Ask HN: What job perks appeal to you? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What job perks appeal to you?

15 pointsahmetsulek47 comments

My friend is starting an agency and wants to know what appeals to developers?

Important to me:

- Full Remote or at least 3 days per week remote (my commute sucks)

- Flexibility (Basically, I just want to be able to make it to doctor appointments without having to waste vacation days. I also like flexible start times so I can workout in the AM.)

- Paid vacation days set in policy (I will assume "unlimited" means none.)

- Ability to learn marketable job skills (I've been trapped in a position for the last 5 years that has me basically only know our proprietary software. That's probably partly my fault for not doing enough side work. Either way I've been applying for positions for probably 3 years now and only got one reasonable offer in which I declined after talking to some employees about the company culture.)

- Sane working hours (Every week can't be "crunch time". If you expect 60+ hours each week from your exempt employees something is wrong.)

- Salary (but free time is much more important to me at this point)

- Paid overtime (one could wish)

- Ability to choose my hardware and an upgrade cycle that allows me to get a new machine before 5 years.

> Paid vacation days set in policy (I will assume "unlimited" means none.)

That's probably a good assumption. In the future, I'll ask for the mean and median vacation days per employee for the previous year if that's listed as a perk.

It's totally possible that there are companies out there with "unlimited" vacation that would be OK with you taking a month off. However, in my experience, even when you have an assigned number of vacation days there is still pressure to not use them. I can only see unlimited as "don't take more than this person". My boss had told me a few times that he takes vacation days and works on them as if to hint I should be doing the same.

So my thinking of "unlimited" vacation days is in the same way ISPs offer "unlimited" bandwidth :)

I'm not on the "unlimited vacation" system, but I've heard that companies like this because you can still stop employees from taking any more days than they did before (by guilt trips or just not approving days off), and if someone quits they don't have to pay out unused accrued vacation time.

So if you ever quit a job with "unlimited vacation," be sure you've taken more vacation than you would have accrued on a traditional system? Otherwise they're screwing everybody and getting away with it.

On that same note you should always take "personal days", "flex days", "personal choice holidays" before ever taking a vacation day. Most companies will not pay you for those days if you leave so use them before vacation days.

> Paid vacation days set in policy (I will assume "unlimited" means none.)

I liked the way my current employer dealt with this. When I was coming on, they mentioned that they had an unlimited vacation policy for exempt employees, but that non-exempt employees got 4 weeks a year as a benchmark to consider. The result is that a lot of people in our group seem to take vacations roughly as if they got 4 weeks of vacation a year but don't have to count it or worry about running over a bit. It also helps that there's a culture of actually taking substantive vacation and not working insane hours and such.

Everyone should get an explicit amount in their contract and they should be paid out if they leave / are fired with unused days. "Unlimited" is total nonsense.

And if companies absolutely insist on "unlimited" and want to show that they mean it, then a minimum should also be in there.

For example: "unlimited" but minimum 3 weeks a year.

I know people will moan about being "forced" to take time off but frankly it is good for you, and I'm sure people can find a way to keep busy if they really try.

Flexible working hours and remote work option.

Probably the most important thing, which isn't really a perk, is having a good boss who doesn't micromanage or try to get you to work more hours than you're comfortable with.

Remote, remote, remote. My job is remote. I own a house in upstate New York, I will not work for a company that expects me to sell it and move to them in $BIG_CITY.

Also the thing I think is the dumbest is when a company won't shell out a couple thousand for decent hardware for the engineers. Like, you want us to be productive, right?

In order (which is actually very hard to find):

  - Mission which truly helps people and focuses on the end-user and not simply the bottom line
  - Working with extremely smart/talented people, who don't take themselves too seriously
  - Robust development practices, to the point you can feel proud of your work and allowed to be the best in your field
  - Treats employees as adults and also truly value their work/life balance (i.e. happy employees are good employees)
  - Money

I'd take ~40k less a year (e.g. 85k vs 125k) if it meant being truly happy in my career with a company that meets the items on that list.

My list is exactly the same. If you work at a place like this, please share :)

No one has yet mentioned HN's favorite, private offices.

Work from home trumps private offices if you have the space. You get to fully customize your work environment, natural light, ergonomic setup, and no commute (although maybe I'd do a 20 minute run as a fake commute to create a transition between working day and free time)

I just get up at six eat breakfast and hit the gym. So much better than sitting in traffic for 2 hours.

Flexible hours, especially start times. Other than that, market rate salary. I really couldn't care less about anything else. Keep the ping pong table - just stay off my ass about showing up at 9AM every day.

(This assumes standard health/dental/vision coverage and casual dress code, which should be prerequisites at this point)

Important to me (now):

    - Remote working / short commute with private office
    - Functional Programming
    - Enough $
    - Smart, enthusiastic, pleasant, professional coworkers.
    - Additional vacation (unpaid if need be) is available.
    - Should get me to the next level of my career

Important things:

-- Modern development practices.

