The price of dev happiness: How much can you spend on your office?

blog.fogcreek.com

9 points·buzzcut··3 comments

Joel's post on this subject have always bothered me. Why do your developers need two $1500 monitors and a $1000 chair just to write code? It just seems wasteful to me.

Also, wow, people pay for instant messaging (HipChat)? If you own any kind of server you can set up an XMPP server + your choice of web client in 30 minutes and it's free forever.

"The point this time is this: your office space and how you design it is an expression of your priorities as a company. It speaks to everyone who comes through the space, every day. Do not be shy about spending money on it."

And that of course extends to developers' tools. If/when I can get to a city where I can try out $1000 chairs I'm going to buy one (I declined to let my company by me an Aeron chair in 1997 because its not a good fit for my body, otherwise I'd already have one of those). I personally am satisfied with one high end 24" NEC monitor, but I wouldn't object to a larger one (two or three would be bad for my neck).

"just to write code"

Just how important is correct code to you and your ventures?

> Just how important is correct code to you and your ventures?

$1000 chairs don't have anything to do with the code. They might make developers %0.001 less likely to leave, but they're not going to do anything about code quality.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com