
Why Quit?  Because the other company has bigger monitors. - sefk
http://sef.kloninger.com/2012/05/engineering-culture-litmus-tests/
======
jroseattle
For the engineers I've hired onto my team, I insist they be provided the very
things that I want as an engineer:

    
    
      - Two big monitors
      - New dev machine/laptop, running latest bits
      - A top-of-the-line chair
      - Some natural light (not to be confused with *natty light*)
    

These are the non-negotiable items, and having taken a few senior mgmt
positions, it's now something I state upfront: this is how we roll, no
exceptions.

There's a second tier, depending on the environment: personal whiteboards.
This is a function of the physical space, obviously; but anytime someone has a
brilliant idea, I don't want them waving hands in front of me, I want expo
markers flying around.

Aside from standard company stuff, that's it. And it's across the board --
everyone gets this. Everyone is valued, because your time is valued. I expect
a lot from my team, and don't want anything petty getting in the way --
especially a few pieces of hardware and furniture that are negligible compared
to the cost of the engineer.

It might not be everything in the world, but it sure seems to keep everyone
happy because they are seriously productive.

~~~
gnarizard
Natural light can't be emphasized enough. I just moved to a window-less
fluorescent fishbowl shared by three analysts/developers, and I've never had
so many headaches.

~~~
rdl
I hate natural light and windows; give me a windowless room where I can set
the temperature, light level, etc. exactly, independent of time of day.

The first thing after "private offices for anyone who wants them" is "24x7
HVAC adjustable as close to individually as possible"; I have a shared office
in an invite-only coworking space which I largely don't use because the HVAC
shuts off at 6pm and is on again at 9am, with huge windows -- it's barely ok
in the evenings/mornings during the week, but unusable on weekends.

------
steve8918
Valuing an employee's time is definitely something that should be considered.

But even taken a few steps further than "I need another monitor to increase
productivity", and you're floating dangerously close to self-entitlement, and
simple, pathetic whining.

At Yahoo, I distinctly remember a thread on devel-random where one employee,
in a single post, complained about things like how ugly the color scheme of
the walls were, the fact that buildings in Mercado had too many floors, so
when he left work, he has to stop at all the floors, and that the parking lot
had flies that would get stuck in his hair gel. He called Yahoo the "worst
place in the world to work at" because of this. It was incredibly sickening
how ridiculous the email was.

The employer-employee relationship is a balance. If it swings too far in one
direction where the employees get their ass kissed every day, then you breed
self-entitled spoiled brats that are intolerable to work with. If it swings
too far towards the employer, you get a dictatorship. I've worked in both
environments, and neither of them are any good.

But to quit because you think that monitors are a litmus test about the
engineering culture is ridiculous and is more of a reflection on you than the
engineering culture. If you have a problem, solve it like an adult. It sounds
like the employee didn't even mention it to his boss until he left. (It also
sounds like the boss didn't bother asking the employee at their 1:1's about
what they thought needed changing, or maybe he was just unapproachable.) Maybe
it was just an oversight, maybe they didn't have the money, who knows. Life in
general is a lot easier if you're flexible and less of a prima donna and go
with the flow. To keep quibbling over the minutiae and extrapolate that to
mean something more than it is, to me, is more whining than anything else.

~~~
knewter
> It also sounds like the boss didn't bother asking the employee at their
> 1:1's about what they thought needed changing, or maybe he was just
> unapproachable.

I'm an owner / CTO of a consultancy, and this point always frustrates me. We
are only 12 or so employees, and we're all very comfortable with one another
(we'll have game nights at the office, watch the GSL, etc). Still, when me and
my partner have a 1:1 or talk to the employees, about 80% of them _will not_
tell us their concerns or things they need.

It's a huge problem for us - we are very interested in spending our money on
benefits, etc. that people care about, rather than just guessing, but it's
virtually impossible to do this. Story time:

We had a designer leave recently (I <3'd him, awesome guy) to go work
somewhere else, and a huge part of his decision, in the exit interview, was
about a difference in health insurance between the two places. We had met with
him 2 months prior EXPLICITLY to ask him (and other employees) if they wanted
us to pursue any changes to health insurance, and were universally told that
our existing benefits in that regard were fine.

We have since modified our health insurance to be just fantastically good,
because apparently this was a concern (and we've had to forego a few other
things in order to be able to afford it). But the point is, this is a guy that
I was friends with, and he just would not tell me what weight to give the
health insurance benefit vector.

It's maddening because I'm a very data-driven guy, and for whatever reason I
can't get good data on employee concerns to save my life. Does anyone have any
pointers here?

