It's funny: For a lot of the employees we've hired offering to buy a $500 monitor or a $600 chair moved the needle on how excited they were more than a $5,000 or $10,000 change in salary would.
I think there are a few things that play into that: If you made an extra $10,000 you'd want to do something responsible with it, but you wouldn't really notice an instantaneous change in your day-to-day life.
But I think more importantly than that it signals that you're supposed to have a good experience and be taken care of. Saying, "Look, if you want/need a monitor or computer to work consider it done" says something about the company. Your success means something to them.
What can office snacks possibly cost a company? Say it's a 10-person company, snacks would cost maybe $1,000/month on the high end? And at that point you're probably burning >$120,000/month in salaries. It's barely even a drop in the bucket, assuming we're not talking about infinite catered meals.
My take on it is that my life is divided into two realms: work and home. I spend maybe 40-45% of my waking hours at work, and the rest at home on nights and weekends.
I can use extra salary to improve my home life (renting a bigger apartment, going to nicer restaurants, traveling to exotic places, etc), but there's not much I can do with it to improve my work life. If my boss suddenly gave me a 10-million-dolllar bonus tomorrow, my home life would change a lot, but my work life would be nearly the same.
On the other hand, a $5 improvement to my work environment affect the nearly half of my life I can't otherwise improve on my own. This is why perks like free food, nice monitors, a cool office, etc have a value to employees that is decoupled from the financial impact of them to the company.
> I can use extra salary to improve my home life (renting a bigger apartment, going to nicer restaurants, traveling to exotic places, etc), but there's not much I can do with it to improve my work life.
You can use extra money to improve your work environment, but you shouldn't have to. That's a difference between working as a contractor and working as a salaried employee. As a contract employee, you get paid far more, but some of that goes to buying your own equipment (as well as benefits and myriad other things). As a salaried employee, you have the reasonable expectation of your employer supplying everything you need to do your job.
I have one of those Logitek wireless keyboard and mouse that use the same usb dongle. I never even considered asking the company for one, I just bought it after work and brought it in. Because it was cheap, I wanted that exact thing, and I wanted it now. If I asked, it either would have been non-standard and denied, or it would have taken them months to figure out how to buy one, and it would have been a toaster or a potted petunia.
I probably shouldn't have had to ask, but sometimes you have to ask yourself if the process is at all worth it.
It's often the path of least resistance working at a billion dollar company. I'm currently on week 4 of waiting for the ordering of a $250 docking station so that I can use a gigantic external monitor instead of my tiny laptop screen. The amount I'm being paid per hour would pay off that cost in a day.
P.S. I'm paying for the monitor...
P.P.S. I'm going to end up paying for the docking station out of pocket too. It's that important to my workflow. It sucks, but it's better than the alternative, and there are things that are more important that this job does get right.
I work at a $30 billion company, and we just submit a simple form with an amazon link and brief description, someone in the Workplace Services department orders it, and it's on my desk two days later.
Ditto if you need a book; they'll even send the ebook version straight to your kindle account.
I guess it's not about the size of the company per se... maybe high vs low margin industries?
I've worked wholly in life insurance companies. The difference is how much autonomy directors/managers/employees are given with respect to their tools. In the worse case I've seen, you have to route every equipment request through both IT Help Desk, System Security, and your manager. It would be sad if it weren't so funny. Office Space is real. The best example I can see is that as developers, we are still given a machine without admin rights. They set a group policy for every user in the organization with a laptop; whenever you connect to their network, the policy changes your power settings so that closing your laptop does not place it into sleep mode. This has cost me hours of time. I close my laptop expecting it to "just work, i.e. stop draining battery like a sieve" like any other consumer product, but because some executive didn't like having to log back into their laptop when they closed it, the entire organization is forced to use that setting. So every time I use this laptop, I have to remember that closing the laptop does not induce sleep, and before I close the laptop, I have to remember to press the crescent moon button! It's silly compared to how well my personal devices work.
Another is a request for a purchase of a license of $50 software. We can't even purchase the software and install it ourselves. It has to be vetted for interference for dozens of other apps, even though we need it for development and don't run any of the apps that they're testing. It cost me lots more time than $50...
