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Ask HN: what are the best non-cash employment benefits you've heard of?

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Ask HN: what are the best non-cash employment benefits you've heard of?

#1
What are some of the best non-cash employment benefits that you've heard of?

I'm interested in anything really interesting/fun/creative/worthwhile or even the boring stuff like life insurance. If it's of value to you as an employee then it's worth listing.

Re: Ask HN: what are the best non-cash employment benefits you've heard of?

#3
A friend of mine works for Maruti(Indian subsidiary of Suzuki Motors). They let you 'buy' a Maruti car and pay the loan installments for you over 4 years. You become eligible for a new car every 3 years or so. If you ever leave, you keep the car, but take over the payments.

After 4 years, the car is yours.

Re: Ask HN: what are the best non-cash employment benefits you've heard of?

#6
As a software developer, it means a lot to be working on a powerful machine with at least two large screens, my choice of OS if possible, and a generally nice desk. Most companies provide decent machines, but every place I've worked at required me to run their stock Windows XP (now 7) with Outlook.

The worst part of my day, every day, is managing windows (the application windows) in Windows (the OS). It's terrible. We build Java software that has a web front end. It really shouldn't matter which OS I use to develop (assuming I test in IE frequently), but I'm forced to use Windows. sigh A really really simple thing that many companies could do is to let their software developers have a bit more control over their environment.

Re: Ask HN: what are the best non-cash employment benefits you've heard of?

#8
One of my favorite non-cash benefits is the ability to use the shipping department for my outgoing packages. (I assume that everyone allows delivery at work.)

It's really nice to be able to take your outgoing packages to the shipping folks, give them some money, and have them take care of fedex/ups. It's much better than leaving work to go to fedex, ups, what have you.

Most large companies already have shipping departments, so the only additional fixed cost is the ability to take money from employees.

And, if fed ex/ups/etc have minimums, this helps meet them, so it may even reduce some company costs.

Re: Ask HN: what are the best non-cash employment benefits you've heard of?

#10
post #7

Free food is the best. It's actually a really strong incentive to get employees to stay at work longer, and who doesn't like free food? Now it is becoming more and more of a standard perk at startups which is a great thing!

I don't like free food.

In most cases, it isn't the food that I'd pick myself and it often leads to weight gain.

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