~~~
philbarr
Coming from the UK, I'm always amazed at how important health insurance is in
the US, and what a broad range of quality of healthcare there is. Our company
provide a free, private healthcare (BUPA), but I've never felt the need to use
it.

Recently, I had surgery for an ACL tear. Unfortunately, for some reason, it
later went septic. The day the consultant found it was septic he rushed me
into surgery that afternoon and I spent the next 6 nights on IV antibiotics,
followed by a course of oral antibiotics. At no point did I have to worry
about how much all this cost - and I didn't ring BUPA just because I couldn't
be bothered and it was all perfectly satisfactory care.

When I was a kid I had extremely bad asthma. A new respirator type device had
just been invented and I was one of the first in the North West to have one.
These things cost thousands of pounds at the time and there's no way my
parents would have been able to afford it, but they got it loaned to them
completely free. It quite possibly saved my life.

I used to think how lucky I was that I wasn't born in some third world country
where I would probably not have survived, but recently I've started to be glad
I wasn't born in the US.

You guys really need to sort this out.

~~~
RandallBrown
All that would likely have happened in the US also. Most people have health
insurance. The ones who don't still get medical care, it just costs them
money. If they don't have the money, they can settle with the hospital on a
payment plan they can afford. It's definitely not perfect, but it's not as bad
as it seems at first glance. I'll see posts about people's 30,000 dollar
hospital bill, but in reality they'll never end up paying that much.

~~~
draz
I work for one of the top 10 hospitals in the United States. Our health
insurance, ironically, isn't all that great. Co-pays are relatively high,
certain things not covered, etc. So it got me thinking about health insurance
and how it affects us (US residents), in comparison to our European
counterparts.

One may argue that Europe went too far with their "social" expenses (hence,
the current financial meltdown). Possibly. However, their view of healthcare
(education, and other items) as a BASIC human right is one I strongly believe
in. Healthcare should NOT be a luxury item. Yet, it is treated as such in the
US. Almost exactly a year ago, I had a bike accident right off the Golden Gate
Bridge. For 10 minutes I was limping my way to Sausalito until I happened to
run into a police officer who thought I should be picked up by an ambulance to
taken to the hospital (although they suspected that I had a concussion, broke
my arm and shoulder, I came out with just scratches). I HAVE insurance, but
for weeks after this injury, I was opening my mailbox at home, expecting a
$20K bill (just the 15 minute ambulance ride was $2000). I was absolutely
terrified. Imagine... and I _HAVE_ insurance. Luckily, I ended up paying just
a few co-pays, and the issue was resolved.

One of the benefits of a great employer in the US (like you have -- Microsoft,
for example) is "Health insurance, Dental covered" etc. That's how they post
it in job boards. Shouldn't health insurance be a given??

To your argument that things are settled through loans, etc: I am utterly
against it. Obviously, statistics show that these things don't work. The
hospital I work for serves an under-served population. People suffering from
chronic diseases and who should be seeing a doctor on a regular basis do not.
Why? Cost. They end up showing up in the ER with a MAJOR issue months later.
Their condition is much more complicated to treat, and significantly costlier.
So, we "saved" on a silly, cheap follow-up, but ended up spending a huge
amount later. And guess what? These patients can't pay their bill anyhow, so
we have to write the expense off.

I am familiar with quite a few people who would have loved to change their
jobs, or even start their own business, but are too worried about losing their
health insurance benefits. Is that the right way to go for the US? Probably
not.

[edited: put it initially under the wrong parent. text left as is]

~~~
icandoitbetter
> One may argue that Europe went too far with their "social" expenses (hence,
> the current financial meltdown)

One may argue that if she has no understanding of the European financial
meltdown, and just wants to find evidence for the failure of the welfare state
where there is none. The crisis happened primarily because of the Spanish real
estate crisis, and it became exacerbated because of (1) structural flaws in
the monetary union and (2) imposition of rapid austerity.

As for the rest, I agree.

~~~
draz
> One may argue that if she has no understanding of the European financial
> meltdown, and just wants to find evidence for the failure of the welfare
> state where there is none

There there. Relax. I was not arguing that the social measures were the only
cause of the financial meltdown. They are, probably, a contributing factor.
You brought up Spain, which in particular, I am quite familiar with due to
personal relations with a Spanish. Real estate was the major factor (as it was
in the US), that is true. However, when Spanish citizens tell me they show up
at the ER for a sore throat because the ER is closer to work/fit their
schedule/whatever instead of setting an appointment with a doctor, I think
that's a big "social" expense that could and should be avoided. Why do they do
that? Because it's free! So who cares, right? There's nothing wrong with
providing free health insurance (and I'm a big advocate for it), but showing
up to the ER without a reason should be penalized.

