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One of the best comments I've ever read on Hacker News was about this topic. I wish I'd saved the link. The point was that this engineer took the removal of an

by drblast 11y ago

One of the best comments I've ever read on Hacker News was about this topic. I wish I'd saved the link. The point was that this engineer took the removal of any perk as a sign to leave, and soda/snacks was a huge one. Why? During the early stages of the company, the "free" soda and food was something everyone chipped in for to save money. And why shouldn't they all save money by buying things like this in bulk? The "free" things were more valuable to each employee than the total bulk cost of those things. The "taking away" of this "perk" represented a shift from a company that one was a valued member of to one that had a management vs. employees mentality. The idea became that the free soda/snacks was something that management gifted to employees to keep them happy. And that shift in culture was the signal to leave.

fossuser 11y ago
I think I remember that too, though not sure if it was a comment or a submission. Is this what you're remembering? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007750
- drblast 11y ago
  Here it is, it's a comment on the Elves post that I was thinking of: http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/#comment-2163 http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-eart...
joshu 11y ago
The Elves leave Middle Earth: http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/ http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-eart...
harryjo 11y ago
The bulk cost-effectiveness argument makes sense, but how does the theory survive in the presence of modern hot-company behaviors that spend money on absurdly gourmet snacks and niche perks, that seem to be more about appearing cooler than the next company, instead of cost-effectively deploying comforts that make employees happier and more committed to their work?
gadders 11y ago
I worked at Lotus in the mid-90's when they had a bad quarter due to "channel stuffing". All the free Coca Cola etc in the fridges was swapped for off-brand rubbish (Panda Pop for those in the UK).
KineticLensman 11y ago
I worked somewhere where management decided to reduce the amount of coffee delivered by the vending machines. They realised that they would also need to reduce the size of the cups so no one would notice. Stupidly they made the cups smaller a day or so before reducing the coffee. The overflow was the giveaway
InclinedPlane 11y ago
Yup. The relationship between employee and employer is a 2 way street, and it may not seem like it some times but both of them have tremendous power. When the employer starts doing dumb shit and increasingly makes it obvious they don't truly value the employee they pick up on that. And then they start leaving. Who leaves first? Oh, just the people who are the most intrinsically motivated, who care about the work the most, who have the most talent/experience and can easily find a job elsewhere (and know it). And when those people start to leave it starts a cascade. Because when the best, most talented, most experienced people leave it makes the working environment worse. A big aspect of job satisfaction for devs is working around other talented and capable folks, when that diminishes it creates a bigger incentive to leave. So more and more people leave, generally the people who have the easiest time finding jobs. So talent and experience just start evaporating out of the company. And before you know it there's an enormous brain drain happening. The thing is, this isn't obvious to people higher up until much, much later. And then it tends to manifest itself as a reduced capability to execute on projects, especially difficult ones. But almost always there's a zillion other things that one can readily blame for such things because no project is the same from cycle to cycle. And, of course, management is generally resistant to the notion that they fucked up and screwed the company over with short-sighted policies. Who would imagine that something as simple as getting rid of free soda could translate into not being able to ship on time years later? That's preposterous? But these are just the rocks in the river that the currents and eddies swirl around, they're the visible aspects of sentiment and changes that run deep and are invisible unless you're in the trenches and paying close attention. Devs aren't a "cost center", they're the value that the entire company is built around. Treat them well and you'll be able to keep the best ones around for a long time, which is an enormous competitive advantage.
- blisterpeanuts 11y ago
  I've often heard this "the best ones leave first because they're in demand" meme presented as fact. It sounds logical enough, but is there any evidence that this is really what happens? Sometimes, the best and brightest are also the most invested into the organization's success, hence the least likely to leave. They may be earning a top salary, they may have the ear of the CEO, or they may just love their job too much to pack up and leave on a whim. It's been my experience that the biggest complainers when it comes to belt tightening policies are in fact the lesser contributors. The little dog yaps the loudest. I don't know exactly why, but it often seems this way.
anon4 11y ago
