of course if you are starting a start-up you gotta do what you gotta do to survive and minimize expenses, and all that but it seems like a practical arrangement if you are the founder and not an early employee with meager equity.

[1] Fear of missing out on critical decisions that happen before the slumber party for instance.

[rayiner]

What, you wouldn't want to live, as a woman, in essentially a geek version of a frat house?

[KennyCason]

I can completely understand. Our initial motivation was to just conserve cash as we were still very early in the design/conception phase and weren't really ready to attempt to grow. Also being married, I couldn't imagine doing this anymore haha

[yardie]

After university I hunted for and found my 1st 1bedroom apartment. Even in my little dorm room I didn't feel cramped and I definitely got along with my roommates in most cases. But there are so many tangible benefits to living on your own.

- Personal hygiene: my roommate wasn't the cleanup. In fact, the only time he got into it was when he had company (a girl) coming over.

- Personal finance: I was able to get the landlord to split the rental but this was not the case for heat, electricity, cable, and internet.

- Personal space: We were both guilty of this. Our girlfriends, unofficially, moved in at some points. Normally, not a problem but if you've ever had to wash your face in the kitchen sink because the bathroom was occupied for hours sometimes.

Sometimes you have to pullback and focus. If you are constantly surrounded by the same faces it can be easy to do "work" without actually doing anything productive.

[bakhy]

I don't really think anyone doubts that this is more productive. But having a life outside work can be cool also.