Also, when I hear that people who have no desire to work (because they're
homemakers, for example) show up at the unemployment office simply to collect
unemployment or just to be eligible to "fun" courses (to fill up their days),
that's a social expense (in Spain, if you're unemployed, even for an extended
period of time, the government will pay for all kinds of courses, be it
knitting, accounting, or something else). Those are expenses that affect a
country's well-being. I AM all for these things. But that's what I meant that
they may have gone too far.

------
crazygringo
The monitors, I totally understand and agree with. That's about actual
productivity.

But choosing your own e-mail address? There must be a thousand little details
like that in my life, every day, that I have no control over, like the color
of my desk, or the sound of a coworker's voice. By all means, try to find a
workplace that suits you the best, but if a seemingly tiny detail like that
bothers you so much, unless company policy turns your e-mail address into
something offensive, I can't help but feel you're going to have a hard time
being happy anywhere.

Am I the only one who's literally never thought about their corporate e-mail
address form before?

~~~
raldi
May I ask how many letters there are in your last name? Mine has nine letters,
and it killed me to work somewhere that my username was "mschiral" and I had
to type most of it _but then stop two letters early_.

It's like Shave and a Haircut without the "two bits".

~~~
msmamet
Where I work, your username is automatically assigned in this fashion:

First letter is U or V depending on whether you are temp or perm employee.
Next 4 letters are first 4 of last name. Final two letters are first 2 of
first name.

I'm vmamema

Nice to meet you

~~~
raldi
Be grateful your name's not Ashton Agincourt.

------
shaggyfrog
I had a stint working at a massive corporation. I was given a "recycled"
machine (full of crap from the previous user), whatever keyboard and mouse I
could scrounge up from empty desks nearby, and two 19" monitors of different
brands, one of which suffered from serious burn-in. Oh, and my work
environment was filthy when I got there, I didn't have all sorts of access set
up, and I had probably the noisiest spot on the floor. These conditions left
an indelible negative first impression when I arrived, and things only got
worse.

It takes an honest commitment by the People in Charge to ensure the best
possible work conditions, and that commitment needs to be asserted every day.
When you stop caring about the environment in which your developers work, then
you've stopped caring. And that lack of care will be apparent the whole way
through -- from top-level processes, to architecture, right down to the desks
at which people work.

At least I had an Aeron chair. So I had that going for me, which is nice.

------
rdl
Of all the "big companies" I've seen, Facebook has the best internal IT. A lot
of those policies were set by Yishan Wong; basically, if something can be done
more efficiently by an individual employee than by using IT, the process is
broken. (<http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/>) Facebook IT is basically a cache,
but if something is faster to get from the Apple Store or whatever, that's how
they did it -- not sure how it is done now.

It's hilarious how in big companies it takes weeks+ to get things done in IT
which could be trivially accomplished with a credit card and web browser, for
less money. Yes, there are security policies (which should be enforced in the
infrastructure and by user policy, not by end user hardware alone, and it
should be carrot vs. stick for common builds), but things like ordering
keyboards and chairs shouldn't be bottlenecked.

~~~
rwg
If you think corporate IT is dysfunctional, try working at a government agency
or a public university.

Something as simple as buying a new desktop computer to replace a ten year
old, dying computer turns into a multi-week affair where every step of the
purchase is stymied by some layer of bureaucracy. (Inevitably, one of those
layers of bureaucracy is on vacation this week and won't get around to
rejecting your purchase requisition until next Monday.)