I think the only thing that works is to never start off with free snacks. At all places I've worked, what we have is an open self-serve bar with an open money box. You take what you want and pay as much as it says. Some people leave IOU notes when they can't make change. It works on the honour system and I've never seen a problem, not in companies with 20 employees and not with 200. Edit: coffee and water are free, of course.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- chrisbennet 11y ago
  http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/magazine/what-the-bagel-man-saw.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/magazine/what-the-bagel-ma... "He is leery of disparaging individual companies or even most industries, for fear it will hurt his business. But he will say that telecom companies have robbed him blind, and another bagel-delivery man found that law firms aren't worth the trouble. He also says he believes that employees further up the corporate ladder cheat more than those down below. He reached this conclusion in part after delivering for years to one company spread out over three floors -- an executive floor on top and two lower floors with sales, service and administrative employees. Maybe, he says, the executives stole bagels out of a sense of entitlement. (Or maybe cheating is how they got to be executives.) His biggest surprise? ''I had idly assumed that in places where security clearance was required for an individual to have a job, the employees would be more honest than elsewhere. That hasn't turned out to be true."
jdietrich 11y ago
There's a similarity to the death spiral of failing restaurants. A struggling restaurateur will often decide to cut costs somewhere to improve margins - cheap out on ingredients, cut back on staffing etc. As soon as they do this, it's game over for the business. You can't make a bad restaurant better by spending less money, so you end up in an irrevocable spiral of decline. Cost cutting -> worse food and service -> fewer customers -> lower revenues -> cost cutting. The cost of free soda is absolutely trivial compared to the fully-loaded cost of an engineer. It's a complete no-brainer with massive RoI. Cutting back on snacks is an act of desperation, perpetrated by businesses that have either run out of opportunities to grow or completely lost sight of the importance of growth. When a company stops caring about per-worker productivity, layoffs are imminent.
- vermontdevil 11y ago
  My old boss once said "You can't cut your way to success" when she was trying to get money from an university to revive a flagging business. It worked as the business is now thriving and is a profit center for the University. I do get there are exceptions to that statement but the general sentiment stuck with me ever since.
zachrose 11y ago
I might be the only person on this thread who thinks that cutting snacks might be a good move sometimes. I once joined a division of a large corporation that wasn't doing so well. This division was new and well funded, but for a variety of reasons had not been able to ship anything of note. The corporation was tanking in the market. A round of layoffs came, and the division got a new leader. One of the first things this leader did was to cut snacks. (In addition to coming up with an actual plan for making a product.) At that point in time, cutting snacks signaled a culture change that was actually positive. Like, more doing and less sitting around in the kitchen eating pretzels and lamenting corporate dysfunction beyond our control. A few thing might make this example different than others in this thread. The division was fairly new and there wasn't much in the way of existing culture. The organization really did seem slow and fat, with an obvious lack of success. Also, the office snacks weren't that good and we were in a neighborhood with better options.
wdr1 11y ago
> The point was that this engineer took the removal of any perk as a sign to leave, and soda/snacks was a huge one. True. In the Yahoo! Burbank office, we originally had a candy bowl in front office. Simple things, like Jolly Ranchers & pieces of gum, that employees would occasionally grab on the way in or out. After a time, it disappeared. I happened to be walking down the flight of stairs with a VP one evening and we passed where the bowl so used it be. It jogged my memory, so I asked what happened? I'd heard it cost $50k/year, facilities didn't want to pay for it, and each executive with a cost center refused. I don't remember his exact words -- it was something that changed the subject but saying it was "complicated" and gave the distinct impression it was true. I remember thinking "Who really cares about the candy, but if our executives can't figure out something so trivial, what the fuck is going on?" This was around 2007 and I left a short bit later. It's historical revisionism to say that was the reason I left, as I had gotten a great offer elsewhere. But it still stuck with me as a sign of executive disfunction & an increasing sense that the rank & file weren't really appreciated by senior leadership.
- Gravityloss 11y ago
  A thousand dollars per week for candy? Thats 200 dollars per day. Assuming it costs 10 dollars per kg, thats 20 kg per day. You must have had quite a lot of traffic at the bowl. If everybody took 40 grams, thats 500 people per day. Or then your financial people are using wrong candy suppliers or, worse, dodgy math...

