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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

#201

Post by tananaev »

lovich wrote: post #94
beenBoutIT wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to make a huge difference in terms of FB's appeal to potential employees. Who wants to work at FB if it means that you'll have to waste time and energy figuring out what to do for lunch every day?

I dont think that's considered a deal breaker for most people, or even a major consideration

If two companies offer offer same salary and similar in every other sense, but one doesn't offer free food, I will choose one that does. If the company that doesn't offer food has +$20 salary per day, I would probably still choose one with food. It's easier, more convenient and probably healthier as well.

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

#202

Post by JimboOmega »

sampo wrote: post #147
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.

> As a Bay Area resident my priorities are the cost of housing, cleaning our dirty streets and alleviating traffic congestion. As far as I understand, the prevailing policy is doing the exact opposite on all those three.

Yup. Prevent construction of new housing. Forcing prices up, putting more people on the streets or commuting from an Exurb.

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

#203

Post by JimboOmega »

dunpeal wrote: post #136
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.

> Solving the basics is incredibly important. Ah, but you see, it is also difficult! "Dirty streets" and "traffic congestion" are big, messy problems, requiring careful planning, managing projects and contractors, adversarial factors, etc. By contrast, passing laws that apply to corporations is so easy! They are generally law abiding, so you just tell them "no more free food for you!", and they obey. Until, you know,…

I really wonder what it will take to kill this Golden Goose. Bay area employees are already a big premium over employees in other areas, but companies still really want to be here. No free food is almost asinine... but it's not a big thing compared to the extra cost in salaries.

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

#204

Post by dunpeal »

trendia wrote: post #179
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Cool, so start-ups lose a potential hiring perk to the incumbents. They could just do something similar to what colleges do: - increase salaries just a bit - but the increased salary goes to a food card - employees can't easily turn this into cash - you swipe it and "pay" - the company is essentially paying for the employee's food Money changes hands, but no one is at a net loss than what a free food perk would cost…

This would make demand less elastic, pushing restaurant prices up for the rest of us.

Absolutely. This will increase demand and raise prices.

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

#205

Post by dmode »

dunpeal wrote: post #194
dmode wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get caught up and be enraged by clickbait BI headlines. Bay Area cities are not cracking down on anything. There is exactly one passed rule so far. And that is by Mountain View that only applies to a single office development. The SF rule is on proposal stages and is unlikely to pass.

> And that is by Mountain View that only applies to a single office development. That is not true. The rule applies to all new offices in MTV. The Facebook office just happens to be the first new office that was completed with the intention to provide free food, since the law passed. (Applying a rule like that to Facebook alone - on what basis, exactly? - would be discriminatory, unusual, and likely unenforceable.) >…

Do you have a source for your first assertion ? This link explicitly says that it applies to the Facebook development

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

They haven't decided whether to expand to cover Google's expansion

For the SF rule, it is only proposed by Peskin and Safai. And Peskin himself said on twitter that this is just a proposal.

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

#206

Post by PretzelFisch »

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!

Is there anything stopping the next campus from opening a restaurant and not charging their employees?

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

#207

Post by milesvp »

favorited wrote: post #155
jotux wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title could almost be: "Large tech companies lobby local officials to allow them to offer exclusive employment benefits."

Is that what happened? Did large tech companies advocate for this? Or is that a conspiracy theory?

I can tell you what I learned from my undergrad econ professors. Every time you see regulations that look like they hurt an industry, you will inevitably find the biggest player in said industry pushing for it. For large companies, the cost of compliance is a smaller percentage of their total costs than for smaller companies, and so it acts as a moat for smaller players trying to break into the industry, effectively reducing competition, and keeping prices high.

So, conspiracy theory or not, it's very plausible that the large established players had a hand in drafting this law.

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

#208

Post by munificent »

jotux wrote: post #185
favorited wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that what happened? Did large tech companies advocate for this? Or is that a conspiracy theory?

I admit this is pure speculation. There are mentions in another article[1] that some restaurant associations supported it: >The measure has the support of Gwyneth Borden, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association and other local merchants. It seems suspicious that before the legislation is even introduced exceptions have been carved out for the existing big companies. [1] http://www.sfexaminer.com/…

If they tried to take the cafes away from existing tech employees, they would have a riot on their hands. Googlers and Facebookers would burn the city to the ground. It is an intensely beloved part of the job.

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

#209

Post by harlanji »

If I read correctly, Alphabet can just add another letter that's a catering company with a commercial kitchen and bring all the meals in on trucks. "Startups" don't have their own food preparation operations as-is, they use catering or similar food delivery which seem unaffected. Maybe the people affected don't realize that. More demand from those services might even make them cheaper as more players enter the space. I don't see who loses, unless "kitchen" extends all the way down to stocked pantries and dish washers.

No opinions of my own offered here. I've enjoyed offices with and without meal options in SoMa and around the Bay.

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

#210

Post by nostrademons »

dunpeal wrote: post #191
megy wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The Googleplex has over 20,000 employees, and food trucks are among the least efficient ways to feed them. You'd have huge convoys of food trucks entering and leaving the Googleplex for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Access control is vital in a location like a tech company's headquarters. With hundreds of random food trucks coming and going every day, such control will become impossible. Finally, food trucks are noto…

The Village at San Antonio is not North Bayshore. This wouldn't work at Google's current campus because there are literally not enough restaurants to feed everyone - there were 4 when I worked there (Sports Page + the Sunnybowl/Falafel/Sushi complex), and since then Sports Page has closed and there are apparently a few new ones by the Computer History Museum. Perhaps the new zoning plans for North Bayshore include more, but it'll be years before that's done.

But when The Village was zoned, it was explicitly done with street-level retail for a wide variety of restaurants. There are over a dozen restaurants within a 5-minute walk of Facebook's offices, plus a Walmart, Safeway, Whole Foods, and produce market, all of which have ready-to-eat meals.

Something that's left out of a lot of the news coverage of this: it's not a law but a development condition attached to the particular property that Facebook is occupying. When a real-estate developer wants to develop a piece of property, there's a complex negotiation with the local municipality (or county, if it's in unincorporated land) that includes things like contracting for water/sewer/garbage services, how to ensure there's adequate police & fire coverage, how the town will build new roads to handle traffic generated from the property, what's the impact on schools & community services, and what types of dwellings & permitted uses are available for the property (you can't build a skyscraper in the path of SJC airport, for example, nor can you build a chip fab on residential land). Written into that contract is the cafeteria clause under discussion here. While I have some doubts about whether this is a good thing (I've got another comment here where I expressed mixed feelings), it's a contract and not a law, and obviously Facebook has felt that the restriction is not too onerous for the building to be worth occupying.

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