One of the perks that more companies should start providing are incentives to workout. Providing a gym or subsidizing a gym membership for an employee will not only benefit the employee's health, but with a healthier employee there is less of a need for sick days. The employee can concentrate their paid time off on vacation. When the employee is feeling good about themselves, the quality of work and their attitude might improve as well.
One of the best companies I worked for was just around the corner from a Holmes Place (upmarket chain of gyms), they got us all memberships and we could literally hold meetings in the sauna or jacuzzi.
Only place I've ever worked where everyone had seen everyone else naked...
After you've met a salary/benefit baseline, the most important thing to recruiting good talent is the work. Often, a good employee will take a fair salary for really interesting work over a great salary for boring work. I've talked with people willing to even take a pay cut to get out of a boring job.
IMO an employer should (a) pay employees fairly and (b) treat them well, give them enjoyable work, etc. And then (c) share the company's profits, if there are any (or when they come). I think this is more important than having an impressive slate of benefits.
Free Lunch?
It can be productivity booster too, since your staff don't have to spend an ~hour walking, hunting for a good restaurant, waiting for food, eating said food, and walking back when the food is just right there.
This can be more of a personal preference type of thing.
I'd agree with all this, to the letter, and I'd add one, because aside from a signing bonus, it's relatively cheap:
Moving assistance, both in the financial sense, and in terms of connecting people with necessary services and utilities. This is especially salient in a place like New York where life is not as "convenient" as one might expect it to be.
I moved from Boston to SF, to my current job, and I was offerend 5k for the relocation expenses, which was really useful, as when you are in the early 20s, even 5k is a luxury. I did throw away my furniture in Cambridge, shipped my car ( about 1.2k) and moved in here. That 5k helped in buying some new furniture, and downpayment for first/security for a rental, and of course the plane ticked and shipping of some boxes with my belongings.
My work, also provided me with a month and a half of free (temp) housing, until I found my own place (which was a real pain in SF). They also provided me with a rental car, until my car was shipped from the east coast.
Without all this help, I would have thought twice about moving in the Bay area. While 5k relocation assistance might be good enough for a young single person, it probably wont be for somebody with a family.
Great hackers don't have hard time finding jobs, so if you really want to attract the best, be willing to provide the above.
Also, I am not sure how is the situation in NYC, but I think some of the best programmers are in the SF Bay area, and few in Cambridge/Boston area.
But at the end of the day, if your idea is not apealing to people, it would be hard to attract them on money/perks basis.
We're in NYC and Chicago, and NYC lost an employee to the Chicago office because finding an apartment was such a nightmare. So, there's that to deal with.
If you can afford to pay a market salary, and you expect to relo people, you can also afford to rent a mid-range apartment in Brooklyn to house them in until they find a place.
Maybe help finding a place? I've heard horror stories, and mainly its due to ignorance of the market. So perhaps have a friendly real estate agent available?
New York real estate agents are utterly terrible. Once you have them show you more than 8-10 apartments, they stop returning your calls, because they'd prefer not having to work for their absurd commissions.
Last time I used one in a move, I ended up spending $2600 for an introduction. This was to one person, for an hour and a half of work at most.
The movers, of whom there were 4, charged me $320 for three hours of backbreaking, difficult labor. They did excellent work. They were thrilled when I added an extra $60.
$5-10k seems to be the standard for a signing bonus, but I'd err closer to the $10k for New York. As much as I think NYC realtors are a useless, overpaid class of people, it's difficult to attack the NY market without one, and they are egregiously expensive: 8.3-20% of first-year rent, usually 15.
Provide information on neighborhoods, commute, safety, and expected rent. Help them find roommates if you know people who are moving into NYC at the same time. Once they've found apartments, set them up with utilities.
Most companies that are successful at bringing people into New York do so through internship programs. New York is much less intimidating to a college student looking through internships, who doesn't have a problem with finding short-term sublets and roommates online, than to an adult seeking full-time work.
In my first apartment, I lived with a couple. I was closer to the girl, although I had absolutely no romantic interest in her. (I had a girlfriend at the time and was madly in love.) The couple broke up; the guy was angry at me and, drunk, he attempted to physically attack me. Bad end, because I liked both of them and wish we could've stayed in contact. I packed up and bolted pretty quickly, taking a 1:30 am cab ride to... the office.
For a month and a half, I was living at work. This was a regular office space-- not a home office. I had a sleeping bag rolled out on the floor and used the gym shower in the morning. This was an understaffed, workaholic company, and I had to spend 6-11pm in a coffee shop to get away from "home". When my then-girlfriend visited me in the city, I had to check into a hotel. Being a cheapskate, I lined up a one-star out in Queens.
After that, I found a decent roommate and moved in with him. The only quirk in the arrangement was that he and I had diametrically opposite approaches to the Quality/Quantity trade-off, so I met (or at least heard) a lot of strange people.
Fun all around. New York can be worth putting up with all this, but it can be a bit much to bear.
I often cook the troops quality, gourmet food, give them cool trips and the chance to put up crazy installation art, and throw many person dinner parties (with outsiders, too).
If I had several team members with kids, I'd probably look in to just contracting someone directly off Craigslist, in which case 100% of the money goes to the person caring for your kids.
