None of those cost money yet so few workplaces value them since disrespect, micromanagement, and industrial era style division of labor are addictions of the corporate management crowd. It's gospel to Ivy League educated and Old Money.
As a separate issue, "As startups, we can't really offer top-dollar salaries to our employees." is complete nonsense. First of all, "we don't pay top dollar" is doublespeak for "We pay below market rate." Nothing says "We don't respect you." as much as that does. If you can't at the absolute minimum pay market rate for the level of talent you require you shouldn't be in business. End of story.
This is frustrating because there are probably a million things we could do for (e.g.) Matasano team members without having to restructure the business, and I'd love some more ideas.
Those we around a month of productivity, we think that people will end up being more than 10% more productive/happy/creativity, and the people we can attract may be 10% better suited to our work. We think it's a perk hardly any other american company can match; great hackers value their time.
More than any of these, philosophically, we want to allow our colleagues to experience the world. We want them to experience freedom.
One of the key pillars of the startup ecosystem is that you can offer someone equity in exchange for significantly "below market rate" wages. In some or even many cases, this will be below the "the absolute minimum pay market rate for the level of talent ... require[d]."
If you view that as a sign of disrespect, then you should probably only ever work for 1)bootstrapped businesses that are pretty far along the bootstrap curve or 2) venture-funded businesses that have significant funding. That's a totally viable approach to working for a startup, and I respect you for refusing to work under less than a given rate.
But I don't think it's fair for you to impose your minimum wage upon others. Some people are willing to work for more nascent businesses in exchange for more upside. That should be their right too.
Do many startups try to pull stunts like that?
I recently worked at a TV station and regularly asked my boss if I could do things like borrow a camera on a weekend, or installed a single game for some of us to play after hours when no one was working.
The answer was always "no". That was unfortunate. The camera I kinda get; it could break. But using my computer at work, when no one else is? Seemed relatively harmless.
Apparently, they discovered that one of their employees, in his spare time, had used one of the editing stations to edit video for his church. When they disciplined him about it, he stated that "everyone else was doing the same thing", which made them panic and decide to treat the whole department as a forensic incident.
I can't think of a more innocuous use of resources than "editing church video in my spare time", but they were all freaked out about it. You'd be surprised what companies worry about.
I had the envious task of imaging ~ 35 workstations (and 2 big-ass RAID arrays) in the middle of the night before employees were supposed to be back in the office the next morning.
I guess the thrust of my argument is that... Employees are trusted with those resources while under employer supervision. ("Supervision"; not that their bosses are over their shoulders, or in some cases even know how to operate it themselves.) But the second that the intent is not approved of, suddenly that employee is suspected of having destroyed everything with an errant keystroke. It's funny, is all.
No is the only sensible answer to both of those questions, purely for liability reasons.
If the camera gets damaged while you're out doing a personal project, is it still covered by the station's insurance? Quite possibly not if it's not being used for work purposes.
If you download a game it turns out to have a virus in it, where does the liability for that fall?
If he'd said no to things like "Would the company pay for a Wii for the team to use in it's off hours", or something like that and he said no, then it might seem more churlish - but your request just don't seem like ones he can easily say yes to to begin with.
There's a good chance that the company has access to hardware/software of various types that his employees don't. And there's a chance his employees would like to use it. Would it be covered by insurance if something went wrong? Definitely something to check on. But that phone call is likely free for him, and a potential higher premium may not be too much higher. It's just an idea to consider.
And things like hosting a PC game for people can be very safe. Certainly no less safe than installing a web browser on a PC. It just takes a little legwork to make sure it's trustworthy (like any software you install) and finding a game people like. I suggest it because I find it analogous to going to the driving range. "It's Friday afternoon and there aren't any vital issues. Let's get in a couple of rounds of XYZ and head out."
2. be neutral about when work gets done
3. be neutral about how work gets done
I also plan to ASK each person what a good reward would be (everybody is different), and make sure to thank them. I understand that it's their job, but it goes a long way to boosting everyone's morale and productivity by saying you appreciate them.
A friend's boss wanted to buy her a small token of appreciation for successfully completing a huge project, and my friend jokingly said she wanted a Hummer. The boss bought her one - a diecast collectible H2, and 6 years later my friend still says that was the best gift she's ever gotten :)
Career and skill development is a perk that is really overlooked. It's a start to offer unlimited Amazon books. However, companies could go much further and offer seminars and full blown courses. It doesn't even have to be expensive corporate training. You could pay a grad student to teach a full blown machine learning course for less than half the cost of a weekend long training seminar.
One thing we try to do is to run internal classes. We had one on C programming that I need to get back up and running; we have a long-running one with cryptography.
Businesses routinely do the equivalent of paying a grad student to teach machine learning; they just don't call it that. In the real world that's called consulting.
1/2 day on Halloween is a great idea.
I am not a fan of company-sponsored lunch; it sends a message that you're expected to be working constantly. Many of the big finance companies do it, and the employees are clear about why.
Books are so cheap relative to FTE cost, I don't know why you'd even come up with a "training policy" for them. We just give everyone an Amazon account and say "go to town". You buy a book, it's yours; the only rule is, don't buy books for your friends on our dime. :)
That costs rounding error next to an employee. Fog Creek-style catered lunches are rather substantially more expensive, but having done them, I think the social benefits to them are pretty awesome. (Company-sponsored dinner, on the other hand, would scare the heck out of me.)
† More accurately, the rest of the team made robots while I went and rented a huge van.
Plus there's the communal, social factor of all eating/drinking together as a team.
As a health-conscious (non-preachy) vegan, I feel left-out otherwise.
Free soda, coffee, tea. (I'm a little negative on free snacks, but if that works for you, okay).
Subsidize access to things like the ACM portal, or other subscription journals. Buy technical books for people.
A shooting range in the basement. ("Let's go think about this problem over a few rounds" has a different flavor). While zoning and other laws would make this impractical, some of the groups I've been in have had "range days," and they've all been a lot of fun, even -- or maybe especially -- for the newbies.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
Having said that my personal favorites are unlimited free books a la Matasano, and flexible work environment (working from office or remotely are interchangeable), and flexible vacation policy (several recent HN posts on this).
Completely distributed teams like SpiderOak are pretty awesome, so set up your company to work like that as the default, and have an office people can work/meet in when they want or need, but connect to the servers the same way whether in or out of the office (a universal API, so to speak).
Let me work when I'm most productive, be it 6am to 3 in the afternoon, or noon to midnight, or whatever. Trust in my incentive to care about the company's success (and by extension my own cashflow). I don't even mind a pager in setups like that, as long as it's used for emergencies only and not abused.
I think the best and most essential things to quality of life are: air, water/food/drink, exercise, sleep. I find that there is an unsurprising correlation that when I am healthy and fit, I am also able to perform my best at the computer.
