Nobody has said it yet?
Equity.
Ask HN: what are the best non-cash employment benefits you've heard of?
41–50 of 59 posts
Re: Ask HN: what are the best non-cash employment benefits you've heard of?
#42The best benefit I've ever heard of is Matasano's unlimited books budget. I have absolutely no clue why nobody else (AFAIK) does this. I'm sure it more than pays for itself just by making people more productive, never mind the value to the employees themselves.
Think what would happen if this became widespread. Book publishers start charging exorbitant prices because most of their buyers don't care. Employers push back and negotiate deals for themselves with publishers. Do you really want the book market to look like the US healthcare market?
Re: Ask HN: what are the best non-cash employment benefits you've heard of?
#43I spent 2 months last year working in China consulting for "the Facebook of China" (not actually Facebook). One thing that I loved about the office - every day at 6pm, caterers would come round with lunch boxes for everyone. Plus soup, plus drink, plus fruit. And every day it was different! (and delicious) Sure it's a far cry from Google's 5-star catering with 10 page menu or whatever, but I remember feeling super ha…
You ate at 6 pm and then went back to work? How long was the workday?
By 9pm most people were out the door apart from most of the department managers who usually stayed until 10pm-ish.
Coming from Japan, I felt this was fairly normal. Long working hours are part of the culture.
Re: Ask HN: what are the best non-cash employment benefits you've heard of?
#44- Free Drinks / Snacks / Lunches - 20% Time - Music/Stereo System in the office - Work from Home Days (where everyone does)
I'm not convinced by the music thing. We have music at our office but in practice it rapidly trends towards whatever offends the least people which is normally some kind of "easy listening" dreck. This doesn't seem to work for most people, given that a fair number of us still listen to our own music on ipods or whatever. I suppose it would be a nice little benefit if the music played was interesting and cool, but I'm…
mpd or other music servers might be useful for this.
Re: Ask HN: what are the best non-cash employment benefits you've heard of?
#45Where I live, a company-paid car lease is pretty much standard for every non-junior developer. It sounds decadent and it probably isn't the "best" non-cash benefit one can come up with, but it does bring a lot of value since paying for a car myself would be a significant portion of my income.
Re: Ask HN: what are the best non-cash employment benefits you've heard of?
#46Between my experiences at several jobs: -In office music -In office shower. Somewhere to store extra clothes and items -In office kitchen (and a good one at that) -Bike rack -Basic bike tools on-hand at office -Easily accessible set of basic hand and small power tools in office. Stuff happens. You need them. -Motorcycle parking -Chair budget. Get what you want/need to work best -I liked Pixar's office/cube budget, al…
That is one huge list :) Sometimes it felt little one sided. But most make sense for big firms.
I doubt any company could or should do it all. But picking a healthy list of those is useful. I got a huge portion of those between working for gamerDNA and then working at the betahouse coworking loft in Cambridge (but of course not all).
Each company should figure out what is right for their particular culture. Defining that culture in a meaningful way can be rather difficult.
Re: Ask HN: what are the best non-cash employment benefits you've heard of?
#47I am currently in the process of negotiating an employee agreement that limits IP claims to stuff reasonably related to the official line of business, rather than the more normal "everything you think about until you leave belongs to us".
Something that works well here is "everything you think about until you leave belongs to us" PLUS "company will give written permission for you to own IP of any personal/open source project that is not work related, permission will not be unreasonably withheld"
Re: Ask HN: what are the best non-cash employment benefits you've heard of?
#48Nap room. Seriously. I'm often dragging a bit by 3-4PM, between general tiredness and food coma from lunch. I'd love to be able to crash out for an hour or two, and come back to what I'm doing refreshed.
I actually find the the post-lunch coma to be really distracting and wonder if companies could benefit trying to feed their employees twice a day with a light late breakfast and then later light lunch.
Pivotal labs does this by offering everyone free catered breakfast at the start of the day. As I understand it, the motivation was to synchronize everyone's lunch hunger so half of a pair-programming team wasn't hungry earlier because they hadn't eaten lunch but their pair had. It also served to mitigate mid-afternoon food-coma somewhat.
Re: Ask HN: what are the best non-cash employment benefits you've heard of?
#49Nobody has said it yet? Equity.
If I could get everything else I wanted, I could see giving up equity, especially the amounts common at a lot of companies. Spend 4 years there then be a founder yourself.
Re: Ask HN: what are the best non-cash employment benefits you've heard of?
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
You ate at 6 pm and then went back to work? How long was the workday?
By 9pm most people were out the door apart from most of the department managers who usually stayed until 10pm-ish. Coming from Japan, I felt this was fairly normal. Long working hours are part of the culture.
Oh wow, you worked 13-14 hours a day? Jesus, when did you live?