I applied to a job in the spring of 2006 and when they were showing me around the development area I noticed that everyone had single smallish CRTs and what seemed like older computers. I asked about it and they told me that most people had P3-500's! Unsurprisingly their salary offer was low also and I did not take the job.

Yeah, at that point you can pretty much conclude that the company is doing something incredibly wrong, and it's only a matter of time before it bites them.

If you have crappy pay and perks, then you won't attract good talent, and whatever good talent you had will eventually leave. Without good talent, it is highly unlikely you'll have a good app. If your app sucks, you will slowly bleed off customers, and revenue.

Of course, that's not a scientific fact. For exceptions start with: Contracts, Government.

I took that job and for 5 years each day when I arrived at work I would have to go around looking for somebody that had carelessly wandered off to the bathroom and steal their chair. Eventually I just settled on one that was missing two wheels and an arm rest since it tended to not mysteriously vanish as often while I was at home sleeping or away eating lunch.

I quit a job a couple of years ago where (I kid you not) I had no desk, no allocated seating, and no PC. I was expected to bring in my own laptop. Whenever there was a director's meeting, we all had to surrender our communal office and hide in the server room. Duration of job: less than six months. It would have been shorter if I'd know what assholes they were (I had some idea they might sort out the problems if I waited a while). Worst. Company. Ever.

I worked for a state agency a long, long time ago. I was doing Perl-CGI web app, but I was only given a tiny table, a wooden chair, and a little teeny green-screen CRT I could use to rlogin and have shell access. This was actually a machination by the current system administrator who wanted the project to fail because we were impinging on his territory. (He wanted all of that State's Public TV related online publishing to be on an old-style text BBS he had set up.)

Well, my project was wildly successful anyways and I ended up being moved to a proper office and he ended up getting a different job.

...and you're not bothering to tell us who it is, so someone from HN might get suckered into working for them next month.

Well, I'm guessing most of you guys are in the US anyway. But if you find yourself in the county of Somerset, UK, and get a chance at an interview with a company providing IT services to a well-known defence contractor, and they tell you it's web development, systems administration and "a bit" of support work, just ask them to define "a bit" rather more precisely.

I can't be too specific because we have some rather repressive libel laws over here.

Awesome :) Me, I'm in Argentina.

Even without the name, maybe they would be tipped off when asked if they mind not having a permanent desk and bringing their laptop to work every day.

I had a good experience working for a company like that, actually.