As the originator of any message, it is important to hear the feedback and respect that feedback. Telling your audience that they got your message wrong shows disrespect for the audience, and a misunderstanding of how communication works.

Try clarifying the message instead of dismissing the audience.

Appending "of course there are exceptions" and "this is just a generality" and "your experience might differ" to every thing you write in an attempt to appease the nitpickers is a recipe for crappy writing. It's also a doomed effort, as the nitpickers will not only still nitpick your original points, they'll nitpick your concessions as well.

The place that I worked that had such nice equipment basically did exactly that: you were given your standard issue equipment with virtually zero flexibility (amusingly other than keyboard and mouse, just like your setup).

That said, the impression mostly comes from the way that you write about the place. You use a lot of absolute terms. There's a lot of talk about best and ideal and happy and then very precise definitions of those things. This gives readers the impression that while you have a very luxurious office, that it's also one that's quite rigid.

Honestly, I'd be surprised if that wholly misses the mark. You're obviously a really smart guy that wants to do well by your employees, and good on you for that. But it also sounds like you're running a grand experiment at FogCreek where you're (mostly by fiat) deciding what you think is best for a company's culture. That may actually produce a place that for the type of folks that get hired there really clicks. I don't think I'd be one of those sorts.

I understood the post in a very different way. There were no definitions, but lots of concrete examples.

It is a staple of writing guidelines that one should be concrete rather than abstract, specific rather than general, etc. The reason for this is that it is easier for people to reason up to the general principle than down to the specifics.

The concrete examples make it more understandable.

This sounds to me like a place that grabbed the "what" and missed the "why". The two questions I would want any company I work for to ask are, "Why would our developers want to be productive for us?" and then, "What do they need to be most productive?" in that order. Give me a reason to be productive and then make sure my equipment doesn't hold me back.

The problem is a lot of people skip the first question and jump straight to the second. I personally believe they do that because the second question is quantifiable. The article is called "The Price of (Dev) Happiness: Part One" and it gives a price at the bottom. There is something a manager can put in Excel and show to superiors.

However, the "why" is more nebulous and harder to enact. Change company culture? Might take months, or years if it's even possible. But I can order $6,174 worth of equipment in an afternoon.

And this isn't just a problem in IT or even in business. There is a ton of information out there about how to lose weight. The "what" is easy to find. But people (including myself) are still overweight because they have no compelling "why".

So when I read this article, I read as a description of "what". And I think there needs to be articles about the "what" just like there needs to be information about how to lose weight. However, I am going to try to not let myself be enamored by it when deciding on a new job. I'm looking for the "why" as well.

* (or whatever the correct term is for HN-linked recruitment-ads-as-blog-posts)

I strongly prefer private offices, but it looks like the only cost effective way to get this is to rent a 10BR house for $10k/mo and have enough space for ~20-30 developers in a mix of private and semi-private (shared) offices, conference rooms, etc.