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Google's "free food" is not free

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

#151

Post by mikeash »

matwood wrote: post #144
mikeklaas wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coke costs all of 25c/can in bulk. Even 10 cans a day is only 2.50

Coke costs all of 25c/can in bulk. Even 10 cans a day is only 2.50 Yep, and it baffles me when companies miss the forest through the trees and cut something like sodas. In the scheme of what a fully loaded engineer costs the company, even 10 cans of soda/day is minuscule (~$625/year). As companies get bigger the same thing always seem to happen. The bean counters see the large costs of providing free X to thousands o…

It's nearly impossible for people to truly grasp that $500,000/year for 50,000 employees is the same impact as $10/year/employee. Even incredibly smart people get this wrong. It happens in business, in politics (see all the people arguing that policy X that works in country Y can't be implemented in the US because the US is Z times larger than Y), everywhere, even with people who otherwise have a very strong grasp of math and science.

It's baffling.

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

#152

Post by knarf_navillus »

jergosh wrote: post #114

$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.

"The meals are worth $15,000."

Simple response: "They're not worth that much to me, I'm afraid."

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

#153

Post by jxcole »

Negotiator: Our free lunch costs us about 15 to 20k per year per employee, so add at least 15k to our offer to find it's true value.

Me: If I were left to my own devices I would make myself a PB and J sandwich and have an apple every day. That comes down to about $2 a day for lunch. So there's 365 days in a year, take away about 104 for weekends, and you are left with about 261 free lunches a year. Hence to me the free lunch is only worth about $522. Just so you know, that's not a lot of money.

Fun fact: It doesn't actually matter if you really would have PB&J every day.

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

#154

Post by cgarvey »

kstenerud wrote: post #140
gonehome wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never viewed as trying to silence people's complaints, but more as a stark way to introduce perspective - that many complaints in the first world really aren't so bad.

Things can always get worse, but only a fool would let them go without a fight.

Especially delicious bagels.

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

#155

Post by overgryphon »

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…

Health insurance is where I care about the fancy perks. If I'm reliant on my company for health insurance, it had better be good health insurance or I'm looking elsewhere.

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

#156

Post by ajays »

rdtsc wrote: post #54
ajays wrote: post #46

Google 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…

> So people shouldn't naively think that Google (or, for that matter, any other company) offers these perks out of the goodness of their heart. It becomes s question of quality. It is one thing to offer free steaks at lunch (a real perk) vs offering beans and rice every day. [just using it to illustrate a point, not saying Google is serving rice and beans only]. The goal of Google is to present how they have very hig…

> It is one thing to offer free steaks at lunch (a real perk) vs offering beans and rice every day. [just using it to illustrate a point, not saying Google is serving rice and beans only].

If they just offered (note: it's an offer, not mandatory) beans and rice, then the employees would just go out for lunch, defeating the purpose of the program.

The lunch has to be good enough to keep the employees there.

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

#157

Post by sleight42 »

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…

It's simpler than this or the post describes.

Every "benefit" has an associated dollar value. That's it. Total them up.

Oddly, salary is a holy cow whereas beenefits are not.

Having worked as an "employee" for 13 years before going freelance, the trend I see is this: employers generally feel its AOK to reduce/remove/substitute lesser benefits to save them money. The same cannot be said for salary reductions.

This is a large part of what led me to go freelance. I control my benefits. I negotiate my rate. I get paid based on those and how hard I work.

At the end of the day, it's still a lot like being an employee but, for me, with far less a feeling of being victimized.

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

#158

Post by mvgoogler »

neilk wrote: post #32
_shane wrote: post #23

The author complains that she was dissatisfied with her offer six years prior but took the job anyway. Then it turns into a rant about how she was robbed of her entitlements. "But what happens when the economy improves? Those wounds will never heal. Anyone with half a brain will say "hey, these guys are evil!" and will bail for greener pastures." Because they don't have bagels in the microkitchen Google is evil? As s…

I wouldn't go so far as to call Google "evil" for reducing perks, but the microkitchens were a lot better before. They used to be overflowing with goodies, many perishable. After the bean-counter moment it was all dry cereal and prepackaged snacks. For me it was just a "shrug, whatever" moment. I realized that as a growing public company Google wanted to control costs more. And I might be weird, but excessive perks c…

"After the bean-counter moment it was all dry cereal and prepackaged snacks."

You must be going to different MKs than I do. My experience is the MKs have always had (at least since Dec 2008, when I started) plenty of seasonal fresh fruit, pre-made salads and sandwiches in addition to the dried cereals and pre-packaged snacks.

The perks are nice but are far from the top of the list of things that I would miss about working here - working with world class people, the opportunity to work on huge problems at scale, the amount that's invested in internal tools and processes, a culture that allows and even encourages you to question management - those are the types of things that I would miss.

The perks are just nice extras.

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

#159

Post by mjwalshe »

neilk wrote: post #45
copper wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine her main gripe would be that the free food was treated as a component of her compensation, and then withdrawn for the perfectly rational (but unrelated) reason of cutting costs.If someone did that to my salary (and it's happened a few times, for various reasons), that would generate a certain amount of ill-will.

That was her fault. She acknowledges her naïveté in accepting this as part of her salary negotiation, but strangely clings to her outrage as well.

Well that's human nature people get far more upset about losing something losing $20 a day in free food feels much worse than gaining the same amount in pay.

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

#160

Post by moocow01 »

michaelochurch wrote: post #132
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…

Maybe I'm just a calculating, cold, emotionless engineer but when it comes to pay packages I've stopped caring about the fancy 'perks'. I only try to gauge how much I'll get paid, how much I'll enjoy the work and learn, and how many hours I'll be putting in. Well, that's normal and smart. You go to work for the work, not the diversions. I don't think I've ever played an XBox during working hours; if there's any possi…

Funnily enough I fit your profile... 28, married, likely to have kids in relatively near future.

I think the perks are a lot like the thrill of buying something new. When your just entering the workforce they seem fantastic - almost unimaginable. When you've been surviving on ramen in your early twenties, free food at a tech company makes it sound like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. Then when you initially get those perks, they usually are somewhat fun. Then as the 'new car smell wears off' you realize that the fundamentals of the job (like what you mentioned) are really 99% of what makes it good or bad.

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