Ten years ago this week I thought I would write a piece to offer a useful metaphor for straight white male privilege without using the word “privilege,” because when you use the word “privilege,” straight white men freak out, like, I said then, “vampires being fed a garlic tart.” Since I play video games, I wrote the piece using them as a metaphor. And thus “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is” was born and posted.

And blew up: First here on Whatever, where it became the most-visited single post in the history of the site (more than 1.2 million visits to date), and then when it was posted on video gaming site Kotaku, where I suspect it was visited a multiple number of times more than it was visited here, because Kotaku has more visitors generally, and because the piece was heavily promoted and linked there. 

The piece received both praise and condemnation, in what felt like almost equal amounts (it wasn’t; it’s just the complainers were very loud, as they often are). To this day the piece is still referred and linked to, taught in schools and universities, and “living on the lowest difficulty setting” is used as a shorthand for the straight white male experience, including by people who don’t know where the phrase had come from.

(I will note here, as I often do when discussing this piece, that my own use of the metaphor was an expansion on a similar metaphor that writer Luke McKinney used in a piece on Cracked.com, when he noted that “straight male” was the lowest difficulty setting in sexuality. Always credit sources and inspirations, folks!)

In the ten years since I’ve written the piece, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, the response to it, and whether the metaphor still applies. And so for this anniversary, here are some further thoughts on the matter.

1. First off: Was the piece successful? In retrospect, I think it largely was. One measure of its success, as noted above, is its persistence; it’s still read and talked about and taught and used. Anecdotally, I have hundreds of emails from people who used it to explain privilege to others and/or had it used to explain privilege to them, and who say that it did what it was meant to do: Get through the already-erected defenses against the word “privilege” and convey the concept in an interesting and novel manner. So: Hooray for that. It is always good to be useful.

2. That said, Upton Sinclair once wrote that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” In almost exactly the same manner, it is difficult to get a straight white man to acknowledge his privileges when his self-image depends on him not doing so. Which is to say there is a very large number of straight white men who absolutely do not wish to acknowledge just how thoroughly and deeply their privileges are systemically embedded into day-to-day life. A fair number of this sort of dude read the piece (or more perhaps more accurately, read the headline, since a lot of their specific complaints about the piece were in fact addressed in the piece itself) and refused to entertain the notion there might be something to it. Which is their privilege (heh), but doesn’t make them right.

But, I mean, as a straight white dude, I totally get it! I also work hard and make an effort to get by, and in my life not all the breaks have gone my way. I too have suffered disappointment and failure and exclusion and difficulty. In the context of a life where people who are not straight white men are perhaps not in your day-to-day world view, except as abstractions mediated by television or radio or web sites, one’s own struggles loom large. It’s harder to conceive of, or sympathize with, the idea that one’s own struggles and disappointments are resting atop of a pile of systemic privilege — not in the least because that implicitly seems to suggest that if you can still have troubles even with those many systemic advantages, you might be bad at this game called life.

But here’s the thing about that. One, just because you can’t or won’t see the systemic advantages you have, it doesn’t mean you don’t still have them, relative to others. Two, it’s a reflection of how immensely fucked up the system is that even with all those systemic advantages, lots of straight white men feel like they’re just treading water. Yes! It’s not just you! This game of life is difficult! Like Elden Ring with a laggy wireless mouse and a five-year-old graphics card! And yet, you are indeed still playing life on the lowest difficulty setting! 

Maybe rather than refusing to accept that other people are playing on higher difficulty settings, one should ask who the hell decided to make the game so difficult for everyone right out of the box (hint: they’re largely in the same demographic as straight white men), and how that might be changed. But of course it’s simply just easy to deny that anyone else might a more challenging life experience than you have, systemically speaking. 

