Very, very well said.

When I see a young company that has lavish offices, I see a company that I want to avoid, for pretty much the reasons the author points out. It's a company that's wasting their resources on things that don't matter. An established and very profitable company can get away with this (although it's still not a great look), but a young company? At best, it's a sign that the company isn't going to be around for all that long.

It also triggers the "chandelier rule" (when being pitched something, the bigger the chandelier in the room the worse the deal is for you). It's not quite the same thing, but it's in a similar ballpark.

I'm interested to see the responses to this, because my reaction is that I rarely as an employee feel as connected to a company as its founder, so the idea of coming into a potentially dangerous office for the sake of saving money for strangers is not high on my priority list for the one life I have available to me. I don't yearn for the luxury offices of Google, but encountering crime scenes is nowhere on my bingo card.

I am not sure if I agree.

In turn this would mean that if a company is profitable, it can have a nice office and spend more money into "unnecessary" things?

Wouldn't it be better to reinvest that profit into the business to make it even more profitable and grow it?

Doesn't the story somehow imply that as soon as you are profitable you can rest on your success? For me that could mean the beginning of the end.

I think you should provide a decent office to your employees to be productive without unnecessary luxuries and it doesn't really matter if the company is profitable or not.