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Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

businessinsider.com

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Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

#161

Post by megy »

dunpeal wrote: post #141
DeepYogurt wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all tech workers went out for lunch every day that would be a huge boon to the local low skill labor market.

So over 20,000 employees would leave the Googleplex every day at noon to get lunch? This just means the next massive campus complex will not open in Mountain View. Big profitable companies and their hordes of tax paying employees will go elsewhere, and definitely will not be supporting MTV's local businesses. Welcome to the wonderful world of unintended consequences!

No, maybe they would come to the Googleplex. A huge boon in food trucks.

Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

#162

Post by repsilat »

tidon12 wrote: post #138
Vordax wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about all the employees that work in the cafeterias at Facebook?

This is the real point. The idea that somehow the catering business serving startups or the kitchen workers in cafes are somehow less worthy of support than owners of restaurants

No, this is not the real point. Employment isn't an upside, that's the broken window fallacy.

Employees should be allowed to bring food from home to eat at their desks if they want, and that is obviously terrible for jobs in local cafes and restaurants.

Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

#163

Post by deathanatos »

DeepYogurt wrote: post #131
justinzollars wrote: post #114

I'm sorry but this is so f*cking stupid. As a Bay Area resident my priorities are the cost of housing, cleaning our dirty streets and alleviating traffic congestion. This is an example of progressivism gone awry. Solving the basics is incredibly important. Our quality of life is in decline (in the bay area) and this is the best our politicians can do? I'm enraged.

If all tech workers went out for lunch every day that would be a huge boon to the local low skill labor market.

I skip breakfast, because the commute is so terrible that by the time I get to the office, it is too late, and I am unwilling to wake up any earlier in the morning for it. (Though, if I really did force myself to have breakfast, I would be waking up for it, not eating out.)

As for lunch, my company only provides it once per week. On the one day we do provide it, it is catered, and thus requires local labor. On the other days, I go out to get it. My favorite sandwich shop just closed; my coworker's favorite Korean place closed with them. If I had to guess, I would suspect they simply couldn't sustain themselves with the rents as they are. Their prices were decent. Other nearby eateries with more of a, for want of a better word, hipster feel to them charge significantly more for less food; I avoid eating there because over the course of the entire year, it represents a non-trivial amount of money. But if it comes to it that they're the only ones that can survive, I'll probably just abandon eating out altogether.

As it is, I'm making plans to abandon SV altogether primarily due to the issues mentioned by your parent: the ever declining quality of life in the Bay Area. Will that be a boon to the local market?

Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

#164

Post by gnopgnip »

ghein wrote: post #106
Roritharr wrote: post #80

This is very interesting for me for a very different reason: We're in Germany where this is taxed heavily. If you offer your employees free meals, this becomes part of their taxable income, so you actually have to give them a raise to even this out, and then you have employees that want to opt-out to get the hands on that cash... I always wondered how Google Germany deals with this. There is a minimum below which it…

It's taxable in the US as well. There have been occasional attempts to enforce the law - IRS recently made noises in 2014/15. The challenge is that it's taxable to the employees but hard to track and prove, it's for relatively little money per employee, and the firms argue that it's for their benefit to secure information/improve productivity/build cohesion... Google can and will fight far harder than the IRS is will…

It is not taxable if it is for the employers benefit

Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

#165

Post by ardit33 »

nostrademons wrote: post #158

Lotta hate for Mountain View in the comments here, which is ironic because with this ordnance Mountain View is trying to fix a problem that tech companies get a lot of hate on HN for. I've got mixed feelings about this, so I'll try and explain both sides: The problem MV's fixing is the perception that highly-paid tech workers have become a class of their own, isolated from the larger communities in which they live an…

Yeah, the Communist party in Albania had a great way to deal with 'community involvment'

Every first Sunday of the month (Sundays were the only days people had off, as Saturdays were actually work day), people were required to get out, and help clean out the neighborhood in 'cleaning actions'.

If you didn't do it, you'd be reprimanded, and if you didn't comply you'd be sent into re-education class, on how community involvement was crucial to a good communist society. If you still didn't comply then you'd be sent off to some 'action' in some more remote area.

Anyways, this is not communist 'community involvement' level yet, but the government should have no say on a person's personal private time.

Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

#167

Post by dunpeal »

DannyBee wrote: post #49
chatmasta wrote: post #5

Can anyone comment on the legality of this? IANAL and it’s just a feeling, but it seems like this must be unconstitutional somehow?

It's likely legal for states to do it It would not be legal for the feds. There are fun loopholes though. Here's the text of the condition for facebook. "CAFETERIA CONDITION: In order to foster synergy between office, restaurant, and retail uses in the Center and realize the economic vitality of the project, the project anticipates employees in the office space will utilize food and retail services available in the C…

> Facebook could open a restaurant in the center.

How would that work for a huge complex like the Googleplex?

They'd have to provide public access to all parts of their complex to comply.

> So for example, it could charge the public that walks in 1 million a meal.

Not a lawyer, but I think that will break the law. Otherwise, "public access" will become completely meaningless: if I don't like you, all items on the menu are no $1m, and of course you cannot stay on premise without ordering...

I'd love to hear a real lawyer analyzing this, but imho, both your suggestions constitute attempts to completely circumvent a law based on technicalities, which is a dangerous game to play when you're a corporation with offices in the jurisdiction of the legislative body you're trying to circumvent.

Your simple solution will also not work for very large businesses (due to the need to open up their entire campus for public access), nor small ones (who can't afford the cost in funds and labor of creating a separate public-access restaurant).

In my estimation, this will make any company think twice about starting a big office in MTV.

Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

#168

Post by pascalxus »

DeepYogurt wrote: post #131
justinzollars wrote: post #114

I'm sorry but this is so f*cking stupid. As a Bay Area resident my priorities are the cost of housing, cleaning our dirty streets and alleviating traffic congestion. This is an example of progressivism gone awry. Solving the basics is incredibly important. Our quality of life is in decline (in the bay area) and this is the best our politicians can do? I'm enraged.

If all tech workers went out for lunch every day that would be a huge boon to the local low skill labor market.

are you kidding me? There's already enormous demand for unskilled labor. Every single cafe and restaurant i encounter here in the bay area has positions open in the kitchen, dishwasher and waiters. One restaurant had 9+ positions open!

Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

#169

Post by stcredzero »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #53
ironjunkie wrote: post #31

This is one of the most stupid policy I have ever seen in the bay area (and there are a lot of stupid ones over here). As much as I dislike some of the big tech cos and the TechBros working there bragging about the free food all the time, I still believe a company should be able to decide if they want to offer food or not. Restaurants were unable to turn a profit, so they lobbied successfully and now everyone beside…

To be fair, it's not quite 'economy 101'. Or rather, 'economy 101' is that anyone with enough leverage, will use monopoly powers in one area, to take control of an adjacent economy. American Oil empires were not built on some new amazing way to get at oil, it was because some had control of the railroads, and charged their competitors a little more to transport therefore putting them out of business (through aggressi…

As it turns out, poverty doesn't cause crime. It's relative poverty that causes crime. Basically, if people are low down enough on the dominance hierarchy, they feel like they have no hope of getting anywhere, then why shouldn't they start acting up?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3XYHPAwBzE

(On the other hand, in societies where everyone is poor, there can be peace.)

Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

#170

Post by gnicholas »

This was covered by the local news [1] and the city council member who was interviewed said:

> “We felt the employees who work there should be able to patronize the businesses—the smaller businesses—in this shopping center”

Employees already have the ability to patronize these businesses. This law is about compelling patronage.

1: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/New-Facebook-Offices-M...

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