If cities want employees to patronize local businesses, they they should start providing enough housing so employees can live near work. Stop forcing employees to live 30 miles away by restricting housing and then complain "But why won't they shop here!?"
Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies
251–260 of 533 posts
Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
As a Mountain View resident who has to drive on Shoreline, please no! This would be disastrous. It's already a mess at 9 a.m. every day thanks to Google. I have to leave to get to work super early just to get on the freeway before the Google traffic makes me drive a 1 mile stretch in 1/2 hour.
Presumbly there would be restaurants in Shoreline in this scenario, and Google employees would walk to the restaurant to spend their money, just like in downtowns across the world. Or they'd bring lunch from home.
Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies
#253This is the beginning of the end for SF. Now that the techies are forced to experience the third world standards of the city, they will move to more habitable cities, like Detroit.
Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies
#254This 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…
Free meals are considered income?
But free benefits are not considered income?
I don't see the difference between the two.
Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies
#255Lotta 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…
Another possible consequence is that food prices in vicinity of new FB office will go up and price everyone else out.
Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies
#256But, doesn't this contradict the spirit of free markets?
Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
I dont think that's considered a deal breaker for most people, or even a major consideration
It could easily break a tie. If I can save an hour everyday because I don't have to figure out lunch/dinner, then that's more time for me.
People in literally every where else in the world live for that hour of lunchtime away from work, so I think (hope?) you're in the minority.
Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm wondering the same. Two growing trends that I'm observing: 1. Businesses moving out of California, especially NorCal. Sergey Brin already said two years ago that he would not have started Google in NorCal today. He was right. There's a lot more interest in other locations, such as Austin. 2. Remote work, and fully remote virtual offices. Personally I know a bunch of people who declined offers in the SFBay to avoi…
There is no truth to your assertion that companies will be leaving Bay. Google, Facebook, Salesforce etc. are actually massively expanding their Bay Area footprint. Google is expanding their Mountain View and building a massive new headquarters https://sf.curbed.com/2017/3/8/14858200/google-headquarters-... Google is also expanding into San Jose Apple just recently completed their spaceship campus Facebook is massive…
Austin is not a "bit player" in the tech scene. Incredible growth is happening outside of the California bubble. Texas, the entire east coast...
Many talented people don't want to relocate for work, and companies are realizing that. Distributed offices are becoming more and more of a thing.
Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies
#259I want to say this is the least rude way but I'll just say it -- this really seems like an oversight of local restaurants being unable to adapt to the market they have. It's similar to how certain stores who failed to realize online retail failed.
Right now, with tech it's heavily favored toward catered food which local restaurants don't necessarily specialize in. At my start up we have a generic catering company that will have a rotating meal each day. It's cost-effective and still good quality food and removes the hassle of our Workplace Services from figuring out what food we should get next time.
If local restaurants could adapt to such a model and made more of an effort to advertise toward their market and perhaps arrange a monthly catered meal or something of the sort, they might see themselves doing better.
Re: Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies
#260All the ripple effects of this are so poorly thought out. There'd be environmental effects--all that takeout is going to come in disposable containers instead of reusable plates. There'd be delivery congestion--personal delivery and catering increases. There's the fact that you're just putting tech kitchen workers out of a steady, consistent job (not to mention, those workers don't rely on tips!). And then at the end of the day, most people aren't going to go to sit-down restaurants to spend $20 on a sandwich in SF; they're just going to bring food from home.