Hacker News Reader

I respectfully would swap "Need: Beer on Fridays" with "Don't Need: Aeron chairs." If my back is killing me because of crappy chairs, no amount of beer is going to stop me from finding a new job.

View on HN

agreed. if company provides an office, providing great chairs goes a long way to increasing health and morale, and it's a company asset that can be reused by various employees, etc. beer is relatively cheap, a consumable, not an asset, and adults expect to buy beer on their own dime and time, if at all. chairs are a business tool, beer is not. do you need Aerons at launch? no. but that's a more substantive benefit for your employees that beer.

If I like the people I am working around then most of that stuff is nice but not necessary, except maybe for the back and the chair thing. I would add a quick commute in the first list and a work at home option.

Agreed. If I want to encourage somebody to sit in a chair for 8-12 hours a day, it's reasonable for me to spend $1k on that chair.

Even if I said the chairs were getting replaced every three years, it'd be a pittance. The comfort would need to get me an average of $1 of additional productivity, per employee, per day, to pay for themselves.

If they save a few people back problems, they're more likely to get me, far, FAR more than that.

(Posted while sitting on a Steelcase Leap)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com