4 ms·

Nobody really uses the ball pits or the video games at these companies. Maybe some companies have foosball lunch tradition at most. Meals at the company altho

by mahyarm 11y ago

Nobody really uses the ball pits or the video games at these companies. Maybe some companies have foosball lunch tradition at most. Meals at the company although are a real time and money saver for everyone. What most people do when the company doesn't provide lunch is walk (or drive) as a group to some local restaurant and have lunch out, every work day. What people with families is commute from the cheaper SFH suburbs into work. It means shitty 30-1hr commutes, but that is life for many americans already.

untog 11y ago
> What most people do when the company doesn't provide lunch is walk (or drive) as a group to some local restaurant and have lunch out, every work day. I feel like you're describing this as a negative when it sounds like a huge positive to me.
- mahyarm 11y ago
  Typical SV let's go for lunch: 1. get car / gather people in 5m 2. wait in traffic for 15m 3. look for parking for 10m 4. wait in restaurant & eat for 1hr or get sandwich and eat in 30m. 5. get back to car in 5m 6. wait in traffic for another 15m And 1.5-2 hrs later you're back at work. Nice to do for special occasions, not so good every day. If SV companies didn't provide lunch by default, the entire south bay would be in gridlock during lunch time. If you're close to restaurants then this is far more practical since you just need to walk for 10m. But if your office parks at least a 15m drive from the restaurants, it isn't. What I do is go out for lunch with coworkers at the company cafe.
SwellJoe 11y ago
Lunch at work is a great idea, for both company and employees, especially if the company is kinda far from food options. I'd probably rather work at a company that pays slightly more and is located near lots of good food in a downtown/walkable area than one that feeds me, unless their kitchens are as good as Google, but it's kind of a toss up. I'm always excited to get invited to Google for lunch, but I doubt most companies do it anywhere near as well as Google. But, breakfast and dinner, too? I begin to question the motives of the company. If it is to enable/encourage a flexible schedule so that employees can make their commute at low-traffic times, awesome! If it is so that employees feel compelled to be in the office 12 hours a day, it's much less awesome. I think Google is a decent example of the former (while still having some traits of the latter). Again, it's easy for it to be used to enable age discrimination and discrimination against people with children and lives outside of work, without ever explicitly doing so. Anyway, I'm not actually trying to say a company feeding their employees is a bad thing. I'm trying to say that there's been a trend of taking tech workers right out of college and sort of continuing their dorm life well into their late 20s and even 30s, and I don't know that it is particularly healthy (for the workers or society in these areas). It's easy to lack empathy when every interaction is with people just like you, which is why I think there's been a recent clash against Google and other tech behemoths in SF communities. There's a lack of engagement in the rest of civil society when you live and breathe work, and live surrounded by people who do exactly the same kind of work, and are living exactly the same kind of life.

by mahyarm 11y ago

untog 11y ago

> What most people do when the company doesn't provide lunch is walk (or drive) as a group to some local restaurant and have lunch out, every work day. I feel like you're describing this as a negative when it sounds like a huge positive to me.

mahyarm 11y ago
Typical SV let's go for lunch: 1. get car / gather people in 5m 2. wait in traffic for 15m 3. look for parking for 10m 4. wait in restaurant & eat for 1hr or get sandwich and eat in 30m. 5. get back to car in 5m 6. wait in traffic for another 15m And 1.5-2 hrs later you're back at work. Nice to do for special occasions, not so good every day. If SV companies didn't provide lunch by default, the entire south bay would be in gridlock during lunch time. If you're close to restaurants then this is far more practical since you just need to walk for 10m. But if your office parks at least a 15m drive from the restaurants, it isn't. What I do is go out for lunch with coworkers at the company cafe.

SwellJoe 11y ago

Lunch at work is a great idea, for both company and employees, especially if the company is kinda far from food options. I'd probably rather work at a company that pays slightly more and is located near lots of good food in a downtown/walkable area than one that feeds me, unless their kitchens are as good as Google, but it's kind of a toss up. I'm always excited to get invited to Google for lunch, but I doubt most companies do it anywhere near as well as Google. But, breakfast and dinner, too? I begin to question the motives of the company. If it is to enable/encourage a flexible schedule so that employees can make their commute at low-traffic times, awesome! If it is so that employees feel compelled to be in the office 12 hours a day, it's much less awesome. I think Google is a decent example of the former (while still having some traits of the latter). Again, it's easy for it to be used to enable age discrimination and discrimination against people with children and lives outside of work, without ever explicitly doing so. Anyway, I'm not actually trying to say a company feeding their employees is a bad thing. I'm trying to say that there's been a trend of taking tech workers right out of college and sort of continuing their dorm life well into their late 20s and even 30s, and I don't know that it is particularly healthy (for the workers or society in these areas). It's easy to lack empathy when every interaction is with people just like you, which is why I think there's been a recent clash against Google and other tech behemoths in SF communities. There's a lack of engagement in the rest of civil society when you live and breathe work, and live surrounded by people who do exactly the same kind of work, and are living exactly the same kind of life.