If your purchase exceeds some magic dollar amount and has to go out for bids,
${DEITY} help you. You might put out an RFP for a toaster and end up with
Purchasing selecting a bidder offering a lawnmower because they're a small
business, woman-owned business, or minority-owned business, and that fact gave
them enough extra points in the selection matrix to beat all of the bidders
offering a toaster.

~~~
rdl
I spent most of 2004-2010 working on government/military (including NATO and
Iraqi and Afghan government, which were the worst) IT contracting.

For instance, it took me 5 months and a 3-star general's approval needed to
make a (trivial) firewall change, between two lobes of a network all at the
same accreditation level. It only happened THAT fast because making the change
had a measurable impact on trauma care (i.e. it probably saved >1 life).

------
pwthornton
I'm shocked at how few companies let their knowledge workers pick out their
machines. I've been using OS X since 10.1, but I keep going to companies that
stick me with Windows, despite the fact that I'm probably 10-20 percent less
productive (maybe more when you factor in all the OS X-only software that I'm
used to). My last job eventually got me a Macbook Pro, and I'm trying to work
on this new employer.

I was able to get a big external monitor but only after asking. It's not
something that you're asked about when you start.

I don't work for a software or engineering company, and I enjoy the work, but
I'd really like to be on a machine that really worked well for me and my
needs. I really dislike Windows software in particular, and have found some
real gems on OS X.

Too many companies try to nickle and dime IT spending. Saving a few hundred
dollars or so on an employees machine isn't going to do you a lot of good if
that means a lot of lost productivity.

The problem is that the people at the top often spend more time in meetings
than working and only do email, PowerPoint, Word and Excel. They don't quite
grasp how a better system could lead to more productivity, because their jobs
aren't to produce things.

Of course, if you don't understand how your employees produce things, maybe
you shouldn't be at the top.

------
kondro
I see lots of different comments here about monitors. I think you're kind of
missing the point.

The point of the article is that engineers value being trusted and allowed to
create the work environment that bests suits them.

Whether you prefer 3 x 23" monitors or a single 30" monitor or even a 13"
MacBook Air, you should be able to use the tools that make you most efficient
(especially if you're being paid $120k+… what's the impact of a $1,000 27"
display on the cashflow).

~~~
jandrewrogers
This is exactly it. At my company, the cost of someone's engineering rig ends
up being a rounding error. So the prevailing popular setup these days is a
loaded Macbook Air or Pro (sometimes with Linux installed instead of OSX) and
a 30" monitor. I think the only real restriction is that we do not run
Windows, which would be an impedance mismatch and support hassle for what we
do (massively parallel real-time analytical databases). Of course, this means
people have to support their own system if they run some odd OS flavor but no
one seems to mind. Whatever makes people happy.

For that matter, we also let everyone pick their own email address as well.

------
ajross
I think the meta-point sort of makes sense. Places that don't skimp on
resources which are a comparatively small fraction of salary (monitors, fancy
coffee makers, catered food, etc...) are more likely to value their employees.

That said: I use a single 15.6" laptop on a stand (or, of course, in my lap)
for pretty much everything I do. I find the added productivity of always
having everything I work on in front of me in exactly the state I always use
it outweighs any benefit of a fancier workstation. I wouldn't know what to do
with a 30" monitor.

~~~
jsprinkles
Speak for yourself. In operations, I have far too many graphs and widgets and
knick-knacks, and I can really use all the real estate given to me
(particularly when in command). I have duals and still don't have enough. At
my last job, I even stuck a USB dongle on my iMac for a third, but it ended up
being a painful experience and negatively impacted things like Exposé.

You can never go too _Star Trek_ when it comes to cool graphs. It's not a
pissing contest, either, honest; I genuinely need all of that information in
front of me in a crisis.

~~~
1qaz2wsx3edc
IMO graphs should be on a separate machine(s)/monitor(s) for all to see &
watch, this could clear up space for your own work. While encouraging
knowledge to be disseminated.

Any critical information you could still keep close, but the less important
stuff can be pushed to central monitor(s).

~~~
jsprinkles
I think it should be both. It's a lot harder to see stuff from a distance. Put
it in front of me, please.

------
andrewkreid
Two monitor stories:

1\. In my last job I calculated the price of a nice monitor as a percentage of
my salary and told my boss that it would only have to make me 0.4% more
productive for it to be a good investment. Did I get a new monitor? Nope.

2\. A friend of mine works at Google in Sydney and I went to visit. The first
thing that struck me as I gazed out across their cube farm (they have a nice
office, but it's still a cube farm) was that the OpenGL screensavers on every
single desktop were running at a decent framerate, a marked contrast to my
workspace, which runs the same screensavers but only 10% have the right video
drivers installed :)

------
jonamato
Monitors are nice indeed, but the one infrastructure item that would get me to
turn down a job offer is Lotus Notes. I depend entirely too much on email to
be able to do my job to saddle myself with that piece of junk. Using Notes is
like trying to run a marathon with snowshoes on.

~~~
outside1234
omg - does that still exist?

~~~
greedo
Yes, I work for a large insurance company, and we're wedded to Notes until
death do us part.

And it's not just for email, it's for a huge number of custom applications
that use the Notes framework.

