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Google's "free food" is not free

rachelbythebay.com

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

#51

Post by Hominem »

rdl wrote: post #49
Hominem wrote: post #14

I 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.…

I would have probably quit sometime between spending limits and a "town hall meeting" about food being worth everyone's time.

It was a funny meeting. The CEO was a hell of a salesman, he came in with a nalgene bottle and made a big show of taking big gulps while touting his new health initiatives that just happened to include cutting a perk. By the time he left people were saying it was a good thing he was so concerned for our health. He did the same speech 5 times in one day to get all the employees, must have been pretty hydrated at the end.

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

#53

Post by ngokevin »

georgieporgie wrote: post #48

Sure, go ahead and screw the employees while the economy is bad. They'll stay on and grumble about it, because they can't go anywhere. People got laid off and were unable to find work, possibly ending their careers, and you're complaining about bagels being cut? Seriously?

"you're lucky you even have a job!"

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

#54

Post by rdtsc »

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 high quality food during interview then start scaling down the quality (and cost) until employees will still feel like driving is a hassle but now a meal is $10 vs $30.

In the end however they lose with this strategy. The people working there can read between the lines. Google might end up with better end-of-quarter bottom line, but in the long long run they will be shooting themselves in the foot.

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

#55

Post by stretchwithme »

The whole idea of free food is not good. I'd prefer to have a wide variety of the highest quality food and pay something reasonable for it.

I really don't want an incentive to maximize my consumption of food. What matters is how much you enjoy what you do it and being as healthy as you can be.

Caffe Macs at Apple does it well. The healthiest options are clearly subsidized, and desserts are not.

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

#56

Post by MattLaroche »

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. They have numbers to hit - and so they use classic high pressure tactics (exploding offers, "accept the offer now" durring the offer, misinformation, tricks) to convince people to accept. It's unfortunate that the recruiter's goals don't line up with the applicant's, but it's true. How one fixes that isn't obvious to me tonight.

I also hate the victim mentality when an employee no longer feels like they're getting what they want from their employer. If you don't like what you're getting, if the economic transaction is no longer acceptable, leave. (I respect employment laws, I think everyone should treat each other, I don't condone abusive behavior or manipulation) Employees aren't victims trapped by evil employers, they're participants in an economic transaction. If the transaction is no longer as profitable as one at another company, then that doesn't make the employer bad or wrong, it's simply time to move on.

(I worked at Google for 5 years, I left in April 2011. And when I went back for lunch one day in November with former coworkers, I had the best meal I'd had since I left.)

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

#57

Post by rdtsc »

overgard wrote: post #30

I find myself in a weird situation, in that I find this writer's writing intriguing exactly because of how much I vehemently disagree with almost all of it. It's like somehow it manages to push all the wrong buttons, in a very precise way. Usually when I read things that I disagree with it doesn't really prod at me, but for some reason almost this entire blog does. The controversy this blog always digs up on really m…

> Usually when I read things that I disagree with it doesn't really prod at me ... I saw nothing in that article as to /why/ google might have done what they did

And then from the article:

""" but enough people finally cornered them and got them to admit it was about the cost. """

From what I see, you really didn't read the article.

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

#58

Post by objclxt »

tzs wrote: post #29
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…

> Why bother calculating "effective salary"? Personally, anything that isn't cold, hard cash I view as tangential to my compensation During the work week, I typically grab breakfast on the way to work ($5.10 at McDonalds, plus $1.25 for a drink out of the vending machine at work). If I have lunch, it might be Subway (around $7). Maybe dinner from Wendy's ($7). Toss in a snack somewhere in there and I'm at over $20/da…

Yes, it can be slightly naive not to take into account benefits, especially if said benefits are written into your contract. And that's the key - if it's not written into your contract, discard it.

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

#59

Post by schammy »

_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…

The point is that the expensive/quality meals were presented as part of her compensation in exchange for lower salary, then this was taken away. If instead she had just gotten a higher salary, she'd still be getting that extra value in exchange for her work.

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

#60

Post by webdev42 »

georgieporgie wrote: post #48

Sure, go ahead and screw the employees while the economy is bad. They'll stay on and grumble about it, because they can't go anywhere. People got laid off and were unable to find work, possibly ending their careers, and you're complaining about bagels being cut? Seriously?

I've worked at Google for almost four years and found this hilarious. "The Friday morning bagel or donut supplies also were curtailed. Sure, they still existed, but you now had to go hunt for them. They were no longer set up in a microkitchen near your office. They would now appear only in certain cafes." – The same donuts and bagels are still at Google. You have to walk an extra 30 feet to the cafe to get them. Oh, and I'd take the 10% raise – which was more like a 15-20% raise after all was said and done, based on total compensation + bonus factored in – over 30 feet of additional bagel proximity any day.
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