3. Speaking of “easy,” one of the problems that the piece had is that when I wrote the phrase “lowest difficulty,” lots of people translated that to “easy.” The two concepts are not the same, and the difference between the two is real and significant. Which is, mind you, why I used the phrase “lowest difficulty” and not “easy.” But if you intentionally or unintentionally equate the two, then clearly there’s an issue to be had with the piece. I do suspect a number of dudes intentionally equated the two, even when it was made clear (by me, and others) they were not the same. I can’t do much for those dudes, then or now.

4. When I wrote the piece, some folks chimed in to say that other factors deserved to be part of a “lowest difficulty setting,” with “wealth” being primary among them. At the time I said I didn’t think wealth should have been; it’s a stat in my formulation — hugely influential, but not an inherent feature of identity like being white, or straight, or male. This got a lot of pushback, in no small part because (and relating to point two above) I think a lot of straight white dudes believed that if wealth was in there, it would somehow swamp the privileges that being white and straight and male provide, and that would mean that everyone else’s difficulty setting was no more difficult than their own.

It’s ten years on now, and I continue to call bullshit on this. I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor and I’ve been in the middle, and in all of those economic states I still had and have systemic advantages that came with being white and straight and male. Yes, being wealthy does make life less difficult! But on the other hand being wealthy (and an Oscar winner) didn’t keep Forest Whitaker from being frisked in a bodega for alleged shoplifting, whereas I have never once been asked to empty my pockets at a store, even when (as a kid, and poor as hell) I was actually shoplifting. This is an anecdotal observation! Also, systemically, wealth insulates people who are not straight and white and male less than it does those who are. Which means, to me, I put it in the right place in my formulation.

5. What would I add into the inherent formulation ten years on? I would add “cis” to “straight” and “white” and “male.” One, because I understand the concept better than than I did in 2012 and how it works within the matrix of privilege, and two, in the last decade, more of the people I know and like and love have come out as being outside of standard-issue cis-ness (or were already outside of it when I met them during this period), and I’ve seen directly how the world works on and with them. 

So, yes: Were I writing that piece for the first time in 2022, I would have written “Cis Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is.” 

6. Ten years of time has not mitigated the observation about who is on the Lowest Difficulty Setting, especially here in the United States. Indeed, if anything, 2022 in the US has been about (mostly) straight white men nerfing the fuck out of everyone else in the land in order to maintain their own systemic advantages. Oh, you’re not white? Let’s pass laws to make sure an accurate picture of your historical treatment is punted out of schools and libraries, and the excuse we’ll give is that learning these things would be mean to white kids. You’re LGBTQ+? Let’s pass laws so that a teacher even mentioning you exist could get them fired. Trans? Let’s take away your rights for gender-affirming medical treatment. Have functional ovaries? We’re planning to let your rapist have more say in what happens to your body than you! Have a blessed day!

And of course hashtag not all straight white men, but on the other hand let’s not pretend we don’t know who is largely responsible for this bullshit. The Republican party of the United States is overwhelmingly straight, overwhelmingly white, and substantially male, and here in 2022 it is also an unabashedly white supremacist political party, an authoritarian party and a patriarchal party: mainstream GOP politicians talk openly about the unspeakably racist and anti-Semitic “Great Replacement Theory,” and about sending people who have abortions to prison, and are actively making it more difficult for minorities to vote. It’s largely assumed that once the conservative supermajority of the Supreme Court (very likely as of this writing) throws out Roe v. Wade, it’ll go after Obergefell (same-sex marriage) as soon as a challenge gets to them, and then possibly Griswold (contraception) and Loving (mixed-race marriage) after that. Because, after all, why stop at Roe when you can roll civil rights back to the 1950s at least?

What makes this especially and terribly ironic is that when game designers nerf characters, they’re usually doing it to bring balance to the game — to put all the characters on something closer to an even playing field. What’s happening here in 2022 isn’t about evening up the playing field. It’s to keep the playing field as uneven as possible, for as long as possible, for the benefit of a particular group of people who already has most of the advantages. 2022 is straight white men employing code injection to change the rules of the game, while it’s in process, to make it more difficult for everyone else. 