~~~
bartonfink
Greedo - it's not in North Carolina, is it?

------
wamatt
Agree with the monitors.

The email thing less so. A consistent email format, helps people remember and
communicate better.

Yes it has less of "YOUR" ego imprinted all over it, but surely there are a
plenty of other ways to express yourself?

Seems a bit petty, and creates admin more work for you sysadmin and his
managers. "GodHatesFags@yourcompany.com". See, now you need a policy against
that sort of unpleasantness. Becomes more complicated. "Just use common sense"
as a policy also has issues, because what is acceptable to some, and "common
sense", is not to others.

The size of the company, is also relative to the number of policies/guidelines
needed. Social acceptability is easier to pull off, in a small group, where
the values are easily sub-communicated.

That does not scale however.

~~~
daleharvey
Yeh I agree with that, I recently joined a new company and was a little
disappointed that I wasnt asked what email I wanted 'dale@company.com' (dale
is usually just rare enough that I can get firstnames in these situations)

I got dharvey@company.com, and within a few days I realised that every time I
needed to email someone I didnt know I never needed to go searching for their
email address, I already knew it.

~~~
javajosh
I wonder why corporate email systems aren't smart enough to take reasonable
action. The first time I try to send a message to 'dale' the system should be
able to infer the recipient from context. With a good naming convention to
avoid false positives (forcing subsquent dales to add a distinguishing letter)
this system would be very reliable.

~~~
flomo
Unfortunately, I've been singed when Gmail decided 'dale' actually meant
'daboss@client.com'. So, please no second-guessing in email addressing.

With good directory typeahead (I won't mention the system because its blue and
yellow and smells), it's not really a problem.

------
jbigelow76
I totally get the monitor point, totally disagree with the email point though.
Absolutely zero of my personal identity is tied into how company related
correspondence are routed to my inbox.

If the email thing really is that big a deal let a cookie cutter corporate
email address be a constant reminder to you that somebody else owns your time
until you build something of your own, and then you can decide email names.

------
kprobst
Strictly speaking, I would leave for two monitors rather than a big one.
Productivity-wise I find that makes all the difference. But the point about
the engineering culture is certainly valid.

~~~
mattdeboard
I'm just the opposite. I was offered a couple of 20" monitors but asked for a
huge monitor. Do not regret it.

~~~
jbigelow76
I'm in the one big ass monitor camp too, I've got two 20s right now and one is
almost wasted (it's the Outlook, chat client, and music playing holder). I've
tried actually utilizing both but my field of vision feels off the whole time
because I dont like having the break between the two centered, too much
context switching. But to each their own.

------
codeonfire
This has always been a tell for what kind of management runs a software
company. If you can't get a 24" monitor because the guy in charge has a 24 and
has to have a 30 before anyone else can have a 24, time to run away.

~~~
Limes102
Haha, yeah. That happened to me.

------
varelse
Google is the only employer that ever offered me a 30" monitor from day one.
Google was also the absolute worst employer of my professional career. I've
gone into why on other threads - just take it as a given that Google and I
really really clashed culturally - and the best thing to do was to leave as
fast as I possibly could.

That said, I can certainly see a manager who asks upfront what I need to be
productive as a good sign and an absolute refusal to consider such needs as a
bad one.

------
damoncali
Just a thought I'm not sure I actually believe myself: Does catering to every
trivial whim (email address? really?) of your employees create a culture of
entitled whiners? I've never worked at such a place, so I wouldn't know.

~~~
jrockway
Yes. But what's the point of spending all that money on employees if they
aren't 100% happy?

~~~
mgkimsal
To get the most work out of them for the least amount of money.

------
sunkencity
I too fall for the big monitor fallacy, I like running an external monitor at
high rez. One screen with a web browser and the other with a split terminal
vim split in 2-4 panes. But it's really just moat. I could do well with just
one terminal and a little better short-term memory. If I work focused and take
breaks, I can work with just one terminal window @ fullscreen, control-z for
task management and a web browser to switch between.

Just look at zedshaw. He works with a couple of junk linux laptops and a white
macbook, and gets the shit done. The hardware doesn't matter that much,
especially if you're doing your work in the terminal most any computer is fast
enough.

I suspect though, that when it comes to guitars he has a little more equipment
jones.

I used to work on a white macbook 1:st gen for years, but I bought a new mbp
15" a couple of years ago so that I could run vmware and not have the machine
melt every time there was flash on a webpage.

