Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope you understand you’re very alone In a crowd of sane people if you want to say that your engineers are happy in a $300 chair. A steel case or Herman miller is tablestakes for a decent software shop and if you’re too ignorant or miserly to see it then it’s probably not a great place to work at. A good chair makes a huge difference for ones quality of life. Please don’t skimp on it.
I'm not saying Herman Millers are a scam, I'm saying that we purchase chairs for close to 20k employees, and great chairs do exist for $2-300. And I get it, I buy for quality, too. But no one is passing up offers over the faux pas of being presented with an inferior chair.
And yeah good mesh back chairs come in at about $300 wholesale.
I find often that the ones available retail are not as good as the ones my big-ass corporation buys though, because furniture has a huge retail markup.