Are Google employees more productive because of company perks? • Hacker News Board

Re: Are Google employees more productive because of company perks?

#41

Post by writepub » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 6:30 AM UTC

What evidence points towards higher productivity at Google? In my opinion, this is largely a myth.

When Google acquired Motorola, snotty Googlers paraded around claiming to be at least 2X smarter than the average Motorola employee. They publicly proclaimed to turn around a sinking ship and produce iPhone killers, emphasis on plural, within a few quarters.

But none of that famed productivity or genius amounted to measurable results.

An objective analysis will reveal that Google's main business - online advertising- has been so damn profitable for them that they've absorbed hundreds, if not thousands of failed projects burning billions. One might argue that any other company with the ability to subsidize this this kind of failure will churn out scores of projects with little chance of success, projecting an image of productivity.

Ponder on this for a moment, if everyone outside core advertising, AI, YouTube and Android are fired from Google tomorrow, their revenue and profit will barely budge. What % of Google do to think work on those products? So how productive do you deem the average Googler is?

Re: Are Google employees more productive because of company perks?

#42

Post by candiodari » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 9:38 AM UTC

ridiculous_fish wrote: post #38

Xoogler here; this information is circa 2015. The infamous perks are low-order bits for personal productivity. For example, on-site food is nice, but making it free actually hurts productivity: larger crowds so you spend more time waiting, you are more likely to travel between different cafes just to sample things, etc. However company-wide these are much more valuable because they improve recruiting and especially r…

I've had offsite food before and onsite food. Yes onsite food comes with queues, but meet up while working + queue + eat still beats the hell out of travel + meet up while waiting + travel + queue + eat + travel.

In my experience, onsite food (free or cheap) is often 30 to 45 minutes. Offsite food starts at 45 minutes and can be occasionally up to two hours and this is mostly out of your control.

I imagine this is pretty dependent on the exact area you work in though.

Re: Are Google employees more productive because of company perks?

#43

Post by nikitoz » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 10:48 AM UTC

avgDev wrote: post #20

I feel as I would hate to work there. They are creating all these things to make it a 2nd home for people. They want people to be there a LONG time. I'm happy with 40hrs with some days remote and I don't think I could switch to googles approach.

I don't think that they want you to stay there for a long time, because they serve only cold food in the evening (Zurich office). It is also OK to work from home from time to time (has to be agreed with manager).

Re: Are Google employees more productive because of company perks?

#44

Post by dakial1 » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 11:00 AM UTC

shanxS wrote: post #24

Does anyone else thinks this question is not well defined? Because, 1. How do you define employee productivity? 2. How do you know that Google employees have more productivity as opposed to other companies? The analysis becomes even more convoluted when "employees" encompasses everyone from engineer to janitor to executive.

Also, one possible answer is that the perks don't make the employees more productive, but they attract more productive employees.