Shopify is giving its employees $1k to furnish their work-from-home setups | Hacker News Reader

Shopify is giving its employees $1k to furnish their work-from-home setups

businessinsider.com

293 pointsTheLastSamurai149 comments

PSA: Used office chairs are a much better deal than new, at least if you are paying close to list price. About 10 years ago I bought a steelcase leap for less than $300. I've used it at least 250 days a year since then with no problems. List price on that chair is $1k.

This. I bought a used Herman Miller Miira for $250 and when I priced it out it was 1200 new. Great chair and significantly better than the new $200 office chairs.

Any ideas on what the best clearinghouses online for used Steelcase or Herman Miller chairs would be?

These chairs are big and heavy, shipping will probably be annoying. I got mine from an office liquidator ~30 minutes from my home, which I found just by searching for office liquidators near me that had inventory listings online. As a bonus, you can probably see it in person before you actually buy it.

http://madisonseating.com has been a reliable supplier for years.

Thanks, this is exactly what I was looking for but for some reason was unable to find.

I highly don't recommend buying from them. I bought a steelcase leap v2 in platinum color and it's clear that the base of the chair is a cheap knockoff.

Crappy silver spraypaint that flakes, the wheels barely work, the piston was broken on delivery (which they did replace for free).

I've had problems with the chair being too low at max height and I am a short guy. I still don't know if it's their cheap base that's the culprit or that's just the design.

Thanks for saying this. Before I read your comment, I thought they were selling opened box or used Steelcase chairs, but 100% authentic. There's nothing on the site that I could find that discloses that parts of the chairs are not authentic. If that's the case, it's super shady of them.

I've been dealing with them for years and never saw anything shady. Perhaps the GP got unlucky and was unwittingly sold chairs with replacement parts.

I bought a brand new one and it's fantastic. The used market for premium chairs in my remote part of the country is non-existent. I certainly would have bought a second hand one since they are so well built.

Same, I bought a herman miller chair new about 6 years ago, there is no used chair that I could find in India.

But even when bought new, something that gets used so much everyday is worth the price.

which herman miller did you bought? and what's the price there?

Not OP but I have a Mirra 2, I liked it better than the Aeron or Embody. I do really suggest you go someplace where you can try it out, also the various sizes. I bought refurb, don't remember price.

Also not OP and I also have a Mirra 2. There is a school of thought that as the Aeron is a design classic they can't really iterate on it. The Mirra has been great for me.

I got the sayl chair. It was around INR 45,000 I believe at that time. The aeron was around INR 85,000.

+1 for this. I bought my Herman Miller Aeron new almost 20 years ago now and I still love it & use it every day. Immediately fixed some (very mild) back trouble I was having.

It probably won't fit the Shopify budget, it's super expensive. But having the same chair used in recording studios and is officially a work of art in the Museum of Modern Art [1] still makes me smile every day I go to sit down to work.

[1] https://www.moma.org/collection/works/3734

Yeah, I bought the executive Aeron because I couldn't stand so much plastic and it cost an eye watering £1200.

But I'd spent £300 on a chair before it that didn't last three months, wasn't as adjustable or comfortable, I couldn't get a refund on and for which there are no spares on eBay. 10 years in it's looking like a great buy.

Same here. There were some refurbished Herman Millers for like 500€ here, so I opted for a new Steelcase Gesture. Don't regret it at all.

Used chairs seem to be plentiful. It seems that whenever a business moves office they just throw away or sell for very cheap all of their chairs and tables.

Selling for cheap basically means they want to get rid of it but not pay for disposal.

Which is good for me because they are almost always still in really good condition.

From a previous life in financial services refit (remodelling) you are correct. I have disposed of lots of top quality desks, chairs and drawers - sometimes with random amounts of cash left in them!

Always returned, btw.

Last fall two regional banks merged, and they consolidated office space. A removals company was in charge of the move, and had a big sale. I missed the first weekend, but snagged 18 steelcase aria chairs - delivered to our coworking space - for $600 (and they took and disposed of 12 older chairs) These chairs' MSRP is $720 each.

Possibly one of the best bargains ever for me.

My office chair was $14 from Goodwill. Thrift stores are great places for office furniture. And when you're done with it, just donate it back so someone else can use it!

