The in-kind component of remuneration is not simply a palliative for the absence of money. The article shows that this is a long-standing practice, rooted in custom and sometimes in written texts, whether employment contracts or corporate statutes. They are linked neither to the duration of the employment relationship nor to the hierarchical status of the individuals concerned. Their social, economic and symbolic significance must be carefully contextualized. This is possible by a micro-historical study that focuses here on the employees of the Medici grand dukes at the turn of the sixteenth century, the Italian glassmakers who migrated to Europe at the end of the sixteenth century and in the seventeenth century, and the dispersed textile industry of Prato between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.