ITT an ex-google employee complains about google cutting some on-campus cafe hours and morning bagels/donuts being more difficult to find. Complains that during the job offer they mentioned food as a perk. Yawn.
Google's "free food" is not free
121–130 of 181 posts
Re: Google's "free food" is not free
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
You might also look at it another way, and Google probably will, too.
If you're being considered by Google and you don't negotiate, perhaps they are the ones making the mistake.
Re: Google's "free food" is not free
#123Google is located in an area where there aren't many restaurants close by. By offering on-site lunches, they keep the employees on campus. So instead of wasting, say, 1.5 hours getting to MtView, hunting for parking, waiting at a restaurant, eating, getting back into your car, etc., the employees just walk over to the cafe, still in work mode; or even better, take the lunch back to their offices. Even if Google gets…
My understanding is that Google is pretty open about that. I think I've seen Marissa Mayer explain it that way in a video about Google before.
Re: Google's "free food" is not free
#124It is amusing that Google offers "free lunches". I wonder how many compensation discussions include the quip, "there is no such thing as a free lunch". Just out of curiosity, does Google gross up salaries for tax purposes? I really think the IRS needs to crack down on companies using excessive perks as non-taxable compensation. If Google is using the perks to justify a "lower but equivalent salary" then they should b…
I am not Google's tax accountant, but the meals are not compensation based on the IRS' published guidelines. http://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b/ar02.html#en_US_2011_pu... Tax tip going way back to Learned Hand: you don't have to feel guilty about structuring your affairs to take advantage of every legitimate opportunity to decrease your tax burden. Here's a related example: US tax law allows you to deduct 50% of me…
This is a good point. Personally, we often hire accountants to minimize our tax burden, yet when companies do the same thing, we like to label them as "evil" (at worst) or "shirking their duty" (at best).
Re: Google's "free food" is not free
#125Google 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
Any person smart enough to clear all of the brain teasers in order to get to that point should be far well able to do the final one that starts "an engineer is given free food at work in lieu of $X salary, calculate the value of X at which this is a fair deal..."
My point was that X=$20k doesn't even come close to passing the sniff test. Its absurd.
Re: Google's "free food" is not free
#126I'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…
Link? I am interested in salary negotiation techniques. Thank you.
I'd suggest the books _Getting to Yes_, and Graeber's _Debt: the First 5000 Years_.
Of course the second book sounds odd, but if you're renting chunks of your life, it's vital to know about the real nature of markets, not the Disneyfied version. Many people I've spoken with are uncomfortable with the antagonistic nature of negotiation, and fail to hit the upper limit of what the employer's willing to spend. Instead of wilting, there should be a feeling of indignance.
Re: Google's "free food" is not free
#127I worked at a place with free food and this exact thing happened. At first it was order any two meals off seamlessweb.com a day. Then it was order one meal, which meant people ordered enough food for two or three meals once a day. Then there were spending limits. Then there was a "town hall meeting" the CEO claimed he had been doing some investigations an came across a worker who was drinking ten cans of coke a day.…
And plus, informal perks aren't part of the contract. It's like part of your salary you can lose anytime.
Re: Google's "free food" is not free
#128Maybe 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…
Same here - perks are stuff I expect to come on top of the salary I ask for. If they try to make the perks an excuse to offer me less, I'll turn around and ask them to rather drop the perks and pay me more, or I'll go somewhere else.
It actually turns me off a company if they offer unusually large perks, as they do need to claw the money back somewhere, and usually it will be salaries, and the reason companies use perks is because employees on average tends to be really bad at judging their actual monetary value.
Re: Google's "free food" is not free
#129I was at Google's campus last month for lunch.
The food is better quality than a Las Vegas buffet with all the trimmings, except it's all free.
The author complaining about Google being "evil" for cutting back or "screwing the employee" is so incredibly ridiculous and so self-entitled it sickens me.
It's like someone complaining that the company used to drop free $100 bills on the ground, but now they're only dropping $50s. The employees were "WOUNDED" because they closed a few locations, or they had to wander an extra 30 ft for donuts? For F*CK'S sake get a grip! The food there is pretty damn good and if you don't like it, there's something wrong with you, not Google. Too bad they closed a couple of locations and you have to walk an extra 30 seconds or be in line an extra 2 mins. IT'S FREE FOOD AND IT'S GOOD.
Re: Google's "free food" is not free
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
You might also look at it another way, and Google probably will, too. If you're being considered by Google and you don't negotiate, perhaps they are the ones making the mistake.
Thanks for framing it that way; I felt this relationship subconsciously but never could name it clearly.
Btw., that's pretty much what happened at my current workplace: after two years of employment I negotiating salary increase -- basing on market situation and possible other employers for me -- and ever since the owners appreciate my role in the company more.