Possibly one of the best bargains ever for me.
Always returned, btw.
But even when bought new, something that gets used so much everyday is worth the price.
Oh well, at least someone got a cheap desk chair out of mine.
I used it all day and I'm amazed I spent years in an $80 Amazon chair.
Shopify did not respond to Business Insider's request
for comment. It's unclear if whether the $1,000 amount
is a bonus employees will see in their paychecks, or
whether workers will need to expense the items they
purchase.
Does it make any actual difference? Yes, it could theoretically impact somebody's tax bracket, but do we need that level of detail?Also someone is blaming a lot of companies with the "why wait?" theme.
The thing is, moving to all remote is not a company does overnight. Particularly with matters of security perimeters, there's a lot of planning that has to be done. Corporate firewalling on premise is a thing... Corporate firewalling a laptop at home is a completely different matter. Assumptions you can make about network in the office vanish once the employee is at home.
Maybe the wait was to implement at least some basic VPN connectivity, proper firewalling and stuff like that?
But for the customer support reps? It might make all the difference in the world. Most of those employees won't have an extra $1k laying around that they can forego until finance gets around to finally reimbursing them for their expenses. For the average customer service rep, the question will likely boil down to:
1.) Can I not pay a bill (or three) right now so I can take advantage of the program?; or 2.) Do I not participate in the program.
A couple years ago I had similar dilemma with expensing around ~$400 for something. At the time I made about $50k/year and was supporting two households in two separate cities. It took a lot of juggling household budget(s) to wait for the 4 weeks it took to get that money back. That was a lot of added stress when I was already working paycheck-to-paycheck.
Today? I make over double that. If I had to put out $1k, I could do so without blinking. But I live a VERY different life now than even 2 years ago.
At my previous job, I was asked to go to an international networking event in Europe. The firm would have reimbursed my expenses. I was prepared to go until I discovered that the trip would cost $22,000. The firm wasn't quick enough with reimbursements for me to justify paying for it upfront, so I had to pass.
That could make a significant difference in terms of usage and spending of these funds.
There doesn't seem to be any official announcement of the program on Shopify's blog or social media so far.
It's probably best to assume that journalists are acting in good faith to uncover the full story and to discover details which might be relevant for their audience either now or retrospectively when people look back on these events in future.
If it works out, that $1k/person could pay dividends in savings if they can reduce office space.
Looks like a great company with a good culture and a great product.
That said, they solve some difficult problems and no one else comes close at the moment.
So it might kinda backfire on that front.
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.
I work from a proper ergonomic office desk now but it beat many other alternatives including a dining table and various purpose-made 'home office' desks.
(Accepting I got lucky with the height of the radiator).
Working from home is not an excuse for the employers for allowing you to work in an un-ergonomic environment.
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.
The downside is that it's no longer in production, so I can't buy another module to add to it. The ones they have now are a lot flimsier; thinner metal, thinner table tops, etc.
If I ever move I'll see to orienting myself on the desk market. And get a used chair, I spent nearly 500 on a new chair from an office shop but it's not as good as the ones I've had at work before. I googled and there's big webshops that sell refurbished office furniture, including the best chairs ever, for under 300.
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/bekant-desk-sit-stand-white-s29...
Obviously I wish they'd give us money to set up a nice work station at home though lol
(My wife has a Steelcase Leap, which I can say similar things about.)
The real problem is cheap headsets with poor mics and people not knowing how to turn the fracking gain down.
Though at home id just swap out my laptop and stick my works one in and plugin my Claret Pre 2 for the mic and the Shitt Audio stack I use for heaphones.
I've been working remotely for a little over 18 years, at first in a tiny 450sqft apt with 2 roommates and now in a house with an office with many other situations in-between in a few different cities.
The most important thing I've ever done for my sanity, productivity, and consistency is set up a permanent space to work. Same chair, same surface, work only. My whole life could be a complete shit-show but my "office" was tidy and available, even if that "office" was an edge of the kitchen table.
There are other things like making sure roommates and significant others understand the boundaries when working and such, but dedicating a workspace has always been the most fundamentally essential.
I’m not sure what I’d spend 1k on besides the machine I use to get work done on.
For me good monitor and good chair are above good PC. My PC being slow affects my employers bottom line, my chair or monitor being bad affects my health.
Monitor I guess is still habit from CRT days, when there was significant quality (measured in not damaging your eyesight) between good and average.
Which is why employer bought me 2 really good desktops, one for home and one for office.
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.
For CPU intensive tasks, I've set up virtual remote desktops [1] that run on a heavy-duty machine or VPS, which I connect to over SSH or Chrome Remote Desktop. I can even connect to them using my phone in a pinch.
[1] https://github.com/kstenerud/virtual-builders/tree/master/ma...
Also, props for letting them use their office equipment at home. Asked my boss for the same and he was happy to allow me to carry the better of my monitors to corona/home office with me :)
No mic/webcam for meetings. Maybe own a laptop but don't have a desk/chair.
The 1k isn't about funding a fancy setup to permanently work from home. It's about filling the gaps so that they can work from home as effectively as possible during this time.
But i guess the opinion of having a comfortable setup is unpopular here, since i got downvoted. lol.
I'm assuming of course that the $1k is for the office itself not for any other tech - i.e. that the employees have a laptop.
I have the Ikea hand-cranked version of a stand up desk, and a normal Ikea office chair. Those are by far the biggest expenses but I think they were under $500 together. A good screen is $250-$600 (I got a g-sync one because this is also my gaming space and my gaming rig feeds the same monitor). Unpopular opinion: more than one big external screen is a waste.
My office supplies are a good pen and a stack of printer paper I grab from the office when I'm there. I have never seen the need for a printer or scanner or any other office supplies.
I'd say $1k isn't exactly luxurious, but if we agree that anyone can do fine with ikea furniture and one external monitor then it's just right.
They should probably ask Shopify to comment instead =P