The root of the problem seems to be that there is no cost accounting for anything related to IT Security. Seemingly anything that could increase security seems like it is fast tracked for implementation. Instead of weighing the NPV impact to the company by implementing this system, they just go with it. There's so much opportunity to teach decision makers to think more quantitatively, but at organizations where things like this are allowed to fester, there's always larger issues with leadership at the top.
Yep, everywhere is different. The pay and benefits at my job are decent. Also the company does something socially useful, which puts everything else in perspective, for me.
P.S. I live about 5 blocks from PSU! How are you liking the PhD program there? What are you studying? Mind if I pick your brain? I've considered grad school off and on so many times...
I'm Intel's Chrome OS Architect; I serve as the technical lead for Intel Chromebooks, particularly on the software side. I particularly enjoy that I get to work on entire systems top-to-bottom: hardware, firmware, kernel, userspace, browser, apps/web... We get to work on problems like "How could this technology make Chrome OS or the web better?", or conversely "What technology could we create to solve this problem that Chrome OS or the web faces?".
I've also found it awesome building up and working with several exceptional teams.
(Note: on HN and elsewhere, I don't speak for Intel unless explicitly stated otherwise.)
> How did you get to that point?
I came in to interview for a completely different position, and found myself in the right place at the right time with the right skillset, and I was open to work on anything sufficiently interesting and challenging.
It helped that I already had extensive experience in the Open Source community. Also, Intel as an employer values and rewards graduate education.
Maybe or maybe not. This is really more about the situation where some people, when considering a new job, would rather have perks worth $X than $X in increased salary. In the $10m example, consider there to be an "assuming I didn't quit or change jobs" in there. :)
As for whether I'd actually keep working, I'm not sure. I might take a break from employment for a bit, but I'd probably come back to somewhere like where I am. I have a great team, a great environment, and I'm working on something socially meaningful.
It's hard to define "perks worth $X"; in particular, the value of those perks is higher than the amount the employer spends on them. Not least of which because everyone else has them too, and thus everyone knows that.
> As for whether I'd actually keep working, I'm not sure. I might take a break from employment for a bit, but I'd probably come back to somewhere like where I am. I have a great team, a great environment, and I'm working on something socially meaningful.
Exactly. I might adjust my working hours, or take a leave of absence, but I can't see myself quitting. I don't want to live a life of leisure; I want to have an impact.
For most middle class people, increasing wealth by $10M does much less to their happiness than having a good job. Short term excitement nonwithstanding.
Give me an extra few thousand to take home over a "nice monitor" any day. I can make do with whatever the company decides is best in terms of resources like that, that's up to them and has no value to me at all.
that is a huge pet peeve of mine, the whole nickel and diming and paying developers $xxx,xxx a year and expecting them to make do with a single $200 1080p crappy monitor and the cheapest possible pc one can get.
This seems to happen sometimes because of budgeting issues and silos and so on, but it is still penny wise and pound foolish to expect "passionate" folks and not give them the tools to excel, and creates ongoing friction which will definitely not help with attrition/retention.
If I owned my company I would honestly nowadays give every developer an 8-core 128gig workstation or two with 2-3 21:9 35" 1440p screens and 1TB+ of nvme ssd and a $1k+ allowance to get whatever best-of-the-best chair they want to get (say, a steelcase leap or similar)
Even if you spent $10k on each engineer for this (and the above would be less than that) it would be worth it just from the perspective of you want your employees' workspace to get out of the way as much as possible to enable them to be productive and write good quality code.
The output and code quality gains from having a top-of-the-line machine/monitor pay for themselves in spades, but for some reason this never seems to be noticed in any company I have worked for, it can go from "we are a startup, we have no money to waste" all the way to "we are a large company and beholden to our shareholders, we have no money to waste" but the end result is the same, the people who could do with better tools don't get them and gripe (justifiably) about it.
On the other hand, getting your team spoiled like that can easily make a product that only works for people who have top-of-the-line conditions.
e.g: (2nd hand info - might be wrong) There's a recent Batman game that fails to work properly, and in fact, was essentially pulled from the market and re-released almost unchanged once common-enough gamer machines (still not "very common") caught up with the specs needed for the game.
another e.g: Facebook now does 2G Tuesdays[0] in which network speed is (optionally) purposely degraded to 2G speeds, to make sure that the technologically spoiled Facebook engineers and designers get an idea of the service their lesser-equipped users get.
