Hacker News Reader

Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

$1500/1920 work hours a year = $0.78/hr. Seems reasonable to me.

Maybe. $1600 is still $1600 though, and the luxuries add up to real money. Especially worrisome when you're generating no real revenue and operating on other people's dime.

Is your workstation a luxury? Bathrooms? Desks? Ergonomic chairs are no different. They are tools of your trade; don't skimp on tools.

What a ridiculous comparison. No, I wouldn't say bathrooms are a luxury. A $1600 chair is. What world do you live in?

One where I want to be comfortable for the 8 hours a day I'm working and have leverage as someone with skills in demand.

Bathrooms are for spoiled corporate brats. Real scrappy startups just have poop buckets.

except they don't? You could choose to not buy 20 chairs and... get 1 engineer for a couple months?

Meanwhile you have things like ad campaigns that have "unlimited" budgets. Hell, there's tripling staff size in a year without some matching revenue growth!

Chairs don't kill startups.

Sure they do. Maybe not on their own, but wasteful spending has killed plenty of startups.

No, it doesn't. $0.78 per person per hour is a lot of money; 10% of minimum wage. Ofc you're not paying people minimum wage but it's still a nontrivial amount

> $1500/1920 work hours a year = $0.78/hr. Seems reasonable to me.

If that sounds good to you, consider $150/1920 instead for a thought experiment! Sounds about fair for someone like me who assuredly could work for years on end sitting on a rock or any random plastic chair outside Hanoi for all I care.. I'd be madly paranoid about spilling coffee or such sitting in a 1500 piece of furniture

I write to you from an Aeron chair I acquired from a failed startup in 2001. I've gotten almost 16 years out of it so far, and I spend at least 8 hours a day 5 days a week in it. I've spilled coffee and food on it, and was able to clean it with just a bit of Dawn detergent and a hose.

I'm not willing to compromise on my health or my working conditions. Too old for that. Spend money on things that make your life more comfortable or easier when you can.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com