Inside Square's SF Headquarters
Welcome to Square
The theme for Square's office is clean and minimalistic, something that you get from the moment you walk in the door.
The reception desk in the lobby is bright and white with just the Square logo decorating the wall. A seating area opposite the desk holds guests waiting to enter
Mixed Working Space
Square has an assortment of standing desks, comfy chairs and work tables so employees can choose to work however they're comfortable, or mix things up throughout the day.
Everyone at Square has their own desk, but no employee -- even CEO Jack Dorsey -- has his own office. The open work area encourages employees to work together and collaborate.
Window Seats for Everyone
A whole side of Square's office is made up of wall-sized windows, a building customization made by the company's landlord prior to Square moving in (the windows used to be concrete walls).
None of the assigned desks in Square's office are placed near a window. Instead, there are common desks and couches positioned near the massive windows that everyone is welcome to use.
Guests to Square's office are not permitted in the window area -- it's sectioned off by a different-colored carpet -- maximizing the space for Square employees and ensuring their privacy if they happen to be working on a confidential project.
Kick Back and Relax
27 Cabanas located around the office offer a secluded place to take a private phone call or have a quick meeting. Square had similar cabanas in its previous office.
Look Mom, No Wires
None of the desks in Square's office have exposed wires. The floor in the office is raised, and all of the cabling and power chords are brought to tables through the floor.
Union Square
All of the conference rooms in Square's offices are named after popular streets in San Francisco. The company's largest conference room is named "Union Square," after the popular shopping area.
A large walkway connecting the entire office is known as "The Boulevard."
Not Your Average Conference Room
Square ditched its long rectangular conference table from its old office in favor of this custom-made oval table.
Microphones are positioned over the table (note the rectangular bars in the center) and Bose speakers are embedded in the ceiling around the table to ensure that everyone at a meeting can be heard. The gray walls offer some sound protection, and double as a surface for ideas to be pinned on during a meeting.
Money Matters
Square has a group of 20 small rooms where managers can conduct job interviews and employee evaluations. The smaller rooms are named after types of currency in order to differentiate them from the conference rooms.
The Gallery
Jack Dorsey's original drawings conceptualizing Square are displayed outside of Union Square in an area known as the The Gallery. The drawings were displayed in the reception area of Square's previous office space.
Square One
The original Square card reader looks nothing like the model we know today. The reader was built in order to get a feel for what needed to go into the process, and was never intended to be sold.
Family Kitchen
Much like all your friends end up in the kitchen during a big party, Square employees are often found congregating around the large counter in this kitchen in the afternoon.
Healthy Mix
Food in Square's kitchen includes healthy snacks like dried fruit and bananas as well as sweets like doughnuts.
Custom Coolers
The coolers in the Square kitchen were also customized for the space.
Easy Signage
Rather than words, commons areas like Square's kitchen are labeled with pictures. The standardized photos make it easier for visiting foreign employees to find what they're looking for.
Internal Genius Bar
Square's IT department has a help desk similar to Apple's Genius Bar. When a member of the IT staff is standing behind the desk, employees know it's okay to approach them with issues.
The desk was created based on feedback from IT employees who were often interrupted at their desks while working on other projects. The help desk lets employees know who's available to help, and allows those who are already busy to focus on their work.
Personalized Coffee
Square has two regular baristas who serve up drinks at Square's coffee shop located in the center of the office.
The espresso bar is Square-shaped and has a bar around it to encourage employees to stay for a while and get some work done, or mix and mingle with others
Make Your Own
Employees can opt to make their own drinks as well at a self-serve bar in the coffee shop.
Square Register
Employees pay for coffee using Square Register. The coffee shop is often used as a testing ground for new Square features.
Square Library
Square has a small library filled with books for employees to read, as well as comfortable furniture for them to kick back on and get some work done.
Mixing It Up
The library in Square is a mix of books written by Square employees and for employee-taught classes, as well as books that Square employees have chosen to bring from home to add the collection.
The Perfect Testing Ground
There's no better beta testers than your own employees. More than 500 employees eat lunch in Square's cafeteria each day, making it the perfect testing ground for updates to the app.
When Square has a new feature it wants to try out, it will often send out emails to employees asking them to do things like bring their credit cards with them to lunch to give a new feature a try
Three Meals a Day
Square's cafeteria serves breakfast,lunch and dinner each day. Food is prepared in the open, right beside where employees can pick it up.
Unlike other startups, Square charges its employees for breakfast and lunch (dinner is free). They're reimbursed on their paycheck for purchases, making it so the only cost for meals is the income tax.
Room for Everyone
Square's cafeteria is large enough to hold the entire company. Besides being a place to eat, the cafeteria is also used for Square's weekly company-wide "Town Hall" meetings.
Mobile payment company Square is growing — fast.
Over the past year Square has doubled in size from 300 to 600 employees. The company is aggressively hiring more people, with plans to grow even bigger in the coming months.
Square’s massive new 150,000 square foot space is approximately three times the space of its previous location, and has room for 1,000 people — 400 more than are currently employed by the company, so it has a little room to grow. The company is only taking up four floors of its current building (6, 9, 18 and 19), and has the potential to ultimately expand even further into the building should its workforce grown even larger.
“Our new headquarters allows us to rapidly scale, while preserving our values of collaboration and transparency," says Bryan Power, Director of Talent at Square. "The design of the space reinforces our commitment to small teams, as well as designers and engineers working alongside one another.”
We had the opportunity to stop by Square’s new headquarters on Market Street in San Francisco earlier this week. Located just a block away from Twitter, the office is so big it was designed to function like its own mini-city.
Clean and minimalistic, the office is divided up into “neighborhoods” with street-themed conference rooms and window seats for every employee with a fantastic bird's-eye view of San Francisco below.
Check out the gallery above for a behind-the-scenes look at Square’s new pad, and let us know what you think of its new digs in the comments.
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