At one point a company I worked for had a similar setup and we did much the same thing. Our office basically turned into a small dorm room (we were all in our early 20's at the time) kind of like you see on the show Workaholics. We had posters, jokes, a whiteboard covered in notes and stupid drawings, we even had themed playlist days where we'd come up with what genre or theme of music we'd have playing... 90's day, it's a cover song day, you're embarrassed you like it day, ska all the things day, etc... It was one of my favorite times/jobs I've had because of that atmosphere, we all learned a ton and collaborated on each other projects and spent way more time at work without even thinking about it. We ended hiring more devs and moving to an open office environment and everything changed, we all were still clustered together, but collaboration slowly faded away, where we used to turn around and talk to one another we now communicated over IM even though we sat less than 10 feet away, partly because an open office means everyone is interrupted as soon as you talk, make noise, play music, etc.
I always just through it was the growing company that lead to the change, but now that you mentioned your experience and I reflect on mine, I think that little 3 man shared off might have been the key to all of the awesomeness and fond memories of my time with that company.
I just flagged this because it (and the other post of the same thing) blows out the page width and makes everything else wrap to the full length of the string, which is considerably more than the average screen width. Hoping an admin can edit it.
What, you don't have all night jam sessions at your 3 bedroom house in San Fran? Just picking yourself up by your bootstraps, struggling to make it, in your 3 bedroom house in San Fran. You know, down in the much and the mire, busting out LoC tirelessly while worrying about how you're gonna keep the lights on, in your 3 bedroom house in San Fran...
This reminds me when I asked a person who is now a "worlds youngest self made billionaire" club member how they possibly built paid their bills while in the early phases of their startup, that time when you're too small to even consider funding, but big enough to warrant a couple hires to help lay a foundation. The reply, "Ha! [founder's name]'s family is loaded...".
That's when I realized I had worked on the underlying skills, I had ideas, but I missed the most important part... money and/or rich friends.
There are plenty of reasonably priced apartments outside of SF and Palo Alto. It means you might need to live in the east bay or somewhere less expensive south of the city but it's possible and maybe necessary in the early days.
It's a feasible strategy - there are thousands of entrepreneurs who did just that: do an MSc/PhD in Finance/Economics (or these days just any old STEM subject), join a bank's trading floor or a big investment company, put aside 2-3 million in 10-15 years - then get out of the rat race and create a start-up or become an angel investor.
Of course there's ten times more people who inherit a million or two of seed capital instead...
People buy things which make their life better than it was before they bought the product or service. The magnitude is not important. You now know 'money', if you have the dev knowledge GO BUILD SOMETHING OF VALUE!
You'll enjoy this. I know in some larger cities, this is a pretty common thing. In South Florida you'll wander into a pirate radio station pretty often, usually identifiable by it's lack of censorship, poor broadcast quality, and incessant rambling of the host over the music about every 10 seconds.
Skimming this, it doesn't appear to argue for any upending, just a "missing link" role (which, granted, would be a great discovery if it's supported, but doesn't upend anything).
Sorry I can't release the tool yet, the suits at my 9-5 are making a stink about my independent research going through their approval process because they contractually own my soul something.
I use the Asus Chromebox (small "desktop" ChromeOS machine) as an OpenELEC media center. It runs absolutely flawlessly, mostly because it's just a basic Intel Pentium system. From what I've heard, the ARM Chromebooks like the Samsung ones can be a bit trickier, but it can be done.
I always just through it was the growing company that lead to the change, but now that you mentioned your experience and I reflect on mine, I think that little 3 man shared off might have been the key to all of the awesomeness and fond memories of my time with that company.