Benefits
Coworking or coffee shop 👩💻
To encourage teammates to work where they’re happiest, Buffer covers co-working space membership fees.
Market rates vary for this one, but as an example we would say for a coworking space in Barcelona, $300 per month would be a low cost, and $450 per month would be a high cost. Whereas in London, $500 is a low cost and $650 is a high cost.
We’ve budgeted $80,000 to reimburse teammates for co-working costs.
Coffee Shop allowance 
Up to $200/month, in lieu of regular coworking Space membership.
Covers beverages at a coffee shop and/or a day pass at a coworking space.
For 2018, we’ve budgeted $10,000 for teammates to utilize the coffee shop allowance.
Internet: 100% of home internet, the average is $60 – $65 per teammate.
Teammates can expense internet in addition to the coworking and coffee shop memberships. Sometimes this is bundled with TV or other home services that Buffer doesn’t cover, we focus purely on the internet portion of a bill.
We budgeted $45,000 to cover internet costs across the team.
Conferences 
For 2018, each team has a conference budget to be shared amongst the team. As conference costs and team needs vary, we defer to the Area Leads to determine how to distribute this sum in the most valuable way. Some examples include leveraging the budget to send a few employees to big key conferences or using the budget to send teammates to speak at more conferences.
Here are the Conference area budgets for 2018:
- Admin & People – $4,000
- Marketing – $4,500
- Advocacy – $11,000
- Engineering (incl. Mobile) – $35,000
- Product (incl. Design & CX) – $25,000
- Data – $3,200
Learning and development stipend 
Up to $240 per calendar year/ $20 per month.
The Learning & Development stipend is available to support teammates’ ongoing self-improvement. This includes:
- Online courses (Treehouse, Udemy, Blinkist Premium, Coursera, CodeAcademy etc.)
- Classes, live training (General Assembly, local courses etc.)
- Leadership coaching
- Digital news subscriptions such as the Wall Street Journal and the Economist
For 2018, we budgeted $18,000 for teammates to utilize the learning and development stipend.
Kindle and audible books 
Each teammate and one dependent may receive unlimited, no-questions-asked Kindle and Audible.com books.
Reading is a cornerstone to our value of self-improvement and this has long been a favorite benefit of working at Buffer.
During a teammate’s first 45 days , US teammates will be gifted with a Kindle Paperwhite and international teammates are invited to purchase a Kindle on their own and expense this through Expensify.
We’ve budgeted a total of $26,933 for Kindle Book purchases to help support continuing education.
Laptops 
Buffer covers laptops for new teammates from their first day and has a 3-year renewal cycle for computers.
To help our team do their best work, we provide a laptop from day one. As computing requirements vary from team to team, and Area Leads know best which machines are most appropriate for their line of work.
We also have a 3–year renewal cycle for computers. However, this isn’t “automatic”; we strive to only replace computers as needed.
Other computer accessories 
Each teammate has up to $200 per year to spend on computer accessories to help them work smarter.
Examples of uses for this benefit:
- Wireless Keyboard
- Magic Mouse/Magic Trackpad
- Laptop stands, e.g. Roost, Rain mStand
- Headphones
- New Kindle Paperwhite
Our total equipment budget for 2018 came out to $94,600.