“If you don’t have a ping-pong table, you’re not a tech company,” says Sunil Rajasekar, chief technology officer at Lithium Technologies, a San Francisco software startup."
I really hope it was tongue in cheek quote out of context.
Is the tech bubble popping? Ping pong offers an answer
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Re: Is the tech bubble popping? Ping pong offers an answer
#12I think they've saturated the market...
Re: Is the tech bubble popping? Ping pong offers an answer
#13This blew me away: "Venture capitalist Michael Cardamone, the tournament’s co-organizer, approves of young companies buying tables with venture funds. “You absolutely should,” he says. “It’s part of building culture.”"
It makes sense in terms of cost to benefit. A ping pong table is a few hundred dollars at most. An employee performing well is $100,000 at minimum. Little things like free food and ping pong tables actually offer a massive return on investment.
Only if having a ping pong table (or free food) improve productivity.
That's a rather strong assumption.
Re: Is the tech bubble popping? Ping pong offers an answer
#14This blew me away: "Venture capitalist Michael Cardamone, the tournament’s co-organizer, approves of young companies buying tables with venture funds. “You absolutely should,” he says. “It’s part of building culture.”"
Its part of building a culture certainly. Believe it or not its possible to build a company culture around things other than ping pong though - the last company I was at had a culture that revolved around food, cooking, and eating together for example (they do food delivery). Probably not as good for my waistline, but it definitely brought everyone together.
Re: Is the tech bubble popping? Ping pong offers an answer
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes sense in terms of cost to benefit. A ping pong table is a few hundred dollars at most. An employee performing well is $100,000 at minimum. Little things like free food and ping pong tables actually offer a massive return on investment.
In London a Ping Pong table would cost around £10k/year in floorspace used.
A company often spend some floor space on areas where employees can take a break from work to disconnect for a few minutes. Why not put a ping pong table there?
Re: Is the tech bubble popping? Ping pong offers an answer
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes sense in terms of cost to benefit. A ping pong table is a few hundred dollars at most. An employee performing well is $100,000 at minimum. Little things like free food and ping pong tables actually offer a massive return on investment.
Only if having a ping pong table (or free food) improve productivity. That's a rather strong assumption.
Is it? Employee retention certainly has strong correlation with productivity.
Re: Is the tech bubble popping? Ping pong offers an answer
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes sense in terms of cost to benefit. A ping pong table is a few hundred dollars at most. An employee performing well is $100,000 at minimum. Little things like free food and ping pong tables actually offer a massive return on investment.
From the article > Startups pay up to $2,300 for a high-end Butterfly-brand table. Your point stands, but the pricing is quite different.
The quote makes it clear that's the upper bound, which doesn't offer any information about the rest of the purchases, let alone the mean.
Re: Is the tech bubble popping? Ping pong offers an answer
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
In London a Ping Pong table would cost around £10k/year in floorspace used.
A company often spend some floor space on areas where employees can take a break from work to disconnect for a few minutes. Why not put a ping pong table there?
Because it then stops being a space where people can take a break, and becomes a space where two people are playing ping pong, with everyone else crammed along the wall.
Re: Is the tech bubble popping? Ping pong offers an answer
#19Well, this indicator is not the worst one of all time. That record is probably still held by the price of butter in Bangladesh. [1] Seriously, all you need to read from this article is the following quote:
Mark Cannice, a University of San Francisco professor, issues a quarterly index of venture-capitalist confidence. “I put more faith in venture capitalist insights and confidence,” he says, “than I would in ping-pong-table sales.”
[1] http://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/08/stock-market-...
Re: Is the tech bubble popping? Ping pong offers an answer
#20the graph venture capital vs.ping pong tables reminded me of this http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations