Orange is the New Black — In the Netherlands, Amazon Web Services (AWS) employees have the luxury of working in… a former prison!
After the establishment of remote work during the Covid pandemic, who would have thought that on-site work could still be so appealing?
In a video that went viral on TikTok, a solutions architect from the cloud division of the e-commerce giant presents her rather unusual workplace.
The offices are located inside the century-old Koepelgevangenis prison (bless you), in the city of Haarlem.
The city’s iconic building, distinguished by its imposing circular shape, was designed based on the principle of panoptic prisons. This type of architecture aims to allow prison guards to constantly have an eye on the entire space, creating in the inmates a constant awareness of being potentially watched, never knowing if they are observed or not.
“Tell me, what’s this The Coding Love site on your screen?”
Admit it, it makes you really want to work there.
Opened in 1901, Koepelgevangenis prison closed its doors in 2016, initially hosting Syrian refugees.
The building was later transformed to accommodate offices. AWS took over the premises in 2022.
In the video shared by the employee, we discover the interior structure of this surprising Amazon prison, which, although slightly anxiety-inducing, still looks pretty cool.
The former cells now serve as offices and meeting rooms for the collaborators (appropriate, you might say), with a small AWS logo placed above their numbers.
Amazon is not the only company present in the building, which now presents itself as a technology campus hosting various companies, entrepreneurs, and students.
Do you love using Vim? Who knows, these offices might just be for you. 👀
Also read on The Coding Love:
- 🎤 DevDay: all the announcements from OpenAI’s first developer conference
- 🚀 Elon Musk launches Grok, his AI meant to rival ChatGPT
- 🐧 Someone created an Angry Birds video game clone using only AI
- 🦾 Boston Dynamics’ robot dog now speaks thanks to ChatGPT
