>>had a budget over ~20k USD to decorate his personal office at work.
These sort of perks are common in senior management in several software companies as well. Especially if your job involves some sort of client/customer facing responsibilities.
Indian IT outsourcing firms give their top management a very lavish budget to spend. Typically 5 - 7 star hotel stay, business class travel, thick daily per diem to spend and the best meals money can buy. Plus they also get paid to spend what it takes to impress clients to win contracts. Office furnishing budget etc. I even know one person who bought a fairly expensive bose sound system, and even took it to his home over time. No one really audits these things, and money once given is large aggregated in a group by statement in a report somewhere, and since its already sanctioned, no one cares how its spent either.
This is one of the biggest motivations for me to move into management as a career upgrade.
You can often be happier more easily by learning to enjoy life without extravagant luxuries instead of fighting in a rat race for expensive baubles.
May be in a first world country like the US, the country from which I come from(India), things like these make huge difference to a person's lifestyle.
How does something like a sound system help you more in India than the US?
It's not a sound system. It's round the clock house help in a country like India. A driver (instead of working your way through mind numbing traffic every day, twice a day), a chef, a maid, etc.
It's buying real estate to secure your family's future for generations instead of living hand to mouth.
It's sending your kids to good schools or doctors in the West as opposed to hoping to scrape together enough cash to educate or send them to doctors at all.
It would be really hard for a first world person to understand how big the chasm is in less privileged parts of the world.
You do not want to be on the wrong side of the wealth divide.
It's not about speakers.
Just adding more to your point. People in the US and western hemisphere in general how many things that are just nature to them are not available to us here in India.
Case in point air and water. Just air and water. Like try breathing the dusty, polluted air. Or drinking water which gives you and your family throat infection every two months, and outbreaks of dengue killing family and friends every 6 months or so.
I'd literally do anything at this point just to breath good air. And that's just starting with the most fundamental requirement of life itself.