In short, equipment doesn't matter that much (unless you're running an IDE),
it's more important to take breaks and stay focused.

~~~
pavelkaroukin
This article wasn't about equipment. It was about external signs about
culture. You can use whatever you love, be it iPad, old MB or Dell workstation
with Windows on it. Whatever get job done.

But if company not willing spend money (quite little in the long run) on
equipment - this is a sign that this place is bad for engineers since
management value engineers less than equipment.

------
ticks
If someone's complaining about the size of a monitor as a reason for leaving
then there's a good chance that it isn't the monitors! People don't like
burning bridges when they leave a job, so they are highly unlikely to say the
real reason - especially when the person that's asking for the reason is the
actual problem.

~~~
sethg
Yeah, the monitor isn’t the reason; the monitor is a symptom.

Best Buy is selling 27" monitors for about $300 and 30" monitors for about
$1,500. As a percentage of a full-time developer’s salary, depreciated over
three years, $600 is pocket change and even $3,000 is defensible. So if a
company is nickel-and-diming its developers over this kind of thing, what does
that say about the overall attitude of the management?

------
stuff4ben
Screw the monitors, as long as I have some good coffee, a filtered water
machine, and my desk is close to the bathrooms (see previous two reqs), I'm in
heaven. Well that and actually having something worth working for. Greenfield
projects are the best, followed by high-profile, high-pressure applications
where you directly affect the company's bottom line. Sadly none of these can
be found in the corporate jobs I've been working at lately.

------
ef4
Those are both good indicators, and at least some companies get them right. I
would add a few more that almost no one gets right: does the culture create
meaningful chunks of interruption-free time (Paul Graham's "Maker's
Schedule")? Do programmers get quiet places to work?

------
jack-r-abbit
My first work email ever was first initial and last name. It made sense. I
liked it. That is what I used when I got my own domain later. It is what I got
@gmail. Interestingly, every job I have had since that first has also used the
same format. If I was given the chance at my next job to pick my own email
address.. it would probably be the same. :)

------
delightedrobot
The email comment makes no sense. If someone is so adamant they need a
specific email address, what else will they be unreasonable about? I'm more
interested in whether the company does everything possible to make the office
a place you never want to leave. The right equipment for every job should be
default. Food follows closely after, followed by nontraditional work spaces.
Some of my best work is done either standing at a desk or sitting on a couch
with my feet up. Flexible schedules also seem more important than an email
address.

~~~
metamatt
Well, you shouldn't compromise on any of those if they're important to you.
And if you don't care about your username, then great, one less thing to have
to worry about.

But I think for anyone that does care about their username, it's a sign of
respect when the company lets you choose it, and a sign -- not the end-all,
but a sign -- of trouble ahead if they can't, and the OP's point is valid.

(The thing about large monitors isn't the end-all-be-all way of judging an
employer either! These are just litmus tests that give a very quick way of
judging whether they have an engineering-focused culture. I'd expect these
factors to largely align, but hey, if there's somewhere that gets both these
tests wrong but everything else right and is still an awesome place to be an
engineer -- more power to them.)

~~~
sefk
Well said Matt, thanks

------
willhsiung
I think the monitors thing only matters if it's applied consistently, such as
getting the biggest/latest/greatest when starting or when requested by the
employee for a work reason. If the company doesn't give that to you in the
first place but does when you are pressured to get a project done, that's not
valuing you - that's desperation. The previous department head in my company
has resorted to something similar and that was a complete turn-off as it was
more about his ass being saved than caring for his people.

------
michael_miller
As a corollary, I've found that salary is a good indicator of how good a
company's culture is. Not because of the actual money of course (money doesn't
buy happiness, blah blah blah), but because a company that pays its engineers
more generally values its engineers more. Most of the "hip" companies with
good culture (FB, Google, Palantir) pay quite well, whereas other companies
associated with a bad culture (which I will not name) tend to pay poorly. Not
always true, of course, but a good heuristic.

~~~
Drbble
And facebook sits engineers at grand long tables people complain about.

------
njharman
I find his domain highly ironic given his views on email addresses.

My identity is with my personal email addresses. Company address is ephemeral
and "throw-away" over the long haul.

------
flavien_bessede
The real power is to be able to expense the monitor of your choice.

~~~
jasomill
This is what all companies should do for "knowledge worker" I/O devices,
within reason. For some definition of reason, that is, that at least covers my
Thunderbolt display and "large" Wacom tablet.

