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I'm always confused by the hatred for people staying late at tech companies doing not-work. It's described like some elaborate anti-worker scam, but a lot of pe

I'm always confused by the hatred for people staying late at tech companies doing not-work. It's described like some elaborate anti-worker scam, but a lot of people I know are genuinely friends with coworkers (and often pretty introverted outside of that) and just enjoy doing that after work. I suppose I can understand the conspiracy theory of "they want you to only have work friends", but I really don't understand "they're replacing a good raise with a $100 ping-pong table". It's just not a sane model of what's happening, keeping employees in the building is not inherently profitable.

user5994461 10y ago
It's not hatred. It's about running a business efficiently, while the employees don't even realize it. 1) Keeping tech employees in the building is profitable. 2) In tech companies in particular, you don't have to be at work behind a computer to be productive. Once you both understand that these things are true and correct, you can begin to understand the business of the SV and why these perks come to be. While people are in the office, they are with co-worker, thinking about work, talking about work, progressing on their work. And the magic thing is you don't have to pay them for it, because they ain't working officially. A bad thing happen in production late? Fine, they're already there and they won't even think that fixing it is doing actual work because they are already there. That foosball table was way cheaper than paying overtime. How about serving breakfast at 9 am and dinner at 19? Then people who wants both will stay. Most likely, people who are a bit close to one or the other might extend their schedule slightly just to grab it. But no way they think of it as extra work.
warcher 10y ago
Honestly, it's people with lives external to work (families, hobbies, friends, kids) seeing people with nothing better to do than hang out in the office all day seizing the inside lane wrt office politics by doing stuff that's not related to their actual work at all. I don't know necessarily whether that's unfair, as a manager might see somebody with nothing better to do with their time but work as an asset, but I can empathize with the resentment.

user5994461 10y ago

It's not hatred. It's about running a business efficiently, while the employees don't even realize it. 1) Keeping tech employees in the building is profitable. 2) In tech companies in particular, you don't have to be at work behind a computer to be productive. Once you both understand that these things are true and correct, you can begin to understand the business of the SV and why these perks come to be. While people are in the office, they are with co-worker, thinking about work, talking about work, progressing on their work. And the magic thing is you don't have to pay them for it, because they ain't working officially. A bad thing happen in production late? Fine, they're already there and they won't even think that fixing it is doing actual work because they are already there. That foosball table was way cheaper than paying overtime. How about serving breakfast at 9 am and dinner at 19? Then people who wants both will stay. Most likely, people who are a bit close to one or the other might extend their schedule slightly just to grab it. But no way they think of it as extra work.

warcher 10y ago

Honestly, it's people with lives external to work (families, hobbies, friends, kids) seeing people with nothing better to do than hang out in the office all day seizing the inside lane wrt office politics by doing stuff that's not related to their actual work at all. I don't know necessarily whether that's unfair, as a manager might see somebody with nothing better to do with their time but work as an asset, but I can empathize with the resentment.