Ask HN: What do you love about your office?

As others have also said, nice chairs and monitors are really, really cheap relative to the cost of employees and office space. Get Aerons or Embodies (I'm now using an Embody), which go for about $900 and $1200, respectively. Read this: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDeveloper... . Note this excerpt, which is long but posted for good reason:

Let me, for a moment, talk about the famous Aeron chair, made by Herman Miller. They cost about $900. This is about $800 more than a cheap office chair from OfficeDepot or Staples.

They are much more comfortable than cheap chairs. If you get the right size and adjust it properly, most people can sit in them all day long without feeling uncomfortable. The back and seat are made out of a kind of mesh that lets air flow so you don’t get sweaty. The ergonomics, especially of the newer models with lumbar support, are excellent.

They last longer than cheap chairs. We’ve been in business for six years and every Aeron is literally in mint condition: I challenge anyone to see the difference between the chairs we bought in 2000 and the chairs we bought three months ago. They easily last for ten years. The cheap chairs literally start falling apart after a matter of months. You’ll need at least four $100 chairs to last as long as an Aeron.

So the bottom line is that an Aeron only really costs $500 more over ten years, or $50 a year. One dollar per week per programmer.

A nice roll of toilet paper runs about a buck. Your programmers are probably using about one roll a week, each.

So upgrading them to an Aeron chair literally costs the same amount as you’re spending on their toilet paper, and I assure you that if you tried to bring up toilet paper in the budget committee you would be sternly told not to mess around, there were important things to discuss.

The Aeron chair has, sadly, been tarnished with a reputation of being extravagant, especially for startups. It somehow came to stand for the symbol of all the VC money that was wasted in the dotcom boom, which is a shame, because it’s not very expensive when you consider how long it lasts; indeed when you think of the eight hours a day you spend sitting in it, even the top of the line model, with the lumbar support and the friggin’ tailfins is so dang cheap you practically make money by buying them.

If you don't need standing desks, get Maxxon Series 1000 desks: http://www.maxonfurniture.com/products/series1000.aspx. They're very durable, sturdy, and don't wiggle. Get Humanscale keyboard trays and dual 24" monitors.

All this stuff will together cost about $3k - $4K per person. But it will last a very long time and make for a substantially better experience, which will a) make it easier to recruit and retain good people and b) make those people like working for you better. In addition, the people you're hiring will probably make at least 30K / year, probably more, and that's not counting benefits and office space. As a percentage of the cost of an employee, the stuff is actually pretty small, but it's visible, so a lot of people think they should skimp on it. You know who doesn't? Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and so forth, because they've realized it's possible to penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Don't get caught up in the stuff -- you don't need the stuff to succeed, and neither does any startup. But if you're thinking about it, do it right.

My family's consulting business operates out of a house, and we use the equipment described here: http://blog.seliger.com/2008/06/15/tools-of-the-trade%E2%80%... , and I usually work at a desk at my place: http://jseliger.com/2010/05/02/writing-space-2010 (picture taken via HN request, too!).

If I had two requests: private bathroom and private kitchen area.

* The reason I go into the office, rather than work from home, is the people there.

* I feel a thousand times better at the end of the day if I can see natural light.

* Running the OS/editor I want to is important.