This is the second post from this blog I've had the displeasure of reading on HN, and both of them make this person seem to be a congenital malcontent.
I think this post sums it up: http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/01/15/bofh/
Google's "free food" is not free
81–90 of 181 posts
Re: Google's "free food" is not free
#82Maybe 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…
I get free breakfast and lunch which combined with living alone means I don't have to cook -- so I note that down as a saving of about an hour a day.
Re: Google's "free food" is not free
#83I'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.
It won't be published until Monday (US time). Your options for finding it then include emailing me, getting the RSS feed at kalzumeus.com, following me on Twitter (@patio11), or (not a given but also not the riskiest prediction I'll make this year) checking the HN front page.
Re: Google's "free food" is not free
#84My only comment after reading this story. Is he seriously complaining about having to walk around and hunt for food, (donuts) rather then finding it in a kitchen next to his desk? If that's the case I would be complaining about the lack of a good gym at Google instead.
Re: Google's "free food" is not free
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 e…
Coke costs all of 25c/can in bulk. Even 10 cans a day is only 2.50
Re: Google's "free food" is not free
#86I read a previous article by her about no one being able to like Apple products after Android and decided she has a totally warped view of reality. I was there when they handed out Android phones. I still use an iPhone. Many Google employees use iPhones. No one has ever given me crap about it, and I haven't seen anyone look at anyone funny in any way.
I mean, Google gives MacBook Airs/MacBook Pros to every employee for christsakes.
And if you want to know how the recruiters talk you into accepting a lower salary, it isn't the value of the food, it's the value of Google's bonuses. Google HR talks to you about "Total Compensation" and the dollar value of the food is not (AFAIK) part of this discussion.
Personally for me, I have no complains about my salary, but the real reason I decided to work for Google was the chance to work on world class infrastructure with access to an incredible pool of talented people, plus the culture.
Google is the only large corporation I've worked at (and I've worked at others like IBM and Oracle), that didn't feel so much like a suffocating bureaucracy, and whose employees generally care about trying to do the right thing, and care about openness and honesty.
You've all no doubt seen the Steve Yegge rant. That's par for the course on Google internal mailing lists, and I like the fact that people challenge management frequently with rants like this.
Re: Google's "free food" is not free
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
Sometimes I feel like the vast majority of annoyances I face at work should have a #firstworldproblems hashtag on them. I remember, I joined in Jan 2009 at the bottom of the recession, which was basically around the same time that all these perks were being cut. And people at work would gripe all about how the microkitchens weren't as good and they discontinued tea time and the cafes were closed on weekends. And then…
I absolutely despise this kind of thinking. The whole "firstworldproblems" meme pisses me off. You can extend this to anything. "People in Country X are starving so it's lame of me to complain about my 2-hour commute." "Children are being beaten in Country Y so I feel bad complaining about working on the weekend once a month." Ok, I'll even pull away from the hyperbole: "my friend Bob got laid off, so I shouldn't complain about working 14-hour days because at least I have a job".
Yes, you absolutely should complain.
I just don't buy any of this. If I'm unhappy about something, then I'm unhappy about something. The tsunami that destroyed the lives of thousands of people in Country Z, while tragic, doesn't make my grievances any less valid.
It's like a new form of Godwin's Law. Any complaint can be dismissed as trivial by claiming it's a "first world problem".
If you want to feel institutional guilt because many people in the world have it worse than you, fine. I'm not going to play that game.
(General "you", here. Nostrademons, I'm not pointing specifically at you, just at the general pain this sort of thinking gives me.)
Re: Google's "free food" is not free
#88I 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…
I too find the writing style very distracting, but I can't quite place my finger on what it is exactly. It's very strange, though. That being said, I think the post makes a valuable point that anybody can learn about negotiating: what are they really giving you, did you expect to get that anyway (i.e. is it material to negotiations), can you reasonably claim it's not material even if it IS something special they're offering (I have allergies to about 25% of common foods, so I prepare my own food), can they take it away later, etc.
Re: Google's "free food" is not free
#89One 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.…
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Re: Google's "free food" is not free
#90Google 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…
How does this explain them offering the food for free vs. charging for it (possibly subsidizing it)? It is still a perk, in that sense.