So yes, ten years on, the Lowest Difficulty Setting still applies. It’s as relevant as ever. And I’m sure, even now, a bunch of straight white men will still maintain it’s still not accurate. As they would have been in 2012, they’re entirely wrong about that. 

And what a privilege that is: To be completely wrong, and yet suffer no consequences for it. 

— JS

Hello, everyone. I’m going to be taking an extended break from kottke.org, starting today. I’ve been writing here for more than 24 years, nearly half my life — I need a breather. This is something I have been thinking about and planning for years¹ and I’d like to share why I’m doing it, how it’s going to work, what I hope to accomplish, and how you can help.

This is a long post and was a hard one to write — I hope you’ll give it your thoughtful attention. But first, let me introduce you to my plant.

(This is going somewhere. Trust me.)

Eight years ago when I still lived in NYC, I bought a fiddle leaf fig tree from a store in the Flower District. Here it is a couple of years ago, thriving next to my desk here in Vermont:

I’d recently moved into my own apartment after separating from my wife and figured a large plant in my new place would add some liveliness to a new beginning that was feeling overwhelming, lonely, and sad. For the first couple of months, I didn’t know if my tree and I were going to make it. I’d never really had a plant before and struggled getting a handle on the watering schedule and other plant care routines. It started losing leaves. Like, an alarming number of leaves.

I’d brought this glorious living thing into my house only to kill it! Not cool. With the stress of the separation, my new living situation, and not seeing my kids every day, I felt a little like I was dying too.

One day, I decided I was not going to let my fiddle leaf fig tree die…and if I could do that, I wasn’t going to fall apart either. It’s a little corny, but my mantra became “if my tree is ok, I am ok”. I learned how to water & feed it and figured out the best place to put it for the right amount of light. It stopped shedding leaves.

The fig tree was a happy plant for several years after that. And I was ok because my plant was ok — I found new routines and rhythms in my altered life, made new traditions with my kids, got divorced, met new people, moved to a new state (w/ my family and tree), rediscovered who I was as a person, and, wonderfully and unexpectedly, forged a supportive and rewarding parenting partnership and friendship with my ex. We made it through that tough time together, that plant and me.

Recently however, my fiddle leaf fig has been struggling again. It’s been losing leaves and has become lopsided — some branches are going gangbusters while others are almost bare and the plant is listing so badly to one side that the whole thing tips over without the weight of water in the pot. This is what it’s looking like these days:

My plant is not ok. And neither am I — I feel as off-balance as my tree looks. I’m burrrrned out. I have been for a few years now. I’ve been trying to power through it, but if you’ve read anything about burnout, you know that approach doesn’t work.

I appreciate so much what I’ve built here at kottke.org — I get to read and learn about all sorts of new things every day, create new ideas and connections for people, and think in public — and I feel incredibly lucky to be able to set my own schedule, be my own boss, and provide for my family. But if you were to go back into the archive for the past several months and read the site closely, you’d see that I’ve been struggling.

Does what I do here make a difference in other people’s lives? In my life? Is this still scratching the creative itch that it used to? And if not, what needs to change? Where does kottke.org end and Jason begin? Who am I without my work? Is the validation I get from the site healthy? Is having to be active on social media healthy? Is having to read the horrible news every day healthy? What else could I be doing here? What could I be doing somewhere else? What good is a blog without a thriving community of other blogs? I’ve tried thinking about these and many other questions while continuing my work here, but I haven’t made much progress; I need time away to gain perspective.

· · ·

So. The plan, as it currently stands, is to take 5-6 months away from the site. I will not be posting anything new here. I won’t be publishing the newsletter. There won’t be a guest editor either — if someone else was publishing here, it would still be on my mind and I’m looking for total awayness here. I’m planning on setting up a system to republish some timeless posts from the archive while I’m away, but that’s not fully in place yet. If you send me email (please do!), it might take me awhile to read it and even longer to reply — I plan to ignore my inbox as much as I can get away with. I probably won’t be on Twitter but will be more active on Instagram if you want to follow me there.