I bought a refurbished Herman Miller Aeron today on Craig's List for $350, with same day delivery. It might just be a Bay Area thing, but Craig's List was crawling with them. I'm guessing it's all the failing businesses liquidating their stock.

I used it all day and I'm amazed I spent years in an $80 Amazon chair.

oo if i may ask -- where?

I just typed "Aeron" into Craig's List and chose a seller. I think they delivered out of San Mateo. The going rate seemed to be $300 - $400 depending on whether you needed delivery or not.

You could still buy original Aeron from dot com era. Got myself 2002 model last year in close to pristine condition, only armrest needed to be replaced due wear

Yep. My small company bought us all second hand aerons for less than £300 each. Perfect condition (except for one which needed a wheel, which we replaced for < £10). When we were acquired and moved offices, a full new set of brand new Aerons were bought, even if you specifically asked to keep your old one.

Oh well, at least someone got a cheap desk chair out of mine.

For those in the UK, I recommend Studio Modern (https://studiomodern.co.uk/) for refurbished chairs. I have only bought one chair from them (Mirra 2), but was originally recommended it by someone who has bought dozens for offices.

I've had 2 mirra chairs at home for years, I think they were ~£120 off ebay each and are ridiculous value for money.

  Shopify did not respond to Business Insider's request
  for comment. It's unclear if whether the $1,000 amount
  is a bonus employees will see in their paychecks, or 
  whether workers will need to expense the items they
  purchase.

Does it make any actual difference? Yes, it could theoretically impact somebody's tax bracket, but do we need that level of detail?

Also someone is blaming a lot of companies with the "why wait?" theme.

The thing is, moving to all remote is not a company does overnight. Particularly with matters of security perimeters, there's a lot of planning that has to be done. Corporate firewalling on premise is a thing... Corporate firewalling a laptop at home is a completely different matter. Assumptions you can make about network in the office vanish once the employee is at home.

Maybe the wait was to implement at least some basic VPN connectivity, proper firewalling and stuff like that?

If it's an expense program, then there could be policies and constraints which limit the types of purchases employees can make.

That could make a significant difference in terms of usage and spending of these funds.

There doesn't seem to be any official announcement of the program on Shopify's blog or social media so far.

It's probably best to assume that journalists are acting in good faith to uncover the full story and to discover details which might be relevant for their audience either now or retrospectively when people look back on these events in future.

Not to be glib, the difference between $1k on the check and $1k expensed doesn't make a difference if you're well paid. If you're considering how it'd impact your tax bracket, it doesn't matter to you.

But for the customer support reps? It might make all the difference in the world. Most of those employees won't have an extra $1k laying around that they can forego until finance gets around to finally reimbursing them for their expenses. For the average customer service rep, the question will likely boil down to:

1.) Can I not pay a bill (or three) right now so I can take advantage of the program?; or 2.) Do I not participate in the program.

A couple years ago I had similar dilemma with expensing around ~$400 for something. At the time I made about $50k/year and was supporting two households in two separate cities. It took a lot of juggling household budget(s) to wait for the 4 weeks it took to get that money back. That was a lot of added stress when I was already working paycheck-to-paycheck.

Today? I make over double that. If I had to put out $1k, I could do so without blinking. But I live a VERY different life now than even 2 years ago.

Tax guy. I second this comment. It makes a huge difference for the non programmers how this is done from both an employee cash flow and tax perspective.

At my previous job, I was asked to go to an international networking event in Europe. The firm would have reimbursed my expenses. I was prepared to go until I discovered that the trip would cost $22,000. The firm wasn't quick enough with reimbursements for me to justify paying for it upfront, so I had to pass.

It makes large difference if you're well paid. You can only buy ~$650 worth of stuff from $1k in paycheck, but you can expense full $1k of stuff in the other scenario. Of course, you could argue that if you're well paid, you can spend additional $500 of your own gross pay to top up that $650 to full $1k, but clearly Shopify doesn't think this way, because if it did, it wouldn't give any extra $1k in the first place, and just tell their employees to get what they need and pay for it themselves.

Hopefully, however it is handed out, other companies start to think about doing something similar. I just hope this works out well for the employees of shopify!