------
bcee
To be honest these days I kind of expect the company to either provide me with
a reasonable budget and tell me to go buy what I need, or let me bring in my
own hardware.

Then I can be sure I'm getting what I need (which is, yes, two 27inch mons and
a mb pro)

------
nicholassmith
Hm, I think a few people have missed the point of the post by the 'omg how
self-entitled' posts I've just scanned through. This isn't just about getting
bigger monitors, or a fancy email or a dozen other things, it's about
companies that don't understand the development environment that works best is
whatever the developer needs. Your company makes software? The developers are
their biggest asset.

Plus given a blank cheque most of us wouldn't go wild, we understand what we
need and skip the rest.

------
ww520
Actually on a related topic, do people know what's the typical ratio of
capital spending vs revenue of a typical software company? Capital spending
should include equipments, IT infrastructure, operation infrastructure, etc.

I was at one company with 1% cap/revenue ratio and it was horrible. People had
to bring in their own big monitors if they wanted a bigger one. Of course the
CEO was proud with such low ratio.

------
joshu
Is it just me or is too many monitors distracting? I find that I have cut down
to just one monitor at both work and home. I was using one monitor for work
and one monitor for communication. I realized it was easier just to quit the
chat apps.

(Mind you, at the company I run, employees get whatever they want, hardware-
wise. Everyone seems to have settled on the 27" apple monitor + the laptop
display.)

------
deepGem
Reminds me of the days at the Sun offices in Santa Clara back in 2004. One
personal office, two top of the line Sun workstations with 21 inch monitors,
an additional windows PC if required. One big whiteboard and two phones. Damn,
get into your office, shut the door and get on with your work. It felt like
your own personal control room :).

------
ntoshev
Apparently this site is using CloudFlare, and it's failing:

DNS Resolution Error

You've requested a page on a website (sef.kloninger.com) that is on the
CloudFlare network. Unfortunately, CloudFlare is currently unable to resolve
your requested domain (sef.kloninger.com). There are two potential causes of
this:

Most likely: if the owner just signed up for CloudFlare it can take a few
minutes for the website's information to be distributed to our global network.
Check back in about 5 minutes and the site should be up and running and
enjoying all the benefits of CloudFlare.

Less likely: something is wrong with this site's configuration. Usually this
happens when accounts have been signed up with a partner organization (e.g., a
hosting provider) and the provider's DNS fails.

------
malkia
Also let the coders name the internal libraries/apps they write. It's their
creation, also improves the culture. Generic names are just not good.

Even our internal servers are called with strange names, //pictures being the
main intranet for the studio :) It's all good...

------
blcArmadillo
I personally like formulated emails. Maybe it's the fact that I really like
consistency but it also makes emailing coworkers much easier. I don't want to
have to go hunting through a directory to find their custom email.

~~~
groby_b
Really, it's not as big a deal as you'd think. You simply know your coworkers
by their e-mail address, not by their name. (Yes, I call people by their
handle, and they call me by mine. We get along just fine)

------
jiggy2011
2 large monitors? _really_? How very 2004, I thought all the rockstar
programmers these days did everything from starbucks on an 11" Macbook air or
through an SSH session from their iPad!

~~~
vidarh
Except at Github, apparently: <http://instagr.am/p/Kt05fpp2OL/>

------
MattRogish
We have an unlimited budget for hardware. You want three monitors? You got it.
A desktop and a laptop? Sold.

The caveat of course, is be a reasonable adult and don't ask for a $50,000
gold-plated MacBook or something. As long as you can get more incremental
value out of the hardware than it costs for us to get it for you, it's yours.

I think it all comes down to trust - as the article states, it's not about
bigger monitors but the company trusting you to do the right thing.

------
hessenwolf
As somebody squeezing my eyes into a 19 inch with shitty resolution, I see
where you are coming from.

Also, I don't have admin access to my computer. I'm forcibly handicapped.

------
lmm
I'm not personally invested in my work email address, but my last employer
insisted I use their format for my IRC nick. That was unpleasant.

------
dsirijus
At my place, you get name.surname@mycompany.com and can have as many aliases
as you want, I don't care - I'll always send you mail to
name.surname@mycompany.com.

How is it NOT geeky to have local mail parts in friggin' order?

Also, even if I had money to provide some hardware to people working for me,
I'd call them whining b....s they are. We'll organically upgrade on neccesity
and keep it lean at all times.

~~~
mh-
congrats, you found the most effective way to ensure that you only hire
candidates who couldn't get on at more enjoyable places to work.