The goal of my time away from the site is resting, resetting, recharging, and figuring out what to do going forward. In this NY Times feature, Alexandra Bell said this about how art is made: “I need some space to think and live and have generative conversations and do things, and then I’ll make something, but I can’t tell you what it is just yet.” That’s the sort of energy I need to tap into for a few months.

Here’s the way I’ve been thinking about it: there’s a passenger ferry that goes from Cape Cod to Nantucket and there’s a stretch of time in the middle of the journey where you can’t see the mainland behind you and can’t yet see the island ahead — you’re just out in the open water. That’s what I need, to be in that middle part — to forget about what I’ve been doing here for so many years without having to think about where I’m going in the future. I need open water and 5-6 months feels like the right amount of time to find it.

· · ·

This is probably a good time to admit that I’m a little terrified about taking this time off. There’s no real roadmap for this, no blueprint for independent creators taking sabbaticals to recharge. The US doesn’t have the social safety net necessary to enable extended breaks from work (or much of anything else, including health care) for people with Weird Internet Careers. I support a lot of individual writers, artists, YouTubers, and bloggers through Substack, Patreon, and other channels, and over the years I’ve seen some of them produce content at a furious pace to keep up their momentum, only to burn out and quit doing the projects that I, and loads of other people, loved. With so many more people pursuing independent work funded directly by readers & viewers these days, this is something all of us, creators and supporters alike, are going to have to think about.

I’ve said this many times over the past 5 years: kottke.org would not be possible today without the incredible membership support I have gotten from the people who read this site. Members have enabled this site to be free for everyone to read, enriching the open web and bucking the trend towards paywalling information online. I hope you will continue to support me in taking this necessary time off.

If, for whatever reason, you would like to pause/suspend your membership until I return, email me and I would be happy to do that for you. You’re also free of course to raise or lower your membership support here if you’d like. Regardless of what you choose to do, I hope I will see you back here in the fall.

· · ·

If you’re curious about what’s on my agenda for the next few months, so am I! I’m leaving on a long-planned family trip soon, but other than that, I do not have any set plans. Suggestions and advice are welcome! I’d like to spend some unrushed time with my kids, who too often see me when I’m stressed out about work. I want to read more books. Watch more good movies. Take more photos. Go on pointless adventures. I want to exercise a little more regularly and figure out how to eat a bit better. Maybe travel some, visit friends or the ocean or both. Bike more. Stare at the walls. I hope to get a little bored. I need to tend to my fiddle leaf fig tree — if my tree is ok, I will be too.

I’m going to miss this — and all of you — more than I probably realize right now, but I’m ready for a break. I’ll see you in a few months.

*deep breath*

Here I go!

*jumps*

· · ·

P.S. The best way to keep tabs on when the site starts up again is to subscribe to the newsletter. You can also follow @kottke on Twitter, subscribe to the RSS feed, or follow me on Instagram so you don’t miss anything.

P.P.S. Big big thanks to the many people I’ve talked to about this over the past few months and years, especially Anil, Alaina, David, Adriana, Tim, Caroline, Matt, Joanna, Meg, Aaron, Edith, Kara, Megan, Anna, Jackson, and Michelle. (Forgive me if I’ve forgotten anyone.) I value your wise counsel and your pointing me, hopefully, in the right direction.

P.P.P.S. A quick blogroll if you’re looking for sites and newsletters to keep you busy while I’m gone. In no particular order, a non-exhaustive list: The Kid Should See This, The Morning News, Waxy, Colossal, Curious About Everything, Open Culture, Drawing Links, Clive Thompson @ Medium, Cup of Jo, swissmiss, Storythings, things magazine, Present & Correct, Spoon & Tamago, Dense Discovery, Austin Kleon, NextDraft, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Poetry Is Not a Luxury, A Thing or Two, The Honest Broker, Interconnected, The Whippet, Craig Mod, Why is this interesting?, Sidebar, The Prepared, Life Is So Beautiful, Fave 5, Sentiers, The Fox Is Black, and Scrapbook Chronicles. Happy hunting!

