Want to know if a company has good engineering culture? Look up the company's engineers' facebook and twitter feeds and see what they're saying. Engineers who are happy tell everyone about it. Big monitors and choosing your email addresses are great; for a couple of weeks. Then after the big monitor honeymoon phase is over and the daily slog begins, the engineers realize that they have a big monitor that buries them in the horrible culture of the company that attracts people based on looks and surface happiness. Two big monitors and nice chairs are byproducts of a culture that is good, not reasons that a culture is good.
Find a company where the engineers are happy, where the engineers don't leave, and where the management understands that happiness doesn't mean a couple of monitors or a nice chair. Happiness is having your opinions valued, getting fulfillment out of your work and being able to effect change within the company.
Absolutely true. There is a company here in Charlotte, NC (any dev in Charlotte will know who this is) who puts all the toys on display to attract employees: flat screens on the wall, all the monitors on your desk you can handle, etc. etc. The actual company, though, is a soul-crushing hell hole with more churn than an amish dairy farm. That place is pure evil.
Let's just say the first word in the name is "Red" and the second is "Ventures". And there is no third word. They're consistently on the Inc. 500's "best places to work" list because they strong-arm employees into rating them well and most likely pay for the recognition.
Interesting. A senior manager from Red Ventures came to my school last year to talk about his company and recruit at my school. He made it sound pretty cool but looks can definitely be deceiving.
There's a reason they are always hiring. Churn is accepted and regular practice. The CEO is quoted as saying, "The graveyard is littered with 'indispensable employees'". They chronically under-pay and overwork. I could go on forever, but in summary, they charm perspective employees into a truly toxic and demeaning environment.
Then after you have found that company ask for the equipment you need? Sure the culture is more than just a few monitors, but I think a company not giving you the optimal gear is less likely to have a good culture.
The theory behind "2 monitors" is that companies that allow 2 monitors aren't the sort of places which have lots of soul crushing work. It's a proxy for a good company.
Not a very good theory, because I recently left a place with lots of soul-crushing work but where people in the software functional all had two monitors.
I was working mostly as a software engineer, but was actually categorized as a systems engineer; I did not have two monitors. They had people in the electrical and test orgs working effectively as software engineers also, and few of them had two. This (dys)functional organization was not at all apparent to an outside observer, no matter how much research they did, without someone on the inside.
So, while I would certainly be more favorably inclined towards a company that promised two monitors, choice of dev box, or other things, I would not use such things as a primary or secondary filter on where I want to work.
Find a company where the engineers are happy, where the engineers don't leave, and where the management understands that happiness doesn't mean a couple of monitors or a nice chair. Happiness is having your opinions valued, getting fulfillment out of your work and being able to effect change within the company.