The Developer's Hierarchy of Needs is similar but not identical to the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs.

So starting from the most basic need. It's not water, it's not food.

Coffee/Tea is essential. some form of caffeine that can be consumed. You could have Coffee bread or Coffee Sachets or Tea or Decafe. I need my brain awake to get work done. Fun fact, back when caffeine hadn't been discovered alcohol was far more popular than water because of the sanitization issues at the time.

What's going on here exactly?

To explain that we need to look at Soft Systems methodology. What looks like unproductive work from an accounting perspective is some of the most valuable work we do. If your staff cannot socialize away from the work desk they will suffer.

Source: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/5/3/28

If we are critical and look at reality in this case a lot is going on in a Coffee/Tea break. Despite the rumor that Developers are not social, we can be. However it's often avoided when people ask can you build a website for me for free.

Side note: The history of why this particular drug was so popular and quickly adopted by cultures is a curious one indeed. Spoiler alert lots of people really like a caffeine hit. Please don't overdo it though as I've heard of people consuming energy drinks with massive amounts of sugar in the double digits. Side effects of this combination are quite nasty.

Quiet time to work is essential for deep work to take place. No matter how much you hear about Generative AI replacing people, Deep workers are always rare and highly valued. Generative AI can help those deep workers, however, it will augment their abilities. Like a dog, it needs you to throw the ball effectively and train it. Build your habits accordingly and stack them.

Ram, despite what you may have heard. you cannot download more ram. Ram is required for the computer to keep in memory all the applications we run locally. In order to debug we may need many of them at one time. The more shopping trips it needs to make the slower the developer will go.

Network, yes those pesky developers keep trying to sneak out of the network and get to work. What they need is for the various items like packages to be loaded and the license to be validated. Make sure the right safeguards are in place.

Minimum interruptions while coding, the truth is sometimes you don't know what you've got till it's taken away. The Open Offices setup causes numerous issues. It's taxing, on deep workers. Mentally taxing. Avoid Context switching as it decreases focus. If you see a developer with they're headphones on it probably means they're busy and don't wish to be distracted.