1. The original plan was to do this in late spring 2020 but….you know.↩

Rich Siegel, 30 years ago this week:

This is the first public release of BBEdit, which is a free text editor that has been under development and extensive in-house testing for the past two years.

BBEdit is 32-bit clean, compatible with any Macintosh running system version 6.0 or later, and when running under System 7.0, takes specific advantage of new features to enhance performance and appearance.

“32-bit clean” was a bugaboo at the time for older Mac apps (the platform was only 8 years old, so “older” wasn’t very old) to run on System 7.

BBEdit is also very economical with respect to disk and memory usage; it will run in a partition as small as 256K. The size of any file is only limited by the amount of memory available in BBEdit’s partition; there is no 32K upper bound.

Text editors that used the standard system text editing APIs in that era were limited to opening files no larger than than 32 kilobytes. That felt constraining even back in 1992. BBEdit could open files as large as the amount of available RAM. Times and technology have certainly changed, as has BBEdit, but BBEdit today (version 14.1, released a month ago) is remarkably similar in spirit to BBEdit then.

BBEdit offers fast and flexible multi-file search and replace capabilities; under System 7, it can also use On Location 2.0 as a searching engine. Grep pattern-matching is available for single- or multi-file searches.

I started using BBEdit in the fall of 1992. I think the version number was 2.1. (Anyone who claims to have used BBEdit 1.x is either misremembering or was a colleague or friend of Rich Siegel’s in 1991.) BBEdit’s multi-file search and replace remains the best I’ve ever seen. In 1992, though, it was a breakthrough.

And I remember thinking, “Grep search, what’s that about?”

Eight years later I was working at Bare Bones Software. My lasting contribution: tweaking the user manual’s Grep chapter when BBEdit 6.something adopted the PCRE regular expression engine; theretofore it had been using a heavily modified version of Henry Spencer’s original library.

18 years ago I created Markdown in BBEdit, with the intention of using it from BBEdit. That’s worked out pretty well — just about every long piece I’ve written for Daring Fireball was written in BBEdit (including this one, natch). At that time, I considered BBEdit mature and well-established.

Discussions marking this week’s anniversary on MetaFilter.

Jason Snell:

I use BBEdit every day. I write most of my stories in BBEdit. Sometimes I write about BBEdit in BBEdit.

Michael Tsai:

I’ve been using it since a year or two later, and I doubt there’s an app I’ve spent more time in. And let’s not forget the excellent documentation and customer support that go along with the app.

Peter Lewis:

Congratulations on 30 years of BBEdit! I’ve definitely been using it for at least 29 years and I can’t imagine my Mac without it. It is the absolutely gold standard for release notes, quality and reliability.

And lastly, Christian Smith:

I can think of no other piece of software that has stayed so true to its original design principles as BBEdit.

I can’t put it better than that.

Having been a fully remote, asynchronous company for nearly a decade at this point, we've discovered one thing about working from home.

Being happy with your space is a critical component of enjoying your work and being productive.

A few of our teammates have (graciously) agreed to share a glimpse into their home workspaces, including the gear and elements of the space itself they love.

(Sarah) Hawk, COO

Favorite piece of gear

I’m old school. I don’t use headphones or a mic or a fancy monitor stand or anything else that people reckon they can’t live without. The only thing I care about is my mug.

What you love about your space

What I love most about the space is the view of the trees out the window. It tricks my mind into thinking I’m outside.

Martin Brennan, Software Engineer

Favorite piece of gear

I’d have to say the Steelcase Gesture, though my favorite non-work-related gear item is the typewriter my wife bought me for my birthday.

