Github Headquarters: An Office Space Calculation

In this post, we help give entrepreneurs an idea of how to calculate office space by using the Keyser iPhone app to reverse engineer the Github Headquarters in the SoMa neighborhood of San Francisco.

“This is a really exciting time for us. GitHub was born in San Francisco, and now that we are in full growth mode, we are thrilled to have found this new space in our home city that can grow with us,” said GitHub Co-Founder and CEO Tom Preston-Werner. “We love being part of the thriving tech community in San Francisco, so we designed our new space to be more than just an office. We want it to be a resource for community organizations and events like tech talks, workshops, and more.”

First, here's a few pieces of information about GitHub that will help us estimate their office space needs.

Required working environments:
- Want office space to be more than just an office.
- 103 San Francisco employees across several departments ranging from information technology to creatives
- 3 Co-Founders

Linkedin Employee Breakdown of GitHub:
- 103 employees in San Francisco
- Sales = 11
- Information Technology = 9
- Human Resources = 8
- Creative = 7
- Business Development = 5
- Accounting = 4
- Engineering = 4
- Operations = 3
- Product = 3
- Other = 49 (the difference between the employee count and the LinkedIn estimates)

Office Space Assumptions:

Here's where we'll make some major assumptions for the sake of getting a rough square footage estimate from the iPhone app.

: Let's assume the GitHub co-founders have the only C-Suite offices, and that the estimated 9 other GitHub VP's enjoy Executive Sized offices.

: Engineers and Product Teams are pretty important to GitHub's success, so let’s assume each engineer and product manager enjoys a large office space that can be also used as a shared meeting space.

: Over eight million people use GitHub to build amazing things together. With 9 IT employees, we'll allocate 9 "small offices" or 900 square feet of office space to information technology.

: Let's assume that each business development and operations employee needs a little privacy and quiet to do their job effectively. We'll allocate a standard sized office space for the 5 biz devs and 3 operations employees.

: Since GitHub has a distinctive look to it's product experience and marketing, let's assume the Creative team (7 employees total) have their own medium sized offices.

Workstation Assumptions:

With our office space assumptions, we made rough square footage estimates based on the GitHub engineering, creatives, information technology, executive level, business development, operations and product teams. This leaves us with the sales, human resources, finance and "other" departments to calculate office space requirements.

: Let's assume that Sales is in a call center type of environment, and all 11 sales people and 8 Human Resources employees have their own small cube.

: Let's assume that all 4 Finance professionals will occupy medium sized cubes.

: All "other" 37 employees will on average occupy large cube.

Conference + Training Room Calculation

Let's assume GitHub has a couple conference rooms based on their employee size. Let's assume that one of the conference rooms is "large" (Seats 16-20 people) and one of them is "medium" (seats 8-10 people).

Let's also assume that the training room that exists at GitHub is the extremely large room with bleacher style seating. This space is large enough to seat the entire company for an all hands on deck type of meeting.

Reception Areas

Stepping into the GitHub reception area gives you a White House, presidential feel. Because of the large feel of the room, we'll allocate 3 large reception areas to this space.

Copy + Storage Rooms

Let's assume one large and one small copy room space for every 100 employees would equate to 1 large and 1 small copy room throughout the GitHub headquarters. Let's also make general assumptions that the GitHub building has a couple small storage closets.

Employee Areas

GitHub has some unique areas. A large kitchen area with a walk up bar exists for employees to grab a bite to eat. We'll assume that GitHub's bar is about ten times the size of an average coffee bar space, and that the large break room is designed to eventually house the anticipated 400 GitHub employees.

Several wellness areas provide a relaxing escape. A couple well designed lounge areas are reserved for workers to keep their workplace environment fresh.

Server Rooms

Let's allocate two large server rooms for the needs of GitHub employees.

Submit and Calculate Totals

Bottom line: the GitHub headquarters is more than an office – it’s an open space that's a resource for employees and community organizations alike.

Based on our office space assumptions and estimates, let's submit and calculate the GitHub office space needs in terms of square footage. The Keyser iPhone app will automatically calculate hallways circulation square footage, as well as load factor, usable space and the total amount of rentable square feet. This calculation is especially useful to help narrow down your office space search.

Without further ado, here is our reversed engineered calculation of the GitHub headquarters in San Francisco: 55,334 Square Feet.

[Photos By Kim Lucian]
[Articles Referenced]: Custom Spaces; State Scoop;

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