Our office just closed too. We're using it as an experiment for wider work from home in the future. This could have widespread impact on work culture.

If it works out, that $1k/person could pay dividends in savings if they can reduce office space.

I realized that Shopify has a bigger market cap than Uber and has grown like wildfire in the last few years.

Looks like a great company with a good culture and a great product.

Agree. Only heard positive things and the CEO seems like a pretty straight dude.

As a developer on the blunt end of their theme development I have questions.

That said, they solve some difficult problems and no one else comes close at the moment.

Care to elaborate what those problems are?

Well for one thing they seem to have have quite a comprehensive tax system which they keep updated. Something I realised could be valuable when dealing with a Californian client on a different Ecom platform.

Another one is a reasonably powerful but client friendly interface, which sounds easy but almost all other platforms fail in some way.

Lastly it isn't totally bad for headless ecommerce, at least if you dont look at the accounts system too hard.

Shopify has become the default platform for eCommerce for people who have their own marketing channels (let's be honest, the main draw of selling on Amazon is they are a default shopping search engine). I've noticed a lot of "influencers" with strong brands have started shopify stores to sell clothing lines etc. If you can get eyeballs outside the Amazon search results, shopify is probably where you're directing them.

I'm a remote worker and I've found it hard to say something positive about the virus, but having companies be more ok with remote workers and (hopefully) finding work still gets done can mean more remote possibilities overall. For me, that's a good thing.

I saw someone mention that whats to stop them from getting comfortable with remote workerse and then hiring cheaper labor from the next state over, inevitably taking advantage of skilled international yet cheap labor, remotely?

You producing a better value for the company than the "cheap labor" from the next state or country.

The point if that if remote works than most onsite employeea likely are *not".

If the next country produces similar results, then who cares? If this brings a great awakening in companies overpaying engineers, so be it. I expect to be paid for my knowledge and experience, not because I need to afford an apartment in the valley.

It's great that people outside SV have an opportunity to earn money. It's not great that putting the prole employees in fiercer competition funnels more money to wealthiest monopolist capital owners.

Two main things.

1) Timezones

1) Working from home takes a rather significant toll on teamwork and collaboration. Allowing people flexibility with their working hours/location is a no-brainer imo. But unless the role is specifically suited to it, you probably want people to spend most of their working hours in the office.

You get the same issues when you need people in geographically separated offices to work together. Obviously lots of companies do that already, but you still have to account for the inefficiencies it causes.

I would simply move to the next state over and enjoy vastly lower taxes, less traffic, and more disposable income.

It's also possible that (too many) people treat this thing as a temporary distraction, throw their hands up in the air, and don't even try to be seriously productive; blame the conditions for no work getting done. Kinda like "github is down and I'm compiling and there's a group of visitors in the office..."

So it might kinda backfire on that front.

The same rules apply: if company can't measure work and its outcomes, there's no hope for this to work. I It is easier for some,while harder for other jobs, however it's not impossible.But I do agree that there migh be some attempts to just have an easy time at home

Damn this is awesome. I'm actually dreading working from home because I don't have a desk, keyboard, or anything of the sort.

Dining tables make the best desks. Lots of surface area, and plenty of room underneath for cables and boxen.

also they're solid as fuck

Finally getting around to getting a proper desk/chair/monitors really made me enjoy working from home a lot more. I don’t do it terribly often, but I really feel like it makes me more productive.

Also working with a remote colleague who doesn’t have good webcam/microphone/headphones is an absolute nightmare. I’m sure most of us have had colleagues that were frustratingly hard to communicate with remotely, and I’m sure most of us have avoided communicating with them because of it.

Failing that, a door with one edge rested on a radiator and the other a stack of cardboard boxes.

I work from a proper ergonomic office desk now but it beat many other alternatives including a dining table and various purpose-made 'home office' desks.

(Accepting I got lucky with the height of the radiator).

In the same vein I worked off a folding table for a long time. It was cheap, large, and surprisingly sturdy. If I needed the room it took up back I just folded it away.

I did that. Now I eat dinner at my work desk. It sucks.

If you live and work in Denmark, your employer is technically responsible for providing you with a height adjustable desk, chair, keyboard, mouse and monitor, if they expect you to work from home.

Working from home is not an excuse for the employers for allowing you to work in an un-ergonomic environment.