Possibly, but that's a different discussion, and one that -- unlike the "primary tools" discussion, cannot be solved by throwing more money at it.
In my opinion and experience, unless you already have proper testing practices, for PC development it is better to make sure your developers have test rigs on their table that are comparable to end user equipment -- and, in most cases, it's better if it is their development machine.
> Requiring PC game developers to write a game on a old PC makes no more sense than requiring PSP game developers to write the game on a PSP.
"Old" is a spectrum. Most people on this thread say a (e.g. channeling Spolsky) your developer should have the best machine money can buy - with 128GB of ram, 8 cores, 1TB SSD. That's not on the "old" / "new" gamer machine spectrum at all. It's on a completely different scale, given that most gamer machines these days (AFAIK) have 16GB of ram quad cores with 256GB, and casual gamers have 8GB with 128GB SSD or even an HDD
I would require PSP developers to test and debug on a real PSP rather than an emulator - but since PC is both the dev and the target environment, it is reasonable in most cases to require the dev PC to be comparable to the deployment PC, and that would essentially guarantee proper function (at some dev cost, compared to the "best machine money can buy", but with significantly reduced "you need to fix this" testing feedback cost, with a likely overall positive effect -- at least from my experience).
Frankly, I think setting up a standard testing VM with limited resources (2-4 cores, 8GB of RAM, small disk) makes much more sense than purposefully reducing programmer productivity.
In either example, it would probably be more useful to have a combination of dedicated human performance testers, and automated benchmarks that flag problems. Forcing developers to use crappy hardware, even part-time, is more of a kludge for when you don't have a healthy testing and feedback process.
Back when I worked for Telecom Gold ( a pre internet email provider) they deliberately locked our x.25 PAD's down to 1200 or 2400 Baud for the same reason.
It only pays for itself a priori if you are profitable. If you are not profitable then burn-rate is an existential threat which no one will take seriously if the founders don't.
I definitely agree that you should give developers everything they need to maximize their productivity, including spending an extra few thousands on their workstation, but it should really be what they need. For the typical startup I'd really question the need for 1TB SSDs, or the fastest CPUs. Focus on big displays, good ergonomics, ample RAM and good software tools, but that's just me.
1TB SSDs are consumer drives nowadays, if you want to spend money you can get 2+ TB already, same deal for CPUs, you can get 128GB/8core with consumer CPUs and consumer motherboards (asus x99 deluxe, intel 5960x, corsair lxp 128 kit), the higher end would be xeons or dual xeons where you can get a lot more cores/ram for a lot more $$$.
I agree that you can hit a point of diminishing returns, but it also depends on what you work on, being able to spin up a few VMs to do long-running tests on without impacting your main development environment can pay for itself very quickly, IMHO if you hire somebody good at current rates and expect them to stick around for 4 years, 10k in hardware is still only a couple % of what you are going to pay them over that time, which is immaterial in the grand scheme of things, profitable or not.
"For the typical startup I'd really question the need for 1TB SSDs"
And that is why you fail. Your already second guessing my needs. I have a 1TB SSD because the 500 was filled.
Don't guess. Ask and then supply and don't make me buy it myself.
LOL, I did not fail, I am not your manager. That's why I said "it should really be what they need". Don't smugly put words in my mouth. And while we're being busting out hipster-level snark if you're not willing to put the order in yourself then I start to question is a prima donna who came of age in the boom era and is too precious to do the dirty work that is required to help a company succeed? (http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html )
I think with some edits this could come across more effectively. You're right that the compliant isn't related to what you said, but the way you respond doesn't look very professional. Just my 2c.
Acknowledged, but I've got karma to burn and I'm old enough by SV standards to be have earned my crankiness, so I'll probably continue to take perverse satisfaction by going off from time to time.
Seems like a very good plan. The equipment isn't lost if the employee suddenly leaves and if he/she stays it's really not that big of an investment.
Whatever makes them happy and efficient. On top of that it's a pretty decent "lock in" move in an age where good developers are somewhat hard to find.