-- Good hardware, paid up.

-- Health insurance.

-- Short commute or remote work.

-- Significant equity or revenue/profit sharing.

-- Autonomy to solve problems.

If I had my own company, the policies would be like this:

- Flexibility to work the hours around your peak creativity.

- Ability to remote work whenever you want.

- A quiet office!

- Freedom to work in all layers of the stack. I personally like to involve myself in design, frontend, backend and devops, and welcome the idea of generalists.

- Market rate salary or above.

- Respect for developer judgement when it comes to technical issues. Including not committing to deadlines or features without discussion and agreement with the developers concerned.

There have been a lot of projects I've seen crash and burn, with all the associated drama, based on commitments made without any understanding of the work involved. It's not fun for anyone.

- The option for privacy. No, a glass-walled office doesn't count.

Sometimes I need somewhere quiet to think. Or take a nap. Or read a book. Sometimes I just need to get away from pressure somewhere and have a quiet cuppa. I'm not paid to type, I'm paid to think - that's not best done in a factory-floor type setting.

Hourly pay. Some weeks I want to work 20 hours. Some I would be willing to do 50. Others, I might want to take off. Hourly is the only way to be fair to you and fair to me.

No exclusivity. I'll sign an NDA, but you don't own me. I may want to do other things from time to time.

At least 75% remote. Tech work doesn't need physical presence. Online communication is more efficient and has the bonus of auditability. Commuting wastes time and resources.

TLDR: spec and hire independent contractors.

- Location/remote.

- Work/life.

The two are very closely related as overall quality of life is effected by both. Life is too short to:

- Overspend it at work

- Overspend it on a commute

- Delay it due to cost of living (ie: delay having a family)

100% remote work option and flexible schedule

Remote work friendly (up to 100%) and reasonable working hours (read: full time actually = 40 hrs/wk).

full remote, flextime.

salary, medical dental, incentive pay -> bonus / stock options / etc.

Important to embrace work-life balance, and not expect people to go above and beyond working on nights/weekends (though imo, it should be allowed - if the employee prefers working that way, etc..).

Flexibility on work hours and the ability to work from home occasionally. Being able to flex around doctors appointments, errands that can only be done during normal business hours, etc makes life a lot less complicated.

Mission - either where we directly effect the lives of people.

Working with a talented and motivated group of people

Salary - competitive salary based on location etc

Paid vacation time and an understanding that people do have lives outside of work

Out of 46 comments the word "remote" was mentioned 17 times. That is interesting to me. Especially when a majority of positions are obviously not offering a remote option.

Laissez-faire approach to management. Being micromanaged causes too many distractions which leads to decreased productivity.

Management that is grounded in reality.

Coworkers whose personalities are not, shall we say, in need of massive debugging.

A shot at retiring, eventually.

Bonuses. Let me spend the money the way I like.

Yeah but they get taxed so much. I think I'd rather have it in my base salary. I'm might be kind of jaded too. In my past jobs were sold to me as if the bonus was a guaranteed part of the salary. Then you would rarely get anything or if they did pay out a bonus it would be much less than 100%.

At least in the US, bonuses are taxed the same as salary. It's just the withholding that is higher, but that only makes a difference until you file a tax return.

Yeah I was going to say that I'm not certain it's taxed more but it just seems like it is because I always end up with something like 50% of what the actual bonus was. Also healthcare and things are still deducted from the bonuses I've seen which I'm not sure is normal.

It just feels higher because you're seeing your marginal tax rate instead of average tax rate. If you get a raise and look at the paycheck before and after the raise, the difference in net pay vs gross pay will be similar to what you see with your bonuses. As the other commenter said, it doesn't change your total tax bill at the end of the year.

I don't know standard practices, but my last bonus check at federal income tax, social security, federal medicare, and state income tax deductions, but no deductions for insurance or anything (and I wouldn't expect to see those.) I do have deductions for my 401(k) and such, but that's still my money, just going to a different account.

Define "much less than 100%" Even for software management positions, I don't think I've ever seen a place that gives more than a 25% bonus and that would be considered very high.

When I say much less than 100% I mean 100% of the amount that the bonus is stated to be. For example if my bonus was 8% of my salary then the most I've ever actually seen paid out was 2-4% based on the company not performing as well as the plan calls for.

Some dental coverage that doesn't suck.

Dental insurance is one of the worst insurance deals going (partially because the market isn't as big and diversified as other types of health insurance). For nearly anyone 17-60, you'd rather have the equivalent cash than the dental insurance.

Tell me about it. I just had a crown put in and it cost 775 out of pocket!

Paid overtime.

1- Remote

2- No Strict TimeZOne/Working Hours.

Interesting work.

Good salary.

As few meetings as possible.

A job!

Nothing beats cash.

Remote.

Flexibility.

These three, but for me I'd put cash on equal footing with the other two. I personally value my freedom over cash once I'm making enough to feed my family's needs.

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