What you love about your space

That it’s not perfect, but it’s mine. I love that I have a dedicated space to work and write to myself, I feel very lucky to have that, and over time I’m adding more things that make me happy to the space.

Kris Kotlarek, Software Engineer

Favorite piece of gear

Yeelight yltd001/yltd003 LED Screen Light Bar

When I was buying the monitor lamp, I was thinking that it is just a gimmick. However, now I love it. I am working from the corner of my living room, and that light is giving me nice separation between my working and living area.

What you love about your space

I will be honest, and I am not that good at keeping my desk tidy. However, I noticed, that if I can keep it clean, it is a bit easier for me to focus and I feel better in that area. Therefore, I am trying to have a habit to keep my workspace clean. I like a small notebook and pen which help keep my space uncluttered. Also, Orbitkey mat allows me to hide my notebook when the day is over. That mat has a magnetic cable organizer which I am using to stick my pen.

Blake Erickson, Software Engineer

Favorite piece of gear

My favorite piece of gear are my Shure SE215 Pro headphones paired with the triple flange tips. These block out noise better than any over-the-ear noise-canceling headphones for a true isolation experience allowing me to get lost in my work.

SE215 Pro - Professional Sound Isolating™ Earphones

SE215 Professional Sound Isolating™ Earphones provide clear sound and deep bass through a single high-definition driver in a durable, discrete design with detachable 3.5 mm (1/8”) audio cable.

Professional Sound Isolating™ EarphonesShure

EATFL1-6 - Triple Flange Sleeves

Triple-flange sleeves replace sleeves for Shure Sound Isolating™ Earphones.

Triple Flange SleevesShure

What you love about your space

What I love about my workspace is actually what is behind me while I work. I built this feature wall so that I don’t have a boring white wall behind me on video calls. I’m very appreciative of having a dedicated room for my office, not only for calls but also that it is away from the front of the house so that the dogs can hang out with me and not bark at every single thing that passes by.

Tobias Eigen, Product Manager

Favorite piece of gear

It would have to be the monitor arms.

I have a dual monitor arm on the left and a laptop arm on the right. They are mounted to the grommet holes in my desk, look super clean and futuristic, and allow me to easily adjust the positioning of my laptop and two monitors any time I want to suit what I’m doing.

What you love about your space

I love pretty much everything about my setup.

My chair is so comfortable, the desk is adjustable, my cat is snoring happily next to me, and I have a lovely view out the window.

Constanza Abarca, Technical Advocate

Favorite piece of gear

I have a few tech gadgets that I like, but I have to do a special mention to my old school planner. I find that writing my daily to-do’s on paper helps me to keep them organized and always on sight. And it is very satisfying to cross the items with my pen once they are done. I use this planner.

What you love about your space

Since I work remotely, and because of the pandemic, I spend a lot of time inside. I love working from home, but sometimes I feel confined and bored.

So my dad built a big table and put it in the garden, so I can sit there from time to time. It is very nice to work with the feel of the wind in your face, and the birds chirping around.

Jordan Vidrine, Designer

Favorite piece of gear

My Sony WH-1000XM3 Noise Cancelling Headphones.

I love these headphones for obvious reasons. They help me to focus in the midst of distracting noises that can take place in such a small space.

What you love about your space

While my wife and I only work from our camper only intermittently, we love that our camper allows us to work from different locations; including state parks, campgrounds, or even a farm through Harvest Hosts.

Through remote work from our camper, we are allowed to constantly be amongst new & interesting scenery. For instance, I am currently working in the woods of Chicot State Park in Louisiana, but in a couple of weeks I will get to work from a state park in Florida with natural springs to explore!

Don’t get me wrong, working from such a small & confined space with your significant other can be difficult, but with the right mindset, a little planning, and patience, the pros for us definitely outweigh the cons

Mark VanLandingham, Software Engineer

Favorite piece of gear

The Ergodox EZ is my favorite piece of work gear. I used to have a lot of wrist discomfort after typing all day at work on top of playing video games at night. After switching to an ergonomic keyboard and feeling the benefits, it’s impossible to switch back.

