Google's "free food" is not free • Hacker News Board

Re: Google's "free food" is not free

#111

Post by daintynews » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 12:47 PM UTC

So I multiplied the $30/day by the 9,600 employees in Mountain View and New York by the 251 days Google is open every year. Remember that Google probably spends a lot more than this, because there are employees outside those offices, and because visitors are there all the time eating.

The grand total: By our guesstimate, Larry and Sergey are spending at least $72,288,000 per year to fill their workers' pie-holes. How can they afford to do that? Easy, of course: Last year Google (GOOG) earned $4.2 billion.

Re: Google's "free food" is not free

#112

Post by _delirium » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 12:49 PM UTC

latch wrote: post #10

veyron wrote: post #7

The real lesson for employees is to ignore the cash value of the perks when evaluating offers. Perks can be taken away, but cutting salaries is much more controversial.

Which is why some sectors treat money as a perk (bonuses). But as much as companies make sure employees understand what a "bonus" is, there's a sense of entitlement and people quit when this years bonus wasn't as big as last years.

Companies try to do the same playing-both-sides there, too, though, which is what causes some of the confusion and ire. On the one hand, it's formally just a perk that isn't guaranteed. But on the other hand, they'll often make claims about what kinds of bonuses you can expect to get -- "baseline 10% is usual" or "we've never given less than a 5% average bonus in the last decade" -- because they want potential employees to consider it as quasi-salary when evaluating the offer.

Re: Google's "free food" is not free

#113

Post by brown9-2 » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 12:58 PM UTC

mjwalshe wrote: post #110

noonespecial wrote: post #75

Google claims to want to hire smart people. Google claims to these ostensibly smart people during the hiring process that the 'free food' is worth (cough) 20 grand in salary?! I sense a disturbance in the force.

And if that perk then goes away - a smart person would have this in writing. So boss wheres my pay rise to replace the free food "hr said" the free food was part of my compensation

Not sure that would work in the situation as Rachel described since the free food was still there, just with decreased availability and ubiquitousness.

Re: Google's "free food" is not free

#114

Post by jergosh » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 1:03 PM UTC

$15k / 250 business days, that would be $60 per day AND they would get the food at much lower prices then you do when you sit in a restaurant. Really? If it was a random company that kind of BS would put me off working there big time.

Re: Google's "free food" is not free

#115

Post by josefresco » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 1:03 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #70

patio11 wrote: post #9

I'm writing a post on salary negotiation today, so I zeroed in on two supporting details here that you should remember for later: when pressed on price, savvy negotiators said: 1) Give us some time to think about it. 2) We are going to re-focus the discussion on a different compensation lever where we can present something you're already going to get as if it were a new incentive justifying your concession on a lever…

Yeah, I did both of those in my salary negotiations with Google. They talked me down from my starting salary, but they also increased my stock options & GSUs. The other important point is - you are the only one who says "Yes" when asked "Is this acceptable to you?" If the free food is not worth $15-20K (which actually seems ridiculous - I've heard numbers for both what average employees value it at and what it actual…

If you are being considered by Google and are negotiating financial terms I would venture that you have plenty of other options available to you (read Facebook and MS)

Re: Google's "free food" is not free

#116

Post by lrobb » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 1:05 PM UTC

moocow01 wrote: post #64

Maybe Im just a calculating, cold, emotionless engineer but when it comes to pay packages Ive stopped caring about the fancy 'perks'. I only try to gauge how much Ill get paid, how much Ill enjoy the work and learn, and how many hours Ill be putting in. Ive seen perks too many times used against employees. (The following rant is nothing towards Google - never worked there.) - Free food and onsite amenities usually is…

>> Fancy employee outings

Or even more atrocious to me, are the 48 hour up all night over the weekend "code jams"... Jeez people, get a life.

Re: Google's "free food" is not free

#117

Post by brown9-2 » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 1:09 PM UTC

MattLaroche wrote: post #56

One thing this article doesn't point out: it wasn't Google who argued that the supposedly lower salary was offset by food - it was a person (sure, an employee or contractor of Google). Perhaps this person was reading from a recruiting script sanctioned by management. But it wasn't the big overarching company that made this argument to the author - it was a person. Recruiters often have the wrong incentive structure.…

This is such an odd argument. The individual in that salary negotiation represents Google The Company and for all intents and purposes, is Google The Company in that negotiation.

Similarly, it is the senior management of Google The Company that sets up and approves the "wrong incentive structure" for their recruiters.

Re: Google's "free food" is not free

#118

Post by brown9-2 » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 1:10 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #42

wonnage wrote: post #25

I'm having a hard time sympathizing. At the end of her negotiation, this was the state of the world: the company didn't want to go any higher, and some handwaving about how much food was worth was enough to convince her to fold. Why bother calculating "effective salary"? Personally, anything that isn't cold, hard cash I view as tangential to my compensation. Even options are questionable - sometimes the salary hit ov…

She wanted to take the deal; she just needed them to give her a reason. It seems disingenuous for her to complain about it later.

If you are naive and you accept a crappy offer from someone, it's not disingenuous for you years later to point out that it was a crappy offer and you were naive, as a lesson to others. The author flat-out states that she did not know much about negotiating at the time.

Re: Google's "free food" is not free

#119

Post by brown9-2 » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 1:12 PM UTC

ok_craig wrote: post #16

skore wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should read the article - the argument was that while yes, perks were offered as a reason to accept a smaller wage, they were then gradually eliminated without changing the wage.

What about that 10% raise the whole company got?

Amazing how often this one-time across-the-board salary raise is being trotted out in defense of other cuts elsewhere. What a great PR move that was.

Besides, I would imagine that in a company doing as well as Google, annual raises of this amount were usual for the performers anyway.

Re: Google's "free food" is not free

#120

Post by anil_mamede » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 1:15 PM UTC

I wish the company I work would offer me free meals. Not only free meals but an infrastructure and environment where I could spend more time in my intellectual growth and personal achieviements. Of course all this requires an huge investment not only in buildings but in human resources (someone has to do the dirty work).

If some company offered me free food, nice, clean and complete bathrooms, restrooms, libraries, lockers, an office arranged in manner where I could work without any disturb in trade of less but still acceptable salary I would accept it.

If they cut me on sallary I would not mind but if they took me the free food completely I would be pissed off.