From anecdotal evidence there are a lot of developers who satisfice when it comes to salary/benefits. There's a certain base level (that they consider "fair pay") and once they get that it's not as simple as adding another 20k/year. Additionally, other factors are way more important (no unnecessary hoops, being happy at work, meaningful/interesting work to do). I've had very heated debates over this but I firmly believe that in "brain activities" specifically, just tossing more money at someone is not exactly the optimal HR strategy.
Hygiene factors vs motivation factors. Some stuff will make you happy, some stuff will make you unhappy. They are not on the same scale. Pay is mostly hygiene - not enough, absolute, or more importantly relative will make you unhappy. It won't make you super happy to increase it over enough though. (Yeah yeah, it totally will for YOU, but in reality... Not really. Increases and relativity matter a lot more than what you really are paid, even me and I'm really cynical about it).
Healthcare, same deal - needs enough to not make you unhappy.
When we hire people we just say, "What hardware and software do you want/need?" and take care of it.
Things like a computer, monitor and mouse are such a commodity it's just best to get it out of the way. And the most it's ever cost us is about $3,000 for a top of the line, maxed out MacBook Pro and Thunderbolt Display. But that's a Haskell developer making $150k, so that's a no-brainer, and gets you off on the right foot.
I recently persuaded my company to let me write job postings loudly bragging about the fact that we will buy you whatever fancy hardware you want. Our best hire explicitly mentioned in his cover letter that this caused him to apply.
I don't even know what I'd do with that sort of hardware. Heck, I can barely use 2GB of RAM on a good day, of which the sole significant offenders are Gnome 3 and Firefox (approx. 300MB each).
You are one lucky person. I can't work with anything less than 8 GB + SSD or 16 GB with a regular HDD. Maybe its the result of poor habits (leaving 2 dozen tabs open at any time) and my development stack (RoR + Node + MySQL + Redis).
I once got a contract with $household_name_restaurant's corporate headquarters. The first day they didn't have a PC for me. Meh, that happens. Around the 3rd day they gave me a 5 year old Celeron laptop with 2GB of RAM. This was about 2 years ago and it was a Java gig. It was an impossible task and that set my mood for the entire time I was there. I helped them out as best I could but didn't extend the contract when it was over. I was unhappy pretty much every day.
The biggest (non-tech) companies seem to have the worst systems for developers. Writing code for a $500m ERP system for a $4b company? Here's a 19" LCD and a Pentium 4 2.4GHz and 3GB of RAM. You can only open one project at a time, blah blah.
Work at a 20-person company? Picked out the loaded MacBook Pro, monitor, and keyboard I wanted to use after my interview.
Feeling like work is a good experience is important. I left a job in part because they nickel and dimed me on airline seats. I gave up my Sunday to fly across the country for a work conference (as if it were a reward to go pull booth duty for 3 days), and they were pissy about reimbursing the $30 or $39 each way for extra legroom for someone who's 6ft 2in and 225 pounds from lifting. iow flying is awful, and that nyc/sf flight is 6 hours of hell. I just couldn't get over $80 being more important than me not being absolutely miserable, and that after I had my SO drop me off at the airport, saving them $50 in cab fees.
Also, from a practical perspective, most large organisations don't have a system where you can go to your manager and say 'please can I spend $X of my own money on my monitor/chair etc' and then have them buy them for you. It might work in a start-up but the infrastructure for that isn't in place in most organisations - you could bring stuff in yourself I guess but it wouldn't be insured.
Likewise, my (carefully adjusted!) chair regularly finds itself in some other part of the office when I'm not in, and if I'd paid for it myself, that would be mighty annoying.
I think there are a few things that play into that: If you made an extra $10,000 you'd want to do something responsible with it, but you wouldn't really notice an instantaneous change in your day-to-day life.
But I think more importantly than that it signals that you're supposed to have a good experience and be taken care of. Saying, "Look, if you want/need a monitor or computer to work consider it done" says something about the company. Your success means something to them.
What can office snacks possibly cost a company? Say it's a 10-person company, snacks would cost maybe $1,000/month on the high end? And at that point you're probably burning >$120,000/month in salaries. It's barely even a drop in the bucket, assuming we're not talking about infinite catered meals.