You're missing out on the #battlestation #setupinspiration trend. WFH is a thing, why not make yourself feel comfortable? A monitor arm and a vertical laptop stand save space. Add a (standing) desk with a nice surface, quality keyboard + mouse, and maybe a small desk plant.

For anyone in the same position I can vouch for IKEA MARKUS office chairs. Working from a dining room chair will leave your back sore after a few days. For desks I'd stay clear though, all the IKEA desks I've had have ended up with annoying wobbles.

I have used a number of Markus-chairs and they are pretty good indeed, and not that expensive. The most surprising thing was when the cylinder in mine, after years of use, started to slowly drift (some internal gasket leaking or something) downwards after raising the seat. I contacted IKEA if I could get a new cylinder for it, but it turned out the 9 year old chair still had some warranty left. A delivery man brought me a brand new replacement chair and took away the old one.

My Ikea Bekant sit-stand desk is still sturdy, although I don't sit/lean on it, and don't weigh much even if I did.

https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/bekant-desk-sit-stand-white-s29...

I tested a few of these in store, and at low heights they were fine, but when raised they were really wobbly. I've used standing desks that wobble when you type, so the monitor wobbles, and it's really distracting to work like that.

Maybe they just didn't put it together properly though in store. Is yours like that?

I got an IKEA desk years ago, forgot the name, and it's pretty good; modular design, height adjustable, really sturdy metal frame and wooden top. I think the wood has warped a bit over the years though, very subtly.

The downside is that it's no longer in production, so I can't buy another module to add to it. The ones they have now are a lot flimsier; thinner metal, thinner table tops, etc.

If I ever move I'll see to orienting myself on the desk market. And get a used chair, I spent nearly 500 on a new chair from an office shop but it's not as good as the ones I've had at work before. I googled and there's big webshops that sell refurbished office furniture, including the best chairs ever, for under 300.

I work at a remote company and this is normal, but obviously Shopify has a much better PR team than us.

just curious, do remote companies give you a stipend when you first come on or is it only if you request it or something else? I've never worked for a remote company but the place I currently work will let you borrow everything if you need to work remotely for an extended period of time (family emergency etc).

Obviously I wish they'd give us money to set up a nice work station at home though lol

We're given some money initially to do setup and some more after your first few months.

You can buy a Herman Miller refurb on Amazon for $500. It's a great deal. You also need a second monitor, mechanical keyboard, webcam, headset. $1k is plenty for all of that

People with mechanical keyboards in conference calls can jump in a lake. haha

I do this and honestly, it's not that bad if you don't have the mic near the keyboard. The headset mic I have seems to drop audio dramatically just a few inches away from my mouth, which is a feature, not a bug, if you're using a mechanical keyboard.

Using the internal keyboard AND internal microphone of a laptop is usually worse.

Just do the conference in a text group chat. I can type fast on that mechanical keyboard, you know :)

At home I have a cheap keyboard to swap to -)

The real problem is cheap headsets with poor mics and people not knowing how to turn the fracking gain down.

Though at home id just swap out my laptop and stick my works one in and plugin my Claret Pre 2 for the mic and the Shitt Audio stack I use for heaphones.

If it's for work, see if you can get your company to order if through whoever they get their office furniture from. I know my previous company paid around $650 each for the Herman Miller Embody

Not at all the most important thing, but mechanical keyboards are going to be sold out so fast. There are tons of people who want them, but just don’t want to bug people in their office. WFH will change that. And it’s mostly small suppliers who won’t scale that fast. I imagine they use some Chinese parts, too.

Cherry MX browns might be an option, they are supposed to be quiet.

Still very clacky if you bottom them out which 99% of people do. Mechanical keyboards, unfortunately, do not have a place in the office space.

Half our open plan office with 15-ish people in it uses browns, never been an issue. There's almost never complete silence anyway (people talking quietly etc.), the keyboards are subjectively below the threshold of registering as noisy.

I started the mechanical revolution in our ~30p open plan office, now a dozen or so of us use them. I'm using MX Clears, others are using Browns, there's even a red in there, the noise isn't really an issue, just don't hammer the life out if it.

Also higher quality boards with nice heavy plates lower the pitch of the sound so it's less intrusive (in my experience).

