I always assumed most of these large companies would adapt and survive but it’s looking increasingly like they will not, or cannot.
Ahh yes, food, such a childish thing.
But I think it’s a universally good perk for more than children. It’s tax efficient (company pre-tax and non-profit expense vs post-income-tax expensive), and it keeps people around the office and around their employees. Keeping employees at work with their coworkers is for sure good for business.
Oh?
Read that as “I envied them before, but hopefully my suffering will be worth it if I don’t lose my job”.
It’s pretty sad and unpleasant to watch.
I see this as just a sour grapes piece from a journalist who has to cover tech from outside the bubble.
I think it’s slowly changing. Maybe not getting “boring” and stodgy but changing. The culture from fb and goog in 2005 of crazy perks like food is probably going away. It’s probably be replaced with new things, like WFH and super funded 401ks and cushy healthcare. It’s a sign of an aging workforce and a changing WFH first culture. Eg Google provided digital (and pricy) reusable Covid test kits to everyone during the pandemic.
Fast forward a few years, and a crop of startups (that innovated while the incumbents belt-tightened) blindside previously unassailable monopolies.
I find it kind of ironic that they use Facebook and Google as examples in the article.
Remember when FB bought the Sun campus, stripped it to concrete walls, and grafitti'ed the hell out of it? Google HQ is the fossilized remains of the SGI campus.
The big question now is: Who is going to dethrone the current rudderless big tech companies, and how will they do it?
Watch who hires all of the laid off tech workers over the next few years.
Especially for organizations that have thousands of employees in one location, providing a cafeteria can be much cheaper for both the employees and the organization than thousands of employees going out to eat in private establishments at lunch time. The organization providing housing to employees to work around the bloated real estate sector can also be beneficial to the employeees and the organization. Similarly, Apple mulling its own health services is a good idea - they can reduce their costs and increase quality of life.
Its economies of scale after all. If you have tens of thousands of organization members in a location, it becomes an economy of scale that can reduce every member's and organization's costs directly.
If you do not provide such services to your members using economies of scale inside your organization and instead leave it to the free market by giving monetary compensation instead, you can bet that the free market will do everything in its power to suck all of that monetary compensation out of the hands of the employees by providing the minimum service in return to maximize profit.
The cafeteria will still be cheaper for employees than going out to restaurants, and it will be cheaper than the company picking up the tab for everyone.
It used to be common to make a lunch and bring it to work too.
This recent stuff that tech workers are entitled to a free meal at work or to go spend an hour+ to go to a restaurant for lunch every day is a very new thing.
Well, if the food can be provided for cheap enough, it may make more sense to give it away free than to handle all the accounting hassle.
> This recent stuff that tech workers are entitled to a free meal at work or to go spend an hour+ to go to a restaurant for lunch every day is a very new thing.
Its not. It was a practice very widespread in most of the world's social democracies, especially in government organizations, in order to lift up the life standards of the members. Its still used in a lot of countries. The US has 'rediscovered' it through the tech companies. Just like its 'rediscovering' company-provided housing and all the other tangible benefits that the rest of the world still practices instead of leaving their employees to the mercy of the market.
That's what she thinks is petty? I wonder if she feels the same about replacing snack bars and drink fridges with free vending machines to slow down the workers who fill their backpacks full of Odwalla, Monster, and expensive snacks every night.
These benefits were worthwhile when employees appreciated them, but appeasing increasingly hostile and entitled workers is a losing battle.
At some point they had to stop as they had caught employees emptying the free drink fridges and taking them off campus and reselling them.
So they had to stop offering that stuff. Though I'm sure they had to re-add it later.
Which of these large companies would you say have a poor work-life balance on average? Google, Facebook, Adobe, Microsoft, and others have reputations as rest-and-vest retirement homes. I've heard Netflix can be challenging, along with some parts of Apple, but nothing like startups, investment banking, or big law.
Twitter before Elon was more like "rest" since they were vesting garbage, but he's trying to morph them into Tesla, which does have a terrible reputation for balance.
Software is ultimately about replacing inefficient human communication and we still have a lot of that.
Some of the other stuff like untracked/unlimited PTO (It's never really unlimited) and free coffee and snacks is nice to have.
I'm in my 40s. I started internships in 1996. All this free food and alcohol, etc.. didn't exist till around 2010.
We would have occasional "hey we're working late so we're getting pizza" in the 1990s and 2000s. We would have "hey we're having a BYOB in the cafeteria friday afternoon." Not this constant culture stuff that constantly wasted tons of money. But Coffee has always been free & around.
It does seem like younger workers who have only experienced the current environment have gotten entitled to it. We used to have crunch time and working weekends and all that nonsense and we didn't have the perks. Sometimes the companies ran out of money anyway. Tougher times can kind of suck. But it still makes these jobs great. They always paid really well. You were still sitting in front of a computer and not stuck doing physical labor.
I worked for Google at the campus on Crittenden for a short stint in 2015. We had a few folks keep the kegerator stocked with their home brews and a wall of liquor one could sample as needed. I kept the kitchenette stocked with hot sauce on my own accord b/c I wanted to have some handy.
I'm also in my (late) 40s and all of these little perks were very new to me. I quickly grew accustomed to them, but to be honest I didn't miss a single one of them after I left. I don't know that they really moved the needle for me at all.
Except for the shuttle. I *loved* having the shuttle. It greatly simplified the ability to not have a car for the first time in my adult life and it was awesome.
That's not "petty" – people shouldn't have been doing that in the first place. A take-home box should be for you, not so you can pile up food to "feed your family".
