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Shopify is giving its employees $1k to furnish their work-from-home setups

businessinsider.com

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Re: Shopify is giving its employees $1k to furnish their work-from-home setups

#41

Post by AmericanChopper »

WalterBright wrote: post #28
40acres wrote: post #13

Damn this is awesome. I'm actually dreading working from home because I don't have a desk, keyboard, or anything of the sort.

Dining tables make the best desks. Lots of surface area, and plenty of room underneath for cables and boxen.

Finally getting around to getting a proper desk/chair/monitors really made me enjoy working from home a lot more. I don’t do it terribly often, but I really feel like it makes me more productive.

Also working with a remote colleague who doesn’t have good webcam/microphone/headphones is an absolute nightmare. I’m sure most of us have had colleagues that were frustratingly hard to communicate with remotely, and I’m sure most of us have avoided communicating with them because of it.

Re: Shopify is giving its employees $1k to furnish their work-from-home setups

#42

Post by eBombzor »

abhijat wrote: post #26
travisjungroth wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all the most important thing, but mechanical keyboards are going to be sold out so fast. There are tons of people who want them, but just don’t want to bug people in their office. WFH will change that. And it’s mostly small suppliers who won’t scale that fast. I imagine they use some Chinese parts, too.

Cherry MX browns might be an option, they are supposed to be quiet.

Still very clacky if you bottom them out which 99% of people do. Mechanical keyboards, unfortunately, do not have a place in the office space.

Re: Shopify is giving its employees $1k to furnish their work-from-home setups

#43

Post by AmericanChopper »

minhaz23 wrote: post #22
jackschultz wrote: post #12

I'm a remote worker and I've found it hard to say something positive about the virus, but having companies be more ok with remote workers and (hopefully) finding work still gets done can mean more remote possibilities overall. For me, that's a good thing.

I saw someone mention that whats to stop them from getting comfortable with remote workerse and then hiring cheaper labor from the next state over, inevitably taking advantage of skilled international yet cheap labor, remotely?

Two main things.

1) Timezones

1) Working from home takes a rather significant toll on teamwork and collaboration. Allowing people flexibility with their working hours/location is a no-brainer imo. But unless the role is specifically suited to it, you probably want people to spend most of their working hours in the office.

You get the same issues when you need people in geographically separated offices to work together. Obviously lots of companies do that already, but you still have to account for the inefficiencies it causes.

Re: Shopify is giving its employees $1k to furnish their work-from-home setups

#44

Post by grogenaut »

jldugger wrote: post #33
geocrasher wrote: post #5

You can buy a Herman Miller refurb on Amazon for $500. It's a great deal. You also need a second monitor, mechanical keyboard, webcam, headset. $1k is plenty for all of that

Sadly the monitors I have at work are 1k each =(

Why are you wasting money? You can get 5 27" monitors for the price of one of those and 3 or 4 43" 4ks for the price of both.

Re: Shopify is giving its employees $1k to furnish their work-from-home setups

#45

Post by SyneRyder »

abhijat wrote: post #24
omegabravo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a brand new one and it's fantastic. The used market for premium chairs in my remote part of the country is non-existent. I certainly would have bought a second hand one since they are so well built.

Same, I bought a herman miller chair new about 6 years ago, there is no used chair that I could find in India. But even when bought new, something that gets used so much everyday is worth the price.

+1 for this. I bought my Herman Miller Aeron new almost 20 years ago now and I still love it & use it every day. Immediately fixed some (very mild) back trouble I was having.

It probably won't fit the Shopify budget, it's super expensive. But having the same chair used in recording studios and is officially a work of art in the Museum of Modern Art [1] still makes me smile every day I go to sit down to work.

[1] https://www.moma.org/collection/works/3734

Re: Shopify is giving its employees $1k to furnish their work-from-home setups

#46

Post by mikekchar »

janesvilleseo wrote: post #15

I have worked from home for nearly a decade. I guess I don’t know what I’m missing but I don’t need 1k chair. I sit at my dinning room table on a 50 dollar chair from Ashley Furniture. No problems at all. True I don’t have a desktop and use a laptop so I can take it with me to onsite meetings or move to another location like my patio, couch, or garage. I’m not sure what I’d spend 1k on besides the machine I use to ge…

Same. I bought a $10 stool as we had just moved (without any furniture) and I didn't want to rush into buying an office chair because I knew how important it was to get a good one. 7 years later I was still using the stool (though I added a pillow). Last year I replaced it with a dining room chair (which I had bought when my parents came to visit -- we don't actually have chairs in our house and sit on the floor, Japanese style). It's nice to occasionally sit back and rest my back, but I'm not necessarily sure that it's a good idea.

The main thing that makes the biggest difference for me is that my keyboard and monitor are at the right height. Which is to say that I have an external keyboard (elbow height) and my laptop sits upon a series of cardboard boxes so that the top of the monitor is at the same height as my eyes. I also use a trackball at elbow height that I can reach without moving anything unduly.

Re: Shopify is giving its employees $1k to furnish their work-from-home setups

#47

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

yibg wrote: post #30
frenchie14 wrote: post #20

> Spotify did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment. They should probably ask Shopify to comment instead =P

I've noticed that BI's articles are full of typos. Not sure if they just rush things out or what, but some of them are so obvious if anyone did a round of proof reading they would've spotted it.

Proof reading doesn’t drive clicks.

Re: Shopify is giving its employees $1k to furnish their work-from-home setups

#48

Post by roel_v »

kamalhm wrote: post #38
abhijat wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, I bought a herman miller chair new about 6 years ago, there is no used chair that I could find in India. But even when bought new, something that gets used so much everyday is worth the price.

which herman miller did you bought? and what's the price there?

Not OP but I have a Mirra 2, I liked it better than the Aeron or Embody. I do really suggest you go someplace where you can try it out, also the various sizes. I bought refurb, don't remember price.

Re: Shopify is giving its employees $1k to furnish their work-from-home setups

#49

Post by manigandham »

yibg wrote: post #30
frenchie14 wrote: post #20

> Spotify did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment. They should probably ask Shopify to comment instead =P

I've noticed that BI's articles are full of typos. Not sure if they just rush things out or what, but some of them are so obvious if anyone did a round of proof reading they would've spotted it.

Most journalism is a commodity business now with writers publishing dozens of stories per day. There's no big pipeline of drafting, copyediting, fact checking and editorial review anymore.

Re: Shopify is giving its employees $1k to furnish their work-from-home setups

#50

Post by roel_v »

travisjungroth wrote: post #9
geocrasher wrote: post #5

You can buy a Herman Miller refurb on Amazon for $500. It's a great deal. You also need a second monitor, mechanical keyboard, webcam, headset. $1k is plenty for all of that

Not at all the most important thing, but mechanical keyboards are going to be sold out so fast. There are tons of people who want them, but just don’t want to bug people in their office. WFH will change that. And it’s mostly small suppliers who won’t scale that fast. I imagine they use some Chinese parts, too.

Just get browns, they're not so bad that they will bother anyone but the most fussy coworker. They're louder than laptop keyboards but as loud as some regular non-mech keyboards.
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