What you love about your space

I have 2 little kids and even though my space is in a dark partly finished basement, I have a quiet(ish) space to go for work. It's also big enough to fit my guitar gear so that I can take breaks and play without having to get up and move.

Kate Jones, Director of People Experience

Favorite piece of gear

I think my favorite thing is the mini fridge. It’s the thing I use most after my computer. Gotta keep those La Croixs ice cold.

Natalie Tay, Software Engineering Team Lead

Favorite piece of gear

My favorite piece of non-work-related gear would be my beautiful Xbox Elite Wireless Controller. If you use controllers a lot and haven’t bought it, I suggest trying it out at your nearest game shop. You will likely fall in love.

If it’s work-related gear, it would have to be something music-related - probably my wired Westone Audio W20, in that orange box behind my laptop. It’s a very old pair of IEMs (about more than five years at this point) which I’m surprised even lasted that long given how abusive I am. The sound is great for its price, though I’m thinking of jumping ship to Shure after this one gives up. Noise isolation is very important for me and headsets have that tendency of hurting me despite me giving them many chances not to.

What you love about your space

I love my space mostly because my cat is always here. She’s blind so she sometimes walks on my feet (that precious feeling) and that’s my reminder to get off my computer and take a break. It’s also fun when I stand and work because it makes her think I’m walking around and so she’ll be very excited and start circling around me.

Justin DiRose, Growth & Marketing Manager

Favorite piece of gear

My absolute favorite piece of gear in this space is my 38” LG ultrawide. It’s a gorgeous display and I don’t know why I didn’t upgrade to this form factor sooner!

What you love about your space

I enjoy my space because it’s a bonus room above our garage, meaning it’s separated from all the noise of having three young kids at home. The only thing I’d change is more natural light. It feels a bit like a basement at times.

Joshua Rosenfeld, IT Associate

Favorite piece of gear

My Nest Hub. I have lots of smart devices in my house, and I can control them all from the little screen on my desk.

What you love about your space

I like how open my space is. The wall behind my desk is a half-wall, so it’s open to the rest of the floor, making the room feel even larger. I also like my 3-monitor setup. With the ultra-widescreen monitor on the left, I essentially function with 4 “screens”, allowing me to have numerous things up and running at the same time.

Rishabh Nambiar, Community Team Lead

Favorite piece of gear

1. IKEA Bekant
2. Corsair K65 LUX Keyboard (because of the layout, MX Red switches, and inbuilt wrist rest)
3. Kali LP-6 Speakers + Ableton Push 2

What you love about your space

• Mega-desk! Enough space for all my work + gaming + music gear + bamboo plant
• optional natural light

Regis Hanol, Software Engineering Team Lead

Favorite pieces of gear

The desk is a comfortable 2m wide and 80cm deep but the most important feature is the automated stand/sit mode. I switch to standing mode for a couple of hours every day and it’s been a blessing on my back.

I used to have three 27" Dell monitors but I had lots of neck pain at the end of the day. When I switched to one 38" LG UltraWide monitor I felt much better.

My clicky device of the month is a MagicForce 68 and my pointing device is an MX Master 3.

When I’m seating, my *ss and back are supported by an old but trusty Aeron Chair.

I listen to a lot of music while I work, either on the Sennheiser HD 560s or via the AudioEngine A5+ powered by the AudioEngine D1 DAC.

Ginevra Brown, Senior Accounting Specialist

Favorite pieces of gear

The desk is an EFFYDESK which is sit/stand (a feature highly recommended by my PT) (59"x29")

My mouse is an M720 Triathlon and the keyboard is G910 Orion Spark.

Nothing too exciting, but enough to keep my little accountant heart happy.

Finally, my headphones are HS60 Pro Surround, great for work calls, listening to music, and tuning out the kids.