Proscribed fun is hard. I can think of about 20 great engineers who would be turned off by a scotch library and free trips to the driving range (is it software for country clubs?) Substitute any of foosball, ping-pong, beer kegs, red-bull, razor scooters and whatnot. You're only going to please half the people, half the time, and probably the wrong people, because who really ever liked razor scooters and nerf guns, anyway?<p>Career and skill development is a perk that is really overlooked. It's a start to offer unlimited Amazon books. However, companies could go much further and offer seminars and full blown courses. It doesn't even have to be expensive corporate training. You could pay a grad student to teach a full blown machine learning course for less than half the cost of a weekend long training seminar.
1. Respect
2. Autonomy
3. Control<p>None of those cost money yet so few workplaces value them since disrespect, micromanagement, and industrial era style division of labor are addictions of the corporate management crowd. It's gospel to Ivy League educated and Old Money.<p>As a separate issue, "As startups, we can't really offer top-dollar salaries to our employees." is complete nonsense. First of all, "we don't pay top dollar" is doublespeak for "We pay below market rate." Nothing says "We don't respect you." as much as that does. If you can't at the absolute minimum pay market rate for the level of talent you require you shouldn't be in business. End of story.
The scotch library is pretty silly.<p>1/2 day on Halloween is a great idea.<p>I am not a fan of company-sponsored lunch; it sends a message that you're expected to be working constantly. Many of the big finance companies do it, and the employees are clear about why.<p>Books are so cheap relative to FTE cost, I don't know why you'd even come up with a "training policy" for them. We just give everyone an Amazon account and say "go to town". You buy a book, it's yours; the only rule is, don't buy books for your friends on our dime. :)
My company had an official holiday -- Company Founding Day -- adjacent to a national holiday every year, turning a 3 day weekend into a 4 day weekend, and required anyone wanting to work on Company Founding Day to get signed permission from the CEO. (Of a 1,000+ employee megacorp.) When customers/vendors complained about a particular employee's inavailability for their needs, everyone could just say "Sir, I'm sorry, there is nothing I can do. It is Company Founding Day."<p>That costs rounding error next to an employee. Fog Creek-style catered lunches are rather substantially more expensive, but having done them, I think the social benefits to them are pretty awesome. (Company-sponsored dinner, on the other hand, would scare the heck out of me.)
Depending on your business and your employees? Equipment.<p>I recently worked at a TV station and regularly asked my boss if I could do things like borrow a camera on a weekend, or installed a single game for some of us to play after hours when no one was working.<p>The answer was always "no". That was unfortunate. The camera I kinda get; it could break. But using my computer at work, when no one else is? Seemed relatively harmless.
Quiet hours, especially in a cube farm.<p>Free soda, coffee, tea. (I'm a little negative on free snacks, but if that works for you, okay).<p>Subsidize access to things like the ACM portal, or other subscription journals. Buy technical books for people.<p>A shooting range in the basement. ("Let's go think about this problem over a few rounds" has a different flavor). While zoning and other laws would make this impractical, some of the groups I've been in have had "range days," and they've all been a lot of fun, even -- or maybe <i>especially</i> -- for the newbies.
Don't forget to review Dan Pink's talk on motivation:<p><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html</a><p>Having said that my personal favorites are unlimited free books a la Matasano, and flexible work environment (working from office or remotely are interchangeable), and flexible vacation policy (several recent HN posts on this).<p>Completely distributed teams like SpiderOak are pretty awesome, so set up your company to work like that as the default, and have an office people can work/meet in when they want or need, but connect to the servers the same way whether in or out of the office (a universal API, so to speak).<p>Let me work when I'm most productive, be it 6am to 3 in the afternoon, or noon to midnight, or whatever. Trust in my incentive to care about the company's success (and by extension my own cashflow). I don't even mind a pager in setups like that, as long as it's used for emergencies only and not abused.
Let people choose what tools they use to get the job done. It really sucks to be forced to use inferior tools/software/hardware/etc at work than what you have become accustomed to using in more progressive environments.
I would have couches and sleep/napping areas--a lot of them.<p>I think the best and most essential things to quality of life are: air, water/food/drink, exercise, sleep. I find that there is an unsurprising correlation that when I am healthy and fit, I am also able to perform my best at the computer.
Treats. Free donuts, coffee, pizza, beers, etc. That kind of thing is low-cost and highly appreciated.<p>Plus there's the communal, social factor of all eating/drinking together as a team.