by drblast 11y ago

fossuser 11y ago

I think I remember that too, though not sure if it was a comment or a submission. Is this what you're remembering? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007750

drblast 11y ago
Here it is, it's a comment on the Elves post that I was thinking of: http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/#comment-2163 http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-eart...

joshu 11y ago

The Elves leave Middle Earth: http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/ http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-eart...

harryjo 11y ago

The bulk cost-effectiveness argument makes sense, but how does the theory survive in the presence of modern hot-company behaviors that spend money on absurdly gourmet snacks and niche perks, that seem to be more about appearing cooler than the next company, instead of cost-effectively deploying comforts that make employees happier and more committed to their work?

gadders 11y ago

I worked at Lotus in the mid-90's when they had a bad quarter due to "channel stuffing". All the free Coca Cola etc in the fridges was swapped for off-brand rubbish (Panda Pop for those in the UK).

KineticLensman 11y ago

I worked somewhere where management decided to reduce the amount of coffee delivered by the vending machines. They realised that they would also need to reduce the size of the cups so no one would notice. Stupidly they made the cups smaller a day or so before reducing the coffee. The overflow was the giveaway

InclinedPlane 11y ago

Yup. The relationship between employee and employer is a 2 way street, and it may not seem like it some times but both of them have tremendous power. When the employer starts doing dumb shit and increasingly makes it obvious they don't truly value the employee they pick up on that. And then they start leaving. Who leaves first? Oh, just the people who are the most intrinsically motivated, who care about the work the most, who have the most talent/experience and can easily find a job elsewhere (and know it). And when those people start to leave it starts a cascade. Because when the best, most talented, most experienced people leave it makes the working environment worse. A big aspect of job satisfaction for devs is working around other talented and capable folks, when that diminishes it creates a bigger incentive to leave. So more and more people leave, generally the people who have the easiest time finding jobs. So talent and experience just start evaporating out of the company. And before you know it there's an enormous brain drain happening. The thing is, this isn't obvious to people higher up until much, much later. And then it tends to manifest itself as a reduced capability to execute on projects, especially difficult ones. But almost always there's a zillion other things that one can readily blame for such things because no project is the same from cycle to cycle. And, of course, management is generally resistant to the notion that they fucked up and screwed the company over with short-sighted policies. Who would imagine that something as simple as getting rid of free soda could translate into not being able to ship on time years later? That's preposterous? But these are just the rocks in the river that the currents and eddies swirl around, they're the visible aspects of sentiment and changes that run deep and are invisible unless you're in the trenches and paying close attention. Devs aren't a "cost center", they're the value that the entire company is built around. Treat them well and you'll be able to keep the best ones around for a long time, which is an enormous competitive advantage.

blisterpeanuts 11y ago
I've often heard this "the best ones leave first because they're in demand" meme presented as fact. It sounds logical enough, but is there any evidence that this is really what happens? Sometimes, the best and brightest are also the most invested into the organization's success, hence the least likely to leave. They may be earning a top salary, they may have the ear of the CEO, or they may just love their job too much to pack up and leave on a whim. It's been my experience that the biggest complainers when it comes to belt tightening policies are in fact the lesser contributors. The little dog yaps the loudest. I don't know exactly why, but it often seems this way.