You’ve got a couple replies saying “not a problem at my office [where I happen to enjoy the use of such a keyboard]” already, so I’ll back you up here:

I have neighbors with mechanicals that bother me so bad I’ve had to pack up and go home for the day. This is over music on noise canceling headphones.

Different people actually have different amounts of trouble with this, with some having lots of problems. Just lucky I guess?

I think the whole noise issue with mechanical keyboards is way overblown. I have two mech keyboards (with Cherry MX Brown and Black switches), and nobody at the office or at home has ever complained. The Apple butterfly keyboards that some of my coworkers use are subjectively just as loud as mine, if not louder (depending on typing style/force obviously – one of my colleagues seems to really hate his Macbook :) ). Furthermore, rubber dome keyboards actually require you to bottom out on every keystroke, while with mechanical keyboards, there is at least the possibility to avoid that.

You can add soft rubber rings to dampen that sound almost completely: https://www.wasdkeyboards.com/cherry-mx-rubber-o-ring-switch...

No they don't. I have 40A-Rs on my MX Browns at home and while they do make a significant difference (especially under a large mousepad), they are still louder than butterfly switches by a wide margin.

Put spacers on your keys. They're cheap, and in addition to muting most of the bottom-out thud, they eat up a lot of the force and spare your knuckles, too.

To install them, find the cheapest kind of ballpoint and pull out the tip and ink tube. The body tube is just the right size to press the spacers onto the key stems. It's miles easier than anything else I've ever tried.

Before spacers, the helpdesk complained about my keyboard noise. The helpdesk! After, no one did.

Just get browns, they're not so bad that they will bother anyone but the most fussy coworker. They're louder than laptop keyboards but as loud as some regular non-mech keyboards.

I'm using browns with O rings at work. Feel great and are no louder than anyone else's keyboard.

Depends on if you have a partner and kids. I’ve had to retire my mechanical keyboard at home for just this reason.

You must have a really small place if that's a problem WFH you really need to be able to shut the door.

Sadly the monitors I have at work are 1k each =(

Why are you wasting money? You can get 5 27" monitors for the price of one of those and 3 or 4 43" 4ks for the price of both.

What? How about some specifics. My requirements for a monitor is high resolution for plenty of desktop space (minimum 4k) and IPS panels for viewing angle, besides, I think IPS is the least straining panel to look at. When you combine these two requirements you are likely at 700+ for a single monitor.

But hey, I see 80 col Vim developers, too, so everyone’s needs are different.

>plenty of desktop space (minimum 4k)

Are you running your 4K monitor in 1:1 mode?

As in no scaling? Yes.

Dell 24" IPS 4k is $350: https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Monitor-P2415Q-24-Inch-LED-Lit/d...

Not bad, but I think 24” is too small for 4k, I would have to use scaling which detracts from desktop real estate.

Because LG 5ks are literally the only choice of external display my employer provides. On the plus side, they may be cheaper in bulk.

That seems incredibly overpriced unless you need absolute color reproduction or some other specialty.

My home one is more than that. It's a 5k ultrawide. Screen real estate is everything for me.

It isn’t about color, it’s about resolution. My LG ultra fine 5k monitor is amazing. Will never go back to cheap monitors again. It pairs perfectly with the 5k iMac Pro.

I can buy two 27-inch 2560x1440 Lenovo monitors for 580-680 euro. So you can definitely get resolution (not necessarily pixel density) for pretty cheap.

Dell 24" 4k resolution monitor is $350. You can get 3 of those.

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Monitor-P2415Q-24-Inch-LED-Lit/d...

24" at 4k is difficult to read. Larger screen real estate really helps those of us who have already spent too much of our lives staring at screens.

That's a different shape and size than a single 30" panel.

You can get a 50 inch 4k TV for a few hundred bucks.

The great thing about Herman Miller refurbs or used is that you can get parts. Sure, you can get a cheap office chair from target or so, but they'll last you a couple of years before the padding is compressed to nothing, parts are breaking, and it's time to throw it out. The Aerons are incredibly durable, and if something fails or I damage something, I can get replacement parts easily. I've gotten new wheels for different floors, replaced a small pad that deteriorated, and replaced the original hydraulic. I've had mine about 10 years now; who knows how long the previous owner had theirs. It's an investment for sure, but one I think holds it's value well.

