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Comment by jopsen | Hacker News Reader

I somehow don't feel sorry if overpaid tech workers, like me, have to buy a desk and chair. It's not like you need new office furniture very often.

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I tend to think of the junior engineers, who might not have a ton of disposable income.

In the before times, they would be put at a workstation with a $2-3000 desk, a $500+ chair, reliable Internet and power, and usually a new(ish) computer, monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

Those engineers don't have the income to get all those pieces for home use; they'll get a cheap Ikea desk and chair, a middling-quality monitor and keyboard, and if they're lucky, their workplace provides a reliable computer at least.

But even for 'overpaid tech workers', there are some tools of the trade you invest in for your own good, but the company should also provide the basics (e.g. reimbursement for things used primarily/exclusively for business).

I think you'll see something akin to the Joel Test [1], but for how companies manage remote. What equipment are they providing? Are you getting a one time allowance to buy your home office setup (desk, external monitor, etc)? Are you getting a stipend towards your internet connection? Are they providing a corporate managed mobile device (why are you using your personal device for work!?)? Do they provide you with a support contact within the org if you need technical support or are you left to flail on your own? Do you have the option of a coworking space allowance so you're not always having to work from your home? How enjoyable and well put together is your onboarding process?

[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-s...

Wow, great article! It's astounding how forward thinking this was 20 years ago, and how relevant it still is. It's even more amazing how many companies still don't live up to these standards today!

> Are you getting a one time allowance to buy your home office setup (desk, external monitor, etc)?

Note that this really should be a recurring stipend. Nothing lasts forever; everything has a service life. I think a three- or four-year depreciation makes sense on a lot of these items, although this is probably something which should be considered an industry standard.

I'm 2 decades into my career and have been working from home for a fortune 100 company for 2 years before covid (well, we would meet once a week in the office but just for meetings), so when the pandemic hit, it didn't change our work habits.

A cheap Ikea desk is perfect for my needs. It's a wood counter-top board and 2 adjustable sawhorses. Cost me about $200. However where I spent the money is on a good 5k monitor. With these 2 (and a saddle chair), I have everything I need for a workspace that is far more functional than an expensive modular furniture desk (ie. cubicle) with a low-res monitor.

Your company paid for that 5k monitor I hope ?

you don't need a $2-3000 desk just to hold a computer and some monitors. you can get a large desk with electronic height adjustment from ikea for about $400.

I'm a junior engineer and I already happen to have a nice chair, computer, and monitor at home. my desk is a piece of trash from walmart, but it gets the job done. altogether, it's about $3500 worth of stuff if bought new. I wouldn't be happy to pay for all that in one go for work, but it wouldn't be an extreme hardship either. I would gladly pay that in exchange for permanent WFH.

The expensive standing desks are only 6-800.

I've been a dev for 20 years and I have a second hand Ikea table that works great and a $60 chair from staples which I'm thinking of upgrading to Steelcase from ebay that is a few hundred. My old PC is much quicker than my crappy PC I used to have in the office.

I suppose I don't feel overpaid, given that I'm living in a 1BR apartment. And now with my office closed, I'm somehow supposed to find a dedicated space in my tiny-ass apartment where I can:

a) Setup the same configuration of laptop, multiple monitors, a desk phone, and an Ethernet jack into my router.

b) Sufficiently insulate the background noise on the hours of Zoom meetings I'm expected to join every day from my girlfriend working in the dining room, and the cacophony of screaming children in the apartment above me.

This solution reeks of tone-deaf executives who would think, "What? You mean all of our employees don't have freestanding houses with a spare bedroom or basement that they can easily convert to a home-office?"

> I suppose I don't feel overpaid, given that I'm living in a 1BR apartment.

I was about to post on this topic as well when I saw your post. There are people on our team who have been working in less than ideal circumstances at home for more than six months now, and who are really struggling as a result.

Even if people do have a good space to work, if partners are working at home together there's often only enough room for one of them to use that good space at a time. Again, not ideal.

My priority at the moment is securing some office space so that people have some respite from the endless grind of working at home under these circumstances.

It really changes the whole "I live with someone" situation. A 1BR with a partner may be reasonable when you each go to work for 8+ hours a day. A 1BR when you're both working from home, taking meetings and calls, etc, is a completely different story. It means a 2BR is really a requirement for most people who are in a relationship IMO, and that's a massive cost difference, many thousands a year.

I expect at most companies, people will have a choice to come back into the office they were in previously once it's safe to do so. That said, it won't necessarily be like it was before. For example, there may not be assigned seating and people you work with may choose to and be allowed to come in occasionally or rarely.

But I'm not sure what you want done in the current situation?

Good luck if your a junior living in a studio apartment with no space to put a desk let alone have a spare room for office.

Exactly why do you seem to be on the employers side here

Certainly some people are in a worse situation than others in many different ways. However, I'm not sure what employers are supposed to do right now other than to be sensitive to the challenges many people are facing. It's not like a $1K stipend for equipment (or whatever) is going to solve small apartments, kids learning at home, partners on Zoom calls all day, etc.

In general, I think employers should provide some sort of outside-home working space once practical, at least for employees who didn't sign up to work remotely.

it's a bad precedent when workers pay the company they're working for

You may not realize that the $500 chair, the ping pong table and the beer fridge effectively comes out of everyone's paycheck.

Right, but is that money coming back to employees in the form of pay bumps now that those things are gone?

Those thing aren't gone, they've already been paid for and are being written off.

Of course, with new contracts being negotiated, not having to pay for all these expenses will give an employer more leeway in terms of salary. However, remote work also increases the candidate pool, so the net effect is going to be lower salaries.

Is it, though? I've always brought my own tools - my Aeron, my preferred high-refresh monitors, a Linux dev machine where possible, my monitor arms, my IDE.

I have a good setup. I know it works.

It's not as feasible to get my own standing desk in each time so I let that go. But they always give me everything and I just set them aside and use my (superior) tooling.

I don't think that's paying the company. That's just me buying tools that are optimal for me. I don't really need each employer to do that for me. These things are mostly buy it for life (except for the desktop and IDE license).

I'd never even consider paying for an IDE I need for work. Why would a company not buy me software that has a direct and immediate impact on my productivity? Huge red flag.

All of these things are productivity improvements. And I'm sure any company would buy them if I cared, but $200? It's a rounding error. And it liberates me from any choices they'd make.

IntelliJ Ultimate is $500 for a commercial license I believe (and you need a commercial license to do work for a company over a certain size, even if you pay for it yourself). Sure it's not going to affect my finances either way but:

1. The 2 minutes it takes to file an expense report is a good trade for $200 (I don't make $6,000 an hour at my job)

2. It's the principle; they should pay for it, not me.

No, you don't have to do that¹. Where did you get that info? I don't want to argue your personal value calculation and I accept that you feel the way you do, so let's set that part aside.

I've been using my IntelliJ licence at multiple jobs on my own and AFAIK if I don't get it reimbursed I don't need a business licence.

¹ https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240855-Can-...

Ah you're right, I stand corrected on the license.

I don't see the value calculation as an emotional one, I truly don't see a reason not to fill out the expense report

I didn't mean to imply that it was emotional, just that it is your own preference and different from mine. Personal there as relating to your person.

Sorry, needed to clarify that, but I really don't want to argue this point with you.

In the past I’ve been a dev at a company that didn’t understand software development at all; and fighting these battles is exactly why I left. Different strokes for different folks, but it’s great to work somewhere that gives me the tools I need for the job without having to ask, and certainly without having to source and pay for them myself.

And it's not like it has to be new. Thrift stores await your arrival.

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