anon4 11y ago

I think the only thing that works is to never start off with free snacks. At all places I've worked, what we have is an open self-serve bar with an open money box. You take what you want and pay as much as it says. Some people leave IOU notes when they can't make change. It works on the honour system and I've never seen a problem, not in companies with 20 employees and not with 200. Edit: coffee and water are free, of course.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
chrisbennet 11y ago
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/magazine/what-the-bagel-man-saw.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/magazine/what-the-bagel-ma... "He is leery of disparaging individual companies or even most industries, for fear it will hurt his business. But he will say that telecom companies have robbed him blind, and another bagel-delivery man found that law firms aren't worth the trouble. He also says he believes that employees further up the corporate ladder cheat more than those down below. He reached this conclusion in part after delivering for years to one company spread out over three floors -- an executive floor on top and two lower floors with sales, service and administrative employees. Maybe, he says, the executives stole bagels out of a sense of entitlement. (Or maybe cheating is how they got to be executives.) His biggest surprise? ''I had idly assumed that in places where security clearance was required for an individual to have a job, the employees would be more honest than elsewhere. That hasn't turned out to be true."

jdietrich 11y ago

There's a similarity to the death spiral of failing restaurants. A struggling restaurateur will often decide to cut costs somewhere to improve margins - cheap out on ingredients, cut back on staffing etc. As soon as they do this, it's game over for the business. You can't make a bad restaurant better by spending less money, so you end up in an irrevocable spiral of decline. Cost cutting -> worse food and service -> fewer customers -> lower revenues -> cost cutting. The cost of free soda is absolutely trivial compared to the fully-loaded cost of an engineer. It's a complete no-brainer with massive RoI. Cutting back on snacks is an act of desperation, perpetrated by businesses that have either run out of opportunities to grow or completely lost sight of the importance of growth. When a company stops caring about per-worker productivity, layoffs are imminent.

vermontdevil 11y ago
My old boss once said "You can't cut your way to success" when she was trying to get money from an university to revive a flagging business. It worked as the business is now thriving and is a profit center for the University. I do get there are exceptions to that statement but the general sentiment stuck with me ever since.

zachrose 11y ago

I might be the only person on this thread who thinks that cutting snacks might be a good move sometimes. I once joined a division of a large corporation that wasn't doing so well. This division was new and well funded, but for a variety of reasons had not been able to ship anything of note. The corporation was tanking in the market. A round of layoffs came, and the division got a new leader. One of the first things this leader did was to cut snacks. (In addition to coming up with an actual plan for making a product.) At that point in time, cutting snacks signaled a culture change that was actually positive. Like, more doing and less sitting around in the kitchen eating pretzels and lamenting corporate dysfunction beyond our control. A few thing might make this example different than others in this thread. The division was fairly new and there wasn't much in the way of existing culture. The organization really did seem slow and fat, with an obvious lack of success. Also, the office snacks weren't that good and we were in a neighborhood with better options.

wdr1 11y ago

> The point was that this engineer took the removal of any perk as a sign to leave, and soda/snacks was a huge one. True. In the Yahoo! Burbank office, we originally had a candy bowl in front office. Simple things, like Jolly Ranchers & pieces of gum, that employees would occasionally grab on the way in or out. After a time, it disappeared. I happened to be walking down the flight of stairs with a VP one evening and we passed where the bowl so used it be. It jogged my memory, so I asked what happened? I'd heard it cost $50k/year, facilities didn't want to pay for it, and each executive with a cost center refused. I don't remember his exact words -- it was something that changed the subject but saying it was "complicated" and gave the distinct impression it was true. I remember thinking "Who really cares about the candy, but if our executives can't figure out something so trivial, what the fuck is going on?" This was around 2007 and I left a short bit later. It's historical revisionism to say that was the reason I left, as I had gotten a great offer elsewhere. But it still stuck with me as a sign of executive disfunction & an increasing sense that the rank & file weren't really appreciated by senior leadership.

Gravityloss 11y ago
A thousand dollars per week for candy? Thats 200 dollars per day. Assuming it costs 10 dollars per kg, thats 20 kg per day. You must have had quite a lot of traffic at the bowl. If everybody took 40 grams, thats 500 people per day. Or then your financial people are using wrong candy suppliers or, worse, dodgy math...