(My wife has a Steelcase Leap, which I can say similar things about.)

Highly recommend it. I got mine on ebay for a little cheaper. I'd expect costs might go up though given the increased demand.

Real or counterfeit?

This is excellent.

I've been working remotely for a little over 18 years, at first in a tiny 450sqft apt with 2 roommates and now in a house with an office with many other situations in-between in a few different cities.

The most important thing I've ever done for my sanity, productivity, and consistency is set up a permanent space to work. Same chair, same surface, work only. My whole life could be a complete shit-show but my "office" was tidy and available, even if that "office" was an edge of the kitchen table.

There are other things like making sure roommates and significant others understand the boundaries when working and such, but dedicating a workspace has always been the most fundamentally essential.

I have worked from home for nearly a decade. I guess I don’t know what I’m missing but I don’t need 1k chair. I sit at my dinning room table on a 50 dollar chair from Ashley Furniture. No problems at all. True I don’t have a desktop and use a laptop so I can take it with me to onsite meetings or move to another location like my patio, couch, or garage.

I’m not sure what I’d spend 1k on besides the machine I use to get work done on.

For me a nice monitor is a must. I cannot be productive on a laptop for more than an hour or two. It all feels so constricting.

You can get some real nice monitors for $30 from the thrift store. I'm looking at one on my desk right now :-)

I paid AU$260 for 2560x1440 27” Kogan branded displays.

And have a second hand 1920x1080 22” either side of those.

Total 4 displays for under AU$1000

I highly recommend it.

It isn't quite the thriftstore, but the last 3 batches of monitors I have gotten were all surplus or off lease.

Something like https://www.newegg.com/dell-u2412m-24/p/N82E16824260047?&qui...

Checks price of the Pro Display XDR.

I do have a work laptop but I never use it because I hate working on the small thing(I don't like laptops that much in general). But when I work from home I use my home computer as it's really powerful(much more so than my work desktop also) and i have dual 25" monitors.

Same. I bought a $10 stool as we had just moved (without any furniture) and I didn't want to rush into buying an office chair because I knew how important it was to get a good one. 7 years later I was still using the stool (though I added a pillow). Last year I replaced it with a dining room chair (which I had bought when my parents came to visit -- we don't actually have chairs in our house and sit on the floor, Japanese style). It's nice to occasionally sit back and rest my back, but I'm not necessarily sure that it's a good idea.

The main thing that makes the biggest difference for me is that my keyboard and monitor are at the right height. Which is to say that I have an external keyboard (elbow height) and my laptop sits upon a series of cardboard boxes so that the top of the monitor is at the same height as my eyes. I also use a trackball at elbow height that I can reach without moving anything unduly.

You don't need a 1k chair you just need a good ergonomic chair, that won't cause long term damage.

For me good monitor and good chair are above good PC. My PC being slow affects my employers bottom line, my chair or monitor being bad affects my health.

Monitor I guess is still habit from CRT days, when there was significant quality (measured in not damaging your eyesight) between good and average.

Which is why employer bought me 2 really good desktops, one for home and one for office.

Laptops are apparently much more ergonomical than desktops, if you use them right. I recently got treated for posture-related problems and on that occasion it was suggested to use a laptop(or similar setup) with both elbows resting on the table. So I got a cheap adjustable vesa mount for my monitor to lower and tilt it accordingly, and have had no issues since then.

Leaning your heard down Al day? My neck hurts just reading that.

I've had a similar experience. I have a lightweight laptop that I carry with me to use wherever I feel most comfortable, be that at a desk (plugged into a monitor, or not), in an easy chair, on a couch, on the beach, in the woods... depends on where I feel most comfortable at the time.

For CPU intensive tasks, I've set up virtual remote desktops [1] that run on a heavy-duty machine or VPS, which I connect to over SSH or Chrome Remote Desktop. I can even connect to them using my phone in a pinch.

[1] https://github.com/kstenerud/virtual-builders/tree/master/ma...

Hm, everyone mentions chairs. Biggest improvement bang-for-buck was setting up better lighting in my home office: I now got three decent 5.5W 4000K MR16 LED spots over each of my tables and oriented to my liking.

