Wait, sorry, are you saying that a company shouldn't hire a person if they can't afford top-end office equipment? Or is this only for developers? I think that's silly & unrealistic, and am hoping it's just hyperbole to make a point.
(edit: I don't actually disagree with your general point, that better tools == higher productivity == better return on that developer salary. However, implying the cost of buying top-end gear for a dev should be a sunk cost isn't fair or realistic. Especially when the business has other employees who don't touch emacs or eclipse but still sit at a desk all day working on a computer. )
Probably primarily for developers. A $100/mo investment to get more out of your developers (who cost at least $30k, and usually $100k+) isn't a problem. If you're looking at much cheaper office staff, you can presumably pay less to make them more productive since hiring more of them is cheaper (measured in Aerons).
How do you manage the differentiation without the less special classes having some resentment? There are some costs that they'd likely understand (person who spends all day in email and Word objectively does not need as good of a computer as a developer), but how do you tell someone that they're not worthy of the same desk/chair that a developer is? What happens if there's a spare developer chair that they start sitting in? Do you ask for it back when you hire a new dev?
I'm not saying it's impossible, especially as the company and grows and there may be less direct contact between the departments, but I definitely see some issues that could arise.
You tell them that the devs are all pretty pretty princesses who can feel a pea through a pile of blankets.
Seriously, I think you've got to buy everyone fancy chairs if you buy them for devs. Otherwise it breeds resentment. If I were a secretary sitting in a shitty chair while all the devs sat in $1000 chairs (including the intern who's only there for the summer and gets paid less than his equipment costs), I'd feel pretty unappreciated.
A developer who plants themselves in their chair for a 12-hour hacking run and barely moves in that time objectively needs a more ergonomic environment than the 9-4:30-ers that spend most of their time standing around the water cooler or coffee maker.
I am a mere gadfly, a dilettante, and I have to get up and walk around to think, draw, sketch, scribble, look out of the window, focus on the horizon. At work, I spend a lot of time talking to groups of people, and moving things about. I'm actually unable to sit at a keyboard and type for more than an hour. So I use a kitchen chair in my home office and at work we have cheapo semi-adjustable computer type chairs, and three year old Windows boxes with smallish LCD monitors.
If someone else at work really did sit or stand at their keyboard for 12 hours straight, I'd have no problem at all with them having a fancy chair, because they would have my admiration and sympathy.
...might sell the idea a bit better to the support staff
Objectively according to who? The developer? That's the point. To the event planner who spends 12 hours working in excel she's got just as legit a need. Seconding the "pretty princesses" sentiment posted above.
One of the points of the original article is that when you take depreciation into account, you can afford to give a developer his or her dream work tools for just $100/month.
According to salary.com, entry-level secretaries in Fog Creek’s neighborhood have a median salary of about $40K. Budgeting another $1.2K to cover the secretary’s computer and furniture does not seem extravagant to me.
(edit: I don't actually disagree with your general point, that better tools == higher productivity == better return on that developer salary. However, implying the cost of buying top-end gear for a dev should be a sunk cost isn't fair or realistic. Especially when the business has other employees who don't touch emacs or eclipse but still sit at a desk all day working on a computer. )