PSA: Used office chairs are a much better deal than new, at least if you are paying close to list price. About 10 years ago I bought a steelcase leap for less than $300. I've used it at least 250 days a year since then with no problems. List price on that chair is $1k.

  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?

Our office just closed too. We're using it as an experiment for wider work from home in the future. This could have widespread impact on work culture.

If it works out, that $1k/person could pay dividends in savings if they can reduce office space.

I realized that Shopify has a bigger market cap than Uber and has grown like wildfire in the last few years.

Looks like a great company with a good culture and a great product.

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.

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

I work at a remote company and this is normal, but obviously Shopify has a much better PR team than us.

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

This is excellent.

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 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 get work done on.

Hm, everyone mentions chairs. Biggest improvement bang-for-buck was setting up better lighting in my home office: I now got three decent 5.5W 4000K MR16 LED spots over each of my tables and oriented to my liking.

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 :)

I heard salesforce is givng USD 250

As someone who has worked at home for many years, and has a nice home office setup. $1k is not nearly enough... you need monitors, a decent desk, a nice chair, office supplies, a printer/scanner, the list goes on and on.

> Spotify did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

They should probably ask Shopify to comment instead =P

SO $1 will buy you a chair...

A bit off topic, but it would be great if they invested some cash to do something about the obvious scam sites on their platform. A domain like fdkwbn.shopify.com should be pretty obvious to even the dumbest AI that it's not a legit site.

Not to be glib, the difference between $1k on the check and $1k expensed doesn't make a difference if you're well paid. If you're considering how it'd impact your tax bracket, it doesn't matter to you.

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.

If it's an expense program, then there could be policies and constraints which limit the types of purchases employees can make.

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.

Hopefully, however it is handed out, other companies start to think about doing something similar. I just hope this works out well for the employees of shopify!

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

You're missing out on the #battlestation #setupinspiration trend. WFH is a thing, why not make yourself feel comfortable? A monitor arm and a vertical laptop stand save space. Add a (standing) desk with a nice surface, quality keyboard + mouse, and maybe a small desk plant.

For anyone in the same position I can vouch for IKEA MARKUS office chairs. Working from a dining room chair will leave your back sore after a few days. For desks I'd stay clear though, all the IKEA desks I've had have ended up with annoying wobbles.

The great thing about Herman Miller refurbs or used is that you can get parts. Sure, you can get a cheap office chair from target or so, but they'll last you a couple of years before the padding is compressed to nothing, parts are breaking, and it's time to throw it out. The Aerons are incredibly durable, and if something fails or I damage something, I can get replacement parts easily. I've gotten new wheels for different floors, replaced a small pad that deteriorated, and replaced the original hydraulic. I've had mine about 10 years now; who knows how long the previous owner had theirs. It's an investment for sure, but one I think holds it's value well.

(My wife has a Steelcase Leap, which I can say similar things about.)

People with mechanical keyboards in conference calls can jump in a lake. haha

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.

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

If it's for work, see if you can get your company to order if through whoever they get their office furniture from. I know my previous company paid around $650 each for the Herman Miller Embody

Highly recommend it. I got mine on ebay for a little cheaper. I'd expect costs might go up though given the increased demand.

Real or counterfeit?

For me a nice monitor is a must. I cannot be productive on a laptop for more than an hour or two. It all feels so constricting.

You don't need a 1k chair you just need a good ergonomic chair, that won't cause long term damage.

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.

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.

I've had a similar experience. I have a lightweight laptop that I carry with me to use wherever I feel most comfortable, be that at a desk (plugged into a monitor, or not), in an easy chair, on a couch, on the beach, in the woods... depends on where I feel most comfortable at the time.

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...

Laptops are apparently much more ergonomical than desktops, if you use them right. I recently got treated for posture-related problems and on that occasion it was suggested to use a laptop(or similar setup) with both elbows resting on the table. So I got a cheap adjustable vesa mount for my monitor to lower and tilt it accordingly, and have had no issues since then.

I think you will find that most of the people this $1k is targeting is people who already have the means to work from home, but maybe need some additional things.

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.

I have done over 10 years and I use chair, monitor, desk, keyboard, mouse, coffee. That's it. Printer or scanner I have never needed. The total is probably $1k or just under.

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.