Also, props for letting them use their office equipment at home. Asked my boss for the same and he was happy to allow me to carry the better of my monitors to corona/home office with me :)

I heard salesforce is givng USD 250

As someone who has worked at home for many years, and has a nice home office setup. $1k is not nearly enough... you need monitors, a decent desk, a nice chair, office supplies, a printer/scanner, the list goes on and on.

I think you will find that most of the people this $1k is targeting is people who already have the means to work from home, but maybe need some additional things.

No mic/webcam for meetings. Maybe own a laptop but don't have a desk/chair.

The 1k isn't about funding a fancy setup to permanently work from home. It's about filling the gaps so that they can work from home as effectively as possible during this time.

The article says that the $1k is for all 5000 of their employees. I doubt all of them have a laptop that they take home and most laptops already include a decent microphone and camera. The budget definitely does not target buying a laptop or desktop computer. It has to be for accessories like a chair, desk, scanner+printer.

Alot of people already have a laptop, or computer at home.

Every single Shopify employee has a laptop they can take home.

Comfortable employees are more productive employees. Here in Washington, this time will be at least 6 weeks(schools closed for 6 weeks). Thats a long time to sit hunched in an uncomfortable position. Id rather spend the extra cash on a nice chair/desk/monitor setup that will last a decade, then pinch pennies to save a few bucks now and then drop that dough at the chiropractor later.

But i guess the opinion of having a comfortable setup is unpopular here, since i got downvoted. lol.

I have done over 10 years and I use chair, monitor, desk, keyboard, mouse, coffee. That's it. Printer or scanner I have never needed. The total is probably $1k or just under.

I'm assuming of course that the $1k is for the office itself not for any other tech - i.e. that the employees have a laptop.

I have the Ikea hand-cranked version of a stand up desk, and a normal Ikea office chair. Those are by far the biggest expenses but I think they were under $500 together. A good screen is $250-$600 (I got a g-sync one because this is also my gaming space and my gaming rig feeds the same monitor). Unpopular opinion: more than one big external screen is a waste.

My office supplies are a good pen and a stack of printer paper I grab from the office when I'm there. I have never seen the need for a printer or scanner or any other office supplies.

I'd say $1k isn't exactly luxurious, but if we agree that anyone can do fine with ikea furniture and one external monitor then it's just right.

Yes, I agree on the last part. Thats why my OP stated a "nice setup". I think people should be comfortable when they work. Otherwise they will find reasons to not work, specially when un(der)supervised. Thus I think people should have higher quality monitors, decent chairs, adjustable height desks etc. I work fully remote, so a printer/scanner is a must, as i have no office to go to. I just look around my office and see lots of expenses... keyboard + mouse was $200.

> Spotify did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

They should probably ask Shopify to comment instead =P

I've noticed that BI's articles are full of typos. Not sure if they just rush things out or what, but some of them are so obvious if anyone did a round of proof reading they would've spotted it.

Proof reading doesn’t drive clicks.

Also, most of people just read the headlines.

Act First Apologise Later, Move Fast & Break Things, etc

Most journalism is a commodity business now with writers publishing dozens of stories per day. There's no big pipeline of drafting, copyediting, fact checking and editorial review anymore.

Does anyone actually go to BI, Forbes, TechCrunch, whatever, directly anymore? The most they get is a headline in someone’s social media feed that generates a click and maybe 10 seconds of eyeball on ad. Proof reading isn’t worth it.

Businessweek is still doing good work.

As is Nikkei, Financial Times, and The Economist.

I guess it's just a typo, but imagining someone at Spotify in Sweden reading a mail by an NY-based journalist asking about a Canadian startup is hilarious. I wonder if this happens in reality.

You wouldn’t believe how often this happens

SO $1 will buy you a chair...

I imagine they assume you already own a chair and a computer, but may want to buy a second monitor for example to make it easier to work.

Assuming you should already own a chair that shouldn’t be worth less than about $1k (or a bit less than that second-hand) is a bit extreme.

A bit off topic, but it would be great if they invested some cash to do something about the obvious scam sites on their platform. A domain like fdkwbn.shopify.com should be pretty obvious to even the dumbest AI that it's not a legit site.

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