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What fun and low-cost fringe benefits/perks would you offer to employees?

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Re: What fun and low-cost fringe benefits/perks would you offer to employees?

#31

Post by esk »

kanamekun wrote: post #7
bugsy wrote: post #4

1. Respect 2. Autonomy 3. Control None of those cost money yet so few workplaces value them since disrespect, micromanagement, and industrial era style division of labor are addictions of the corporate management crowd. It's gospel to Ivy League educated and Old Money. As a separate issue, "As startups, we can't really offer top-dollar salaries to our employees." is complete nonsense. First of all, "we don't pay top…

"If you can't at the absolute minimum pay market rate for the level of talent you require you shouldn't be in business. End of story." One of the key pillars of the startup ecosystem is that you can offer someone equity in exchange for significantly "below market rate" wages. In some or even many cases, this will be below the "the absolute minimum pay market rate for the level of talent ... require[d]." If you view t…

I haven't a clue why this is being downvoted, unless the point you are making is too obvious. Perhaps the parent was only describing startups that neither give employees equity nor pay them at market rates?

Do many startups try to pull stunts like that?

Re: What fun and low-cost fringe benefits/perks would you offer to employees?

#32

Post by m0nastic »

rmc wrote: post #29
m0nastic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most awful forensic engagements (that didn't involve the threat of bodily harm) I ever worked was for a company who called me in to image the drives for an entire video production department. Apparently, they discovered that one of their employees, in his spare time, had used one of the editing stations to edit video for his church. When they disciplined him about it, he stated that "everyone else was doin…

They were probably worried that some other employee was making sexually explicit videos, or even worse, videos of child sexual abuse. If that was happening, it might come out eventually. If it came out that the company was also aware that employees were making personal videos, then that's potentially bad PR for them.

Correct, they were specifically worried about the appearance of them condoning whatever content was produced if it was publicly known.

The result from this was for them to just dissolve that entire department, and then outsource any future video production that they might need.

Re: What fun and low-cost fringe benefits/perks would you offer to employees?

#33

Post by tptacek »

yosh wrote: post #21
DaniFong wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are exploring an alternate mode of vacation (one might say, the French model, although not because it is not national) -- in which the company essentially shuts down august till labor day, on top of a couple weeks of ordinary flexible paid time off. We hope that this will enable people to take real vacations (without worries that something really important is happening around the lab), and the lab isn't hamstrung…

Forced vacation isn't freedom. If August isn't a convenient time to take a vacation, and the employee would rather work, let them work and take that chunk of time off at some other point. If taking that time off another time during the year is unacceptable, then your policy simply isn't fair to all your employees. Where I work even the national holidays are floating holidays, so if I want to work on Christmas that is…

This works for some businesses and not for others. Most successful YC companies, for instance, cannot simply shut down for the entire month of August. In others, teams are so tightly coupled that the business wants vacations as synchronized as possible. It all depends.

The important thing to remember is that there is almost always some degree of freedom withheld by vacation policies. It's not especially productive to reason about vacations as if absolute freedom of scheduling is a sacred principle. Some businesses can come closer to others in providing freedom, and if that freedom is especially valuable to you, you should adjust your compensation expectations accordingly.

But remember the iron law of supply and demand. If a company provides a benefit (say, "months of paid vacation any time of the year on no notice"), and the market values that benefit, candidates will factor that into their compensation negotiation and the salary the company needs to pay for a given level of quality will decrease. In other words: you're paying for the vacation policy one way or the other.

(This is a subtext to the constant jealous comparisons between European and American vacation policies that tends to bug me.)

Re: What fun and low-cost fringe benefits/perks would you offer to employees?

#34

Post by m0nastic »

jeffool wrote: post #30
m0nastic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most awful forensic engagements (that didn't involve the threat of bodily harm) I ever worked was for a company who called me in to image the drives for an entire video production department. Apparently, they discovered that one of their employees, in his spare time, had used one of the editing stations to edit video for his church. When they disciplined him about it, he stated that "everyone else was doin…

Ahah, you poor soul. I guess the thrust of my argument is that... Employees are trusted with those resources while under employer supervision. ("Supervision"; not that their bosses are over their shoulders, or in some cases even know how to operate it themselves.) But the second that the intent is not approved of, suddenly that employee is suspected of having destroyed everything with an errant keystroke. It's funny,…

I agree.

My boss at my previous employer somehow managed to convince the higher-ups that we needed a lab full of about 20 ridiculously well-spec'd desktops with high-end video cards (and this was well before you could argue for their use in things like CUDA).

This was our Counterstrike lab.

Re: What fun and low-cost fringe benefits/perks would you offer to employees?

#35

Post by tptacek »

patio11 wrote: post #26

My company had an official holiday -- Company Founding Day -- adjacent to a national holiday every year, turning a 3 day weekend into a 4 day weekend, and required anyone wanting to work on Company Founding Day to get signed permission from the CEO. (Of a 1,000+ employee megacorp.) When customers/vendors complained about a particular employee's inavailability for their needs, everyone could just say "Sir, I'm sorry,…

We did a "company offsite" instead of an extra holiday; we spent the morning building Arduino robots†, and the afternoon at Three Floyds. I'm sure there's someone here ready to say "that's not a benefit! just give me the freedom to choose what i do that day myslef"[sic]. Oh well. I'm guessing I'm not too unhappy about missing the opportunity to work with the kind of people who would complain about stuff like that.

