"Silent compensation" definitely is compensation. To turn things around, I don't know for certain but I doubt Google puts in its software engineer contracts "we

"Silent compensation" definitely is compensation. To turn things around, I don't know for certain but I doubt Google puts in its software engineer contracts "we are paying you $X less in salary because of the free food". Rather, they offer a salary and list the other benefits (and negatives like noncompetes) in the contract and let the job candidate consider it. It sounds like it would be beneficial to list out each of the non-monetary advantages and disadvantages of a job and how much money they're each worth, but in reality there's too many [1] to make that practical. Not only are there a ton of these unseen effects but their value is different for each individual. One person may value their ability to take another job at a competitor quite highly while another may not. And that's the case for all these unseen effects. [1] Examples of unseen effects that make the implicit wage different from the explicit one: * having to sign a noncompete * do you like the sorts of people you'll be working with? * do you like the tasks you'll be working on? * do you have flexible hours? * do you like the place where you work? * do you like the length of the commute to work? * do you like the smell of the rhododendron's outside your office window? etc.