Should we put a weight rack in the office?

The one thing I really would love in an office is a bar to hang from.

Not to do pull-ups or anything, just to decompress the spine.

It's the one thing I am extremely glad to have in my home office. Walking over to it, hanging for 30s once in a while, really fulfills that need for both getting mentally unstuck from problems and changing posture.

> However, there were also many reasonable voices that raised concerns. Some were concerned about the practical aspects of a rack - it could take up a large part of a room that could otherwise be used for working or conferencing. Others were concerned about the noisiness of a weight rack or weights dropping.

This isn't the first time I heard it.

Company X get a new office that's NOT a rented house somewhere in the Valley and wants to get a foosball/ping-pong table. All is well until they get to their next funding round and then triple headcount. Now the table, which used to be in a corner, is next to a conference room and the space is actually needed for meetings/having new employees. So it slowly progresses into an office-only space because we'd rather have Kyle's team than play games.

The weight rack has an extra "dude bro" connotation to it but the logistics are the same for any non-standard item in the office.

In the early 2000’s, we built out our flex engineering office to include an exercise room and a shower. We had a full set of weights. It was only used about 5% of the time. It looks good for recruiting new employees, but in reality people probably won’t use it. I would still put in a shower, and maybe a room and mats for stretching, body weight exercises, and maybe some resistance bands. But that’s about all I would do if I were to do it again. The shower is useful for bikers and lunchtime joggers.

Personally, I would go for a "power tower" type of setup(dips plus pullups) plus some mats, boxes and light weights to flesh out calisthenics routines. And if noise isn't a factor, I'd go for a Stepmania setup first over more traditional gym equipment - way broader appeal when it covers "video game", "exercise", "customizable jukebox" in one package.

I took pairs of 15 and 40 pound dumbbells into the office. People could come over for a change of pace, get the blood pumping, and leave. They weren't much of a distraction and didn't take up much space.

As if offices weren't noisy enough already.

Nothing says "building a homogenous culture that rejects diversity" quite like dedicating office space to the founder's hobby. It just screams "we want people like us" rather than "we want people who are awesome".