~~~
dsirijus
No, I attract hard working, no nonsense people who take joy in getting things
done with least amount of friction, and who don't need masseuse to write code.

~~~
illumen
Smart working people can just go elsewhere. The hardworking people can make
use of recycled computers scavenged off the street. If you can't wait 10
minutes for the test suite to run, things to compile or files to finish
transferring - then you're just a wining bitch. Using old hard drives is fine,
an SSD will just make the work easier. Work should be hard, and painful -
otherwise it's just play. Why would you want to see multiple views of your
data, when you can just flip between windows all the time and scroll a lot?

------
Joeboy
Choose your own email address? It can take weeks of hassling here to get _any_
email address set up here. I consider it a luxury to be able to receive email,
clone our git repositories or connect to webservices I'm coding for. On the
plus side I've got quite good at setting up ssh tunnels.

------
alan_cx
Pah, monitors, blah, blah. What about a comfy chair? I'd go anywhere for a
nice chair. ;)

~~~
kzahel
pfft, chairs. what, do you sit down all day long, you slob?

------
petercooper
As with most things in life, the _little things count_ because the little
things show that people care (or, at least, are putting in enough effort to
look like they do) and don't think you're just a cog in a machine.

------
javajosh
This post confuses masterful flourishes with substance. And by the way, I
don't like big monitors - I get too many degrees of freedom and find it too
hard to focus. I have a 27" cinema that I never use with my 13" MBP.

~~~
Drbble
How can you fit a line of Java code on a 13" screen?

------
sgt
I am productive using my 15 inch Macbook Pro. They offered me a Samsung 23
inch monitor but the quality was poorer than my MBP's screen, and it looked
cheap and not very elegant to share the same deskspace.

------
penetrator
it's hard for me to imagine that the first apple computer would be have been
created if woz insisted on using a large cinema projector, much less two
projectors

he hacked a regular tv instead, and that's how apple was born

~~~
varelse
Back in those days, printers were macho 160-column beasts that could spew out
10,000+ lines of code in one continuous folded scroll.

I then debugged by taking that enormous scroll of paper to the beach, the
park, or somewhere else pleasant and scribbled all over it.

While I love 30" monitors, something has been lost in abandoning that method
of reviewing code. Just sayin'...

------
benihana
Want to know if a company has good engineering culture? Look up the company's
engineers' facebook and twitter feeds and see what they're saying. Engineers
who are happy tell everyone about it. Big monitors and choosing your email
addresses are great; for a couple of weeks. Then after the big monitor
honeymoon phase is over and the daily slog begins, the engineers realize that
they have a big monitor that buries them in the horrible culture of the
company that attracts people based on looks and surface happiness. Two big
monitors and nice chairs are byproducts of a culture that is good, not reasons
that a culture is good.

Find a company where the engineers are happy, where the engineers don't leave,
and where the management understands that happiness doesn't mean a couple of
monitors or a nice chair. Happiness is having your opinions valued, getting
fulfillment out of your work and being able to effect change within the
company.

~~~
baggachipz
Absolutely true. There is a company here in Charlotte, NC (any dev in
Charlotte will know who this is) who puts all the toys on display to attract
employees: flat screens on the wall, all the monitors on your desk you can
handle, etc. etc. The actual company, though, is a soul-crushing hell hole
with more churn than an amish dairy farm. That place is pure evil.

~~~
jsight
Interesting... I worked in Charlotte for a few years and can't think of
anywhere like this. I wonder who you could be referring to?

~~~
baggachipz
Let's just say the first word in the name is "Red" and the second is
"Ventures". And there is no third word. They're consistently on the Inc. 500's
"best places to work" list because they strong-arm employees into rating them
well and most likely pay for the recognition.

~~~
soemoea
Interesting. A senior manager from Red Ventures came to my school last year to
talk about his company and recruit at my school. He made it sound pretty cool
but looks can definitely be deceiving.

~~~
baggachipz
There's a reason they are always hiring. Churn is accepted and regular
practice. The CEO is quoted as saying, "The graveyard is littered with
'indispensable employees'". They chronically under-pay and overwork. I could
go on forever, but in summary, they charm perspective employees into a truly
toxic and demeaning environment.

------
hackermom

      [detached]
      melissa@tellus$ whoami
      melissa
    
      Last login: Fri May 18 09:29:53 on ttys002
      MelBook:~ melissa$ whoami
      melissa
    

_phew!_

------
yashchandra
Amen to Dual Monitors

------
wyclif
_Some projets_

Projects.

