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Comment by aditya | Hacker News Reader

The average Sequoia startup raises a lot of money, so it makes sense for them to sound all kinds of alarms, if you started out being frugal and efficient you're already trying to survive. If you're a mega startup with Aerons, yeah okay.

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Don't pick on Aerons. My back has been thanking me every day since I acquired an Aeron from the Arthur Anderson bankruptcy auction many years ago. Given how long these things last, and how little they cost relative to the cost of employee retention, even new, I think it's a no-brainer. Good chairs are mandatory.

Well, I missed out on Aerons the first time through. Maybe I'll find some cheap ones in half a year or so. :p

There is a whole economy surrounding Aerons. You can buy them used, at any time, for about $750-$800. That's not the bargain that they were during the dotcom bust (I bought mine for $365 plus auctioneers fees), but it's $350-$500 off of new retail, and well worth it. Steelcase leap chairs aint half bad either, and can be had slightly cheaper, though there seem to be a lot less of them on the market. Interestingly, I also bought a Keilhauer chair at the same auction where I bought the Aeron--it was $35 plus auctioneers fees, and it's a $900 chair new (and a very fine chair in its own right)...quality chairs that aren't Aerons are also available. I definitely don't suggest sitting in a crappy chair while you wait around to save $200 or $300. I wouldn't, anyway, and when we start hiring, we certainly won't make people sit in crappy chairs.

I'll have to try one of those someday.

I've been sitting on what looks like a cheap Aeron knockoff (~CAD$250 - http://www.staples.ca/ENG/Catalog/cat_sku.asp?CatIds=88,91,9...) for about 5 years now, and I'm very satisfied with it - especially compared to other chairs I've tried. I'm really curious if the Aeron is actually worth a 5x price tag compared to a chair I'm already happy with.

Enter Canadian Postal Code

Can I get a link to that I can use in the US?

Edit: Or a Canadian Postal Code...

Argh. I don't know why e-commerce sites insist on doing that.

Here's the postal code for one of their own stores: M1H1A9.

I've tried finding a non-annoying link, but Google results for that chair's name show a slightly different picture (maybe a newer model).

A new IKEA Markus chair for $200 (less in Europe) is more than fit for this. I'm sure there are other similar ones. Maybe not fancy looking but its mesh and back support are the best I've used (including Aerons.) Spending over 200 for a chair is perception only, IMHO. Or being pretentious.

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00103102

I'd be willing to try an IKEA chair. When we start hiring full-time people, I'll give my Aeron to the first hire, and sit in a Markus myself to see if it's up to snuff--if it is, that's wonderful. I'd love to save $600 per chair over used Aerons.

But, frankly, I'm suspicious. IKEA furniture is not exactly known for quality or longevity (though its quality is often equal to furniture costing several times more...a lot of furniture, even expensive furniture, is just made really horribly these days--I was astounded to note that relatively expensive places like Ethan Allen and Restoration Hardware are now selling MDF garbage just like Walmart and Target...people are often dumb enough to buy based on brand without any knowledge of what they're buying).

How long have you been sitting in this chair? I've got six or seven years of ass time in my Aeron, and it sits exactly the same as when I bought it (the foam lumbar support dingus did just give up the ghost a few weeks ago, so it's slightly the worse for wear--but, just like parts in a high quality electronic device, it's a replaceable component, and I always wanted the upgraded adjustable Y-shaped lumbar thing, anyway, so it's a mixed blessing...and, many people remove that part and sit in the chair with no additional lumbar support, anyway, so the chair is still perfectly functional and comfortable).

This is very true. I bought a cheap office chair from a box retailer a year ago and completely regret it. Sitting and trying to do work becomes work in of it self. In fact, it is painful. A chair is one of those programmer's tools that you should spend a little money on (keyboards being another example).

Yeah, I lived through several Office Max/Office Depot/Walmart chairs. They're kinda like inkjet printers...they wear out so fast, and work so poorly, that when you finally break down and buy a laser printer (or good quality chair), you look back and think, "What kind of idiot must I be to keep going back and buying the same crappy thing over and over and expecting it to be any different?" Sure, I'd buy different brands and models every time, just like with chairs, but in the end the level of quality at that end of the market for those particular goods just isn't worth buying at any price. I've now had the same chair and the same color laser printer for many years, and several times the lifespan of a cheap office chair or an inkjet printer. Both have provided fantastic value, and are still working great, and I expect to get another several years out of both of them. I just wish I'd learned that lesson a little earlier in life.

And, I agree on keyboards, though the longevity of even good keyboards is not quite comparable. But, when I found a keyboard I liked a few years ago (an IBM small form-factor keyboard, where escape, function row and the number pad are all closer to home), I bought two of them--I'm still using the first, and the second is ready to step in at the first signs of breakage in the first.

I meant more like Maltron ergonomic keyboards: http://www.maltron.com/

I don't buy into none of them fruity keyboards. I might start considering options like that, if I experienced any pains in my hands, wrists, or arms. But, once I switched to a good chair, I've never had any keyboard related pains (while I'd experienced tons of problems before that, and experimented with split keyboard layouts to no avail...one thing that did help, was switching to a tiled window manager and almost completely killing the mouse from my workflow). I guess everybody is different, but I'm perfectly content with a good quality traditional keyboard (though a shorter reach to escape is a nice feature).

I've never tried any of them either but have met some devout followers: http://infohost.nmt.edu/~shipman/ergo/kinesis.html

I use one of these: http://keyovation.com/ at work. It's substantially cheeper than the Maltron, but missing a few bits, such as a separate numeric keypad, and I'd really like to get control, alt and shift keys in the gap between the two halves.

I had one at the place I worked in '97-'98, and frankly I didn't find it all that comfortable.

Same here. I've had one...yes it's a good chair, but I don't understand the price difference between my chair and the aeron.

Our chairs were 30 dollars each and we got them used, Saved 10s of thousands.

I use an Aeron at home... While I do think they're overpriced in comparative terms, they are better than a standard $100 chair.

That being said, I don't use an Aeron at the office, and I don't find myself pining for my chair at home all day long.

Sitting for very long periods becomes uncomfortable because you're not supposed to sit for long periods. The human body just isn't built for it. Get up and walk around the block. Buying a chair that encourages you to stay seated is the wrong solution.

Ok, but if your body wasn't built to do something and you're still going to do it anyway, you might as well use any resources you can afford to ease your pain.

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