† More accurately, the rest of the team made robots while I went and rented a huge van.

Re: What fun and low-cost fringe benefits/perks would you offer to employees?

#36

Post by jeffool »

m0nastic wrote: post #32
rmc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were probably worried that some other employee was making sexually explicit videos, or even worse, videos of child sexual abuse. If that was happening, it might come out eventually. If it came out that the company was also aware that employees were making personal videos, then that's potentially bad PR for them.

Correct, they were specifically worried about the appearance of them condoning whatever content was produced if it was publicly known. The result from this was for them to just dissolve that entire department, and then outsource any future video production that they might need.

Which, to me, is an insane concern. Who wouldn't understand, in the rare instance of such abuse, "we trust our employees to conduct themselves in an appropriate manner. This person misused our trust, etc."

Re: What fun and low-cost fringe benefits/perks would you offer to employees?

#37

Post by [deleted] »

m0nastic wrote: post #32
rmc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were probably worried that some other employee was making sexually explicit videos, or even worse, videos of child sexual abuse. If that was happening, it might come out eventually. If it came out that the company was also aware that employees were making personal videos, then that's potentially bad PR for them.

Correct, they were specifically worried about the appearance of them condoning whatever content was produced if it was publicly known. The result from this was for them to just dissolve that entire department, and then outsource any future video production that they might need.

[deleted]

Re: What fun and low-cost fringe benefits/perks would you offer to employees?

#38

Post by m0nastic »

jeffool wrote: post #36
m0nastic wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, they were specifically worried about the appearance of them condoning whatever content was produced if it was publicly known. The result from this was for them to just dissolve that entire department, and then outsource any future video production that they might need.

Which, to me, is an insane concern. Who wouldn't understand, in the rare instance of such abuse, "we trust our employees to conduct themselves in an appropriate manner. This person misused our trust, etc."

I thought it was insane rather than to deal with issues like that on a case by case basis, they decided to just fire ~ 30 people. But then again, I'm not a corporate muckety-muck, so what do I know.

Re: What fun and low-cost fringe benefits/perks would you offer to employees?

#39

Post by DaniFong »

yosh wrote: post #21
DaniFong wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are exploring an alternate mode of vacation (one might say, the French model, although not because it is not national) -- in which the company essentially shuts down august till labor day, on top of a couple weeks of ordinary flexible paid time off. We hope that this will enable people to take real vacations (without worries that something really important is happening around the lab), and the lab isn't hamstrung…

Forced vacation isn't freedom. If August isn't a convenient time to take a vacation, and the employee would rather work, let them work and take that chunk of time off at some other point. If taking that time off another time during the year is unacceptable, then your policy simply isn't fair to all your employees. Where I work even the national holidays are floating holidays, so if I want to work on Christmas that is…

Question: have you experienced both models, or are you just guessing? This isn't meant to condescend -- I'm just truly curious.

The trouble is twofold -- two or three weeks of paid time off, while standard, isn't enough for people to have significantly different experiences in their lives. Furthermore, if the business is still running, then many people will have to continue to work through their vacation. (as is currently happening for me, as we speak).

Question: If forced vacation isn't freedom, are weekends freedom?

Re: What fun and low-cost fringe benefits/perks would you offer to employees?

#40

Post by DaniFong »

tptacek wrote: post #33
yosh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forced vacation isn't freedom. If August isn't a convenient time to take a vacation, and the employee would rather work, let them work and take that chunk of time off at some other point. If taking that time off another time during the year is unacceptable, then your policy simply isn't fair to all your employees. Where I work even the national holidays are floating holidays, so if I want to work on Christmas that is…

This works for some businesses and not for others. Most successful YC companies, for instance, cannot simply shut down for the entire month of August. In others, teams are so tightly coupled that the business wants vacations as synchronized as possible. It all depends. The important thing to remember is that there is almost always some degree of freedom withheld by vacation policies. It's not especially productive to…

Most successful YC companies, for instance, cannot simply shut down for the entire month of August. In others, teams are so tightly coupled that the business wants vacations as synchronized as possible. It all depends.

We're certainly in the latter category, so this is an important distinction. I do think groups in product organizations have this freedom where operational groups don't, though something similar may be possible there.

But remember the iron law of supply and demand. If a company provides a benefit (say, "months of paid vacation any time of the year on no notice"), and the market values that benefit, candidates will factor that into their compensation negotiation and the salary the company needs to pay for a given level of quality will decrease. In other words: you're paying for the vacation policy one way or the other.

I don't really think that talent is best thought of as an efficient market. People are empirically quite limited in their ability to perceive ahead of time the situations in which they will be the happiest or most productive, and salaries seem to be primarily determined by societal norms.

For us, the decision mostly hinges upon whether or not our employees will actually be happier, more creative, and ultimately more productive under the new model. The policy might sway a few candidates that would otherwise look elsewhere, and it might retain several candidates confronted with lucrative alternative offers, but ultimately it's how it will effect the team's spirit that really matters.

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