Re:Unicorn layoffs keep piling up
by shagie on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @07:14PM
(#22884268)
Its not that they were excessive... and they do last for years. Its that immediately after getting funding the startups of the period immediately spent a good chunk of it on high end quality of life items. The most visible was the chair. And they weren't that cheap then either (they're much less expensive now - in 2000, the chair was $1100 - which is $1650 in today's money. I can find a new Aeron chair for about half that and a refurbished one for a quarter)
> Aerons were hailed as triumphs of industrial design and were a whole different beast from the overstuffed leather power chairs that dominated the Old Economy. “They’re not in my mind an example of hubris as much as they are an example of companies trying to treat their staff more generously than they could actually afford,” says information architect Chris Fahey.
They were the most visible symbol of the excesses of the dot com startup office. The new pool table, the foosball table, ping pong table, espresso machines in the break room in the office that they just moved into. The chair is the one that people can point to being common to everything (and was also part of the stuff that was getting sold after the 95% layoff).
These are not companies that had lasted years to get the value out of the chair but rather in the range of months to a few years. They were spending money like it was free in hopes to get acquired before they had to sell it all and try again.
The chair? I love it and I would have seriously considered (gulp) another a month or so ago instead of a different mesh chair if I had realized that the refurbished ones were as affordable as they are.
https://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/21364/
> Aerons were hailed as triumphs of industrial design and were a whole different beast from the overstuffed leather power chairs that dominated the Old Economy. “They’re not in my mind an example of hubris as much as they are an example of companies trying to treat their staff more generously than they could actually afford,” says information architect Chris Fahey.
They were the most visible symbol of the excesses of the dot com startup office. The new pool table, the foosball table, ping pong table, espresso machines in the break room in the office that they just moved into. The chair is the one that people can point to being common to everything (and was also part of the stuff that was getting sold after the 95% layoff).
These are not companies that had lasted years to get the value out of the chair but rather in the range of months to a few years. They were spending money like it was free in hopes to get acquired before they had to sell it all and try again.
The chair? I love it and I would have seriously considered (gulp) another a month or so ago instead of a different mesh chair if I had realized that the refurbished ones were as affordable as they are.