The same goes for better keyboards or chairs for employees. I'll have a coworker say "this keyboard is uncomfortable" or "I'm squinting a lot at this monitor", and when I offer to order something different, they reflexively say "Oh, don't get anything too fancy!"
If the company's going to ask someone to work years of their life away, the least a company can do is make sure the damage to vision, posture and wrists is minimized. Note minimized - it gets a little more clear when you realize that nobody really comes out of a career with better health - even if it's just age.
(someone will probably pop up and say "But I'm more healthy working now that I've lost weight at 50 years of age than I was at 30!" Fine. But you'll never get to be 30 again, fat or thin.)
I showed up at my first day at the new gig with my own keyboard (tenkeyless Cherry MX brown keyswitches) and mouse. Multiple people said "Hey, you don't have to bring your own stuff, just tell us what you want and we'll order it."
Having spent a decade at a much larger company (Halliburton) I feel absolutely spoiled at this place. The system they gave me on Monday? Brand new 2015 Macbook Pro Retina 15" with 512G SSD and 16G RAM (and external USB3 hub and USB3 SATA HD for Time Machine backups). Two 23" monitors were already on my desk waiting with DVI-to-Mini-Displayport adapters.
Today I sent a request for a desk lamp, and someone walked in 30 minutes later with two and asked which one I preferred. This afternoon I requested a license key for VMWare Fusion 8, and had it in email about an hour later. This stuff would have taken weeks, or never been approved, at my previous gig - where half the stuff on my desk was brought in from home because purchase requests would have been rejected with "You have a keyboard already, why do you need an expensive one?"
Today the Das Keyboard 4C was waiting on my desk when I arrived (it was requested two days ago) and the big and tall office chair I requested was delivered (assembled) this afternoon. I feel so spoiled compared to places I've worked at before.
When I inquired about a better chair, I wrote "I'm a big dude and the chair I have now won't last more than month or two with me on it. Do we have options for better chairs? No rush, whenever you have time."
One of the facilities guys came by a couple hours later, said "We have two options for big and tall chairs, want to follow me and you can try out the ones that a couple other people have?" The first one I tried out in someone else's office (they were gracious and said "sure, he can try mine") worked, I said "This one will do". He rolled it in, assembled, into my office the very next afternoon!
Sort of a funny contrast from my first day at my first "real" IT job at an ISP in Oklahoma City in 1995 - "here's a screwdriver, you get to assemble your own desk." That first day happened to also be April 19 - the day of the OKC Bombing. What a first day.... We ended up winning awards for our duct-tape-and-bailing-wire on-the-fly 'Net coverage of the event...
Everyone oohs and ahhs about the perks that Googlers and Facebookers have - but I'm feeling pretty damned spoiled here in Houston.
If the company's going to ask someone to work years of their life away, the least a company can do is make sure the damage to vision, posture and wrists is minimized. Note minimized - it gets a little more clear when you realize that nobody really comes out of a career with better health - even if it's just age.
(someone will probably pop up and say "But I'm more healthy working now that I've lost weight at 50 years of age than I was at 30!" Fine. But you'll never get to be 30 again, fat or thin.)