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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

#401

Post by gaius »

sampo wrote: post #322
necubi wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're just pandering to special interest groups --groups they believe will like this move, and since there is no alternative party in the Bay Area, they know most tech workers will not break Repub, so they can do what they want. It's true that basically all elected officials in SF are Democrats, but in practice there are two semi-official parties: "progressives" and "moderates." The supervisors pushing this, Aaro…

> "progressives" and "moderates." How did the people who oppose pretty much all progress, came to be named "progressives"?

It’s a reference to progressive taxation

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

#402

Post by ggg9990 »

ironjunkie wrote: post #395
michaelkeenan wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like the Golden Gate Restaurant Association endorsed it[0]. I couldn't find a list of which restaurants are members of the GGRA, but the board of directors[1] includes people from the Bluestem Brasserie, San Francisco Soup Company, Ladle and Leaf, Extreme Pizza, Rose's Cafe, Wayfare Tavern, Souvla, Canela, Palm House, The Dorian, and Perry's. [0] https://sf.eater.com/2018/7/25/17614570/san-francisco-corpor..…

Thanks, This is a list of places I will try to actively never go again.

The GGRA includes nearly every significant restaurant in the Bay Area. Hope you like cooking.

Your position is something like, “Man this Donald Trump guy is f’in horrible. Give me a list of all Americans so I can remember to never talk to them again.”

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

#403

Post by stale2002 »

jartelt wrote: post #359
someguydave wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private corporations on private property should be able to make private contracts with employee as they see fit, without government interference.

If the private corporation didn't like the conditions of the city zoning and development laws, they could build their office elsewhere.

Or instead we could vote these politicians out of office.

There are more techies moving to the bay area every day. Sooner or later those numbers add up and we've got ourselves a real voting bloc.

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

#404

Post by pyrale »

hellisothers wrote: post #244
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…

Problem is the employee is taxed on those funds AND those funds aren’t tax deductible for the employer like dine in (50%) or in house food (100%) so it’s nowhere near comperable.

It sounds reasonable that the richest industry/workers in the area don't get free perks at the expense of other taxpayers.

Non-financial compensations are taxed in many countries, I really don't see what's wrong here.

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

#405

Post by SolarNet »

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?

Probably not a conspiracy theory. Just an inevitable "if you can't beat em, join em" sort of mentality. For big companies regulation is generally easier to build loopholes into than fight.

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

#406

Post by icebraining »

misja111 wrote: post #396
BurningFrog wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefit of a company cafeteria is mostly that you don't lose half an hour walking to a restaurant, waiting in line, ordering etc. It's not about the money.

You can order by phone or online in advance so you only have to walk to the restaurant to pick up your food. Maybe you don't like the walking, but then think again: it has been shown many times that some physical movement during the working day is beneficial for your productivity and health. If you really want to avoid leaving the building at all costs, there is also another option: ordering your lunch and let it be…

Why are you assuming there even are restaurants near the office? A bunch of people getting into their cars and clogging up roads at lunch time doesn't sound like an improvement to me.

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

#407

Post by mschuster91 »

closeparen wrote: post #347
st26 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to imagine your local city bus is so unpleasant to be called a dystopian hellscape.

While I was a BART commuter, I walked a gauntlet of slumped-over hard drug users, sprawled-out homeless people, human urine, and feces every day. Fortunately, I've only seen people drop their pants and take a shit on the sidewalk in front of me twice. Missed a random stabbing on the stairwell into my station by about 5 minutes. This is Civic Center Station, which serves Twitter, Uber, and Square. No amount of tech wo…

> No amount of tech worker foot traffic is going to clean up an area if the government isn't willing to police it.

And policing will just drive the problem somewhere else. What America desperately needs is a new approach to a lot of issues that goes way beyond ever more police, courts and jails:

- drugs and addictions (now that enough white middle class people suffer from heroin or worse, something hopefully will be done beyond the "put them all in prison" attitude that caused the War on Drugs in the first place)

- mental health resources, whose lack of is directly affecting or even causing much of the homeless population

- medical resources

- housing

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

#408

Post by pyrale »

ajmurmann wrote: post #372
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #98

> The ban wouldn't be retroactive, however, so on-site food at companies like Google and Twitter would still be available Cool, so start-ups lose a potential hiring perk to the incumbents. (Does anyone know the story behind this bill? Which politicians and restaurants supported it? I’d like to avoid the latter going forward.)

Politicians either don't give a shit about startups because they don't fill their campaign coffers or just plain don't understand the ecosystem. Techies need to take over Bay area politics.

I would really love to see techies take over, only to see them forced to acknowledge the misery they usually turn a blind eye on.

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

#409

Post by JorgeGT »

beerlord wrote: post #393
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…

What stops you from offering a meal for 10c for your staff only? Who determines the monetary value of a meal which would normally be free?

The invoice the company pays for the meal. If cooked on-site, the bills for supplies and salary of the cooks, etc. These things are why companies are required to keep books of accounts.

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

#410

Post by lozenge »

watwut wrote: post #391
otterpro wrote: post #66

Company-provided lunch provides an opportunity to build relationship among the coworkers. Most people do not says "no" to free lunch, especially if it's good. So, they naturally sit down together to eat. When I worked at a company that offered free lunch, the company used it to help build rapport and camaraderie among the coworkers. It's one time during the day when the entire team can sit down and eat lunch together…

I dont care about this policy one way or the other, but following is not true: "If the team still wants to do lunch together everyday at an outside restaurant, it would not be easy, especially the logistics, which would be a nightmare" It is not nightmare, it is pretty easy thing to do and friends groups in work do it almost daily without any problem.

I think they meant taking out the entire company, say 30+ people, rather than just having lunch among your friend group, which is probably very overlapping with your team, and therefore encourages "silos", which the company already has enough of.
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