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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it? Employee retention certainly has strong correlation with productivity.
Personally, a decent salary & benefits, interesting projects, learning opportunities and sane management would keep me in your company for life. But, given these things are so difficult to deliver on, let's just throw them kids' games, energy bars and craft beer on tap.
To me the ping pong table and exposed surfaces in startups reflect wood paneling in law firms. It's symbolism rather than functionality. Symbols do matter.
“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.
This clearly illustrates what's wrong with the San Francisco tech culture: it is stuck in the 20th century, and assumes that 'tech' means white or Asian male in their 20's. Actual cutting edge tech companies order foosball tables.
(Not sure that is a thing but it should be).
Can we use the classic metric of aeron chair sales?
You'd have to adjust for the standing desk fad
Instead, employees will bring in their own toys like card games and basketball hoops, because that's what they like.
The culture happens because the employees themselves have the latitude and money to make it happen. The foosball table that they are all trying to mimic happened because some ceo/founder at a successful company always wanted one and brought one in for himself. Now it's offered as some kind of perk even though nobody likes the game. The perk should be extreme latitude and high pay. The culture will happen all by itself.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally, a decent salary & benefits, interesting projects, learning opportunities and sane management would keep me in your company for life. But, given these things are so difficult to deliver on, let's just throw them kids' games, energy bars and craft beer on tap.
It's not like having B makes A harder.
"Hey, we have a dysfunctional CEO, a runway shorter than the one at Hong Kong airport, and a legacy codebase that reduces the most experienced developer to a gibbering wreck. But look - we have foosball and whiskey tasting nights!"
In my experience, it's true. It does build culture. In our case, Foosball is a place were employees can bond with each other that transcends business boundaries. Marketing and engineering people both like Foosball - same can not be said for a lot of other extracurriculars.
We even hold tournaments during company time that at least 3/4 of the company chooses to play in.
When you are spending at least 1/3 of your time every day with the same people, I think it is healthy for you to occasionally do something together that is not work. I assume the people here who head straight home also have never gone out after work for drinks with their co-workers or gone to a sports game with them, or anything like that. Foosball and ping pong provide an opportunity to do that.
In fact, as a manager I often challenge my team members to a game of foosball when I get a sense something isn't right and it gives me an opportunity to chat with then 1:1 without feeling like an intervention.
Should you buy a $1300 foosball table when your company is not making money? IMHO, absolutely not. But if you have a good sales month, go for it. I'd rather be in a company where people get to know each other than one where everyone sits quietly at their desk all day and leaves just as quietly at the end.
Then again, I hold a different world view than some other people. I think that a FU money exit is unlikely for most, and getting a four hour a day job without a pay cut is unlikely for most, so if you're going to spend 1/3 of your life at work, a fair measure of success is if you can actually be happy while you are in the office.
This 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.
Yes, provided everything else about the company is working. People are productive. The product is showing signs of fit. People believe in the founder(s)' vision and in the CEO's direction. Under these circumstances, things like ping pong tables and free meals can offer amazing ROI.
But when your first few business moves are shopping for fancy digs and filling the space with ping pong tables, your priorities are questionable. Morale can't be bought with trinkets. Morale is earned with a strong sense of collective mission and product traction. The rest is icing on the cake.
This distinction is often lost on people, who rush off to buy foosball tables as though the mere presence of such will trick employees into being happy and productive. It's a very '90s attitude: "People want to work for a startup that looks startupy." Well, sure. But the best people want to work for a startup that has a real shot at success, first and foremost.
These cultures are all artificial. I've worked at a handful of companies that all brought in the ping pong/foosball/shuffle board, and nobody plays them. It's always a ghost town. Instead, employees will bring in their own toys like card games and basketball hoops, because that's what they like. The culture happens because the employees themselves have the latitude and money to make it happen. The foosball table that…
Last time I went through a series of interview to find a new job, I systematically asked to go to the bathroom. I believe male's toilet cleanliness is a good indicator of how employees perceive their workplaces. Said simply, if it's not clean then I expect employees to give poor considerations to each other or to the work they produce. You can be fooled by what recruiters tell you in the interviewing room, the perks…