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From the experience of my friends, perks like beverages and snacks vary quite from industrie to industrie. For example in design related industries (agencies et
by niklasd 8y ago
From the experience of my friends, perks like beverages and snacks vary quite from industrie to industrie. For example in design related industries (agencies etc.), there often are an abundance of snack & beverages perks, in addition to a nicely furnished office etc.
On the other hand, in industries like investing and law firms, snack perks are reduced to bascially soda, coffee and maybe a banana (and furniture is rather of practical appearance). And those I have seen from the inside tendend to be financially very healthy.
A friend of mine explains this with the pay gap: As a designer he has a much smaller salary than his lawyer and investment friends, so his agency invests in these small (and comparably cheap perks) to keep him happy anyway, despite the pay being only okayish. This logic doesn't apply to people with six-digit salaries.
So I think the variety of snacks often has little to do with financial health, more with practice. Though I agree with the author, than any changes in it (like cutting perks) propably do correlate with financial health.
- speedplane 8y agoTrue that law firms offer very little in the way of snacks (although that is starting to change), but they offer other perks that can be far more expensive, a common one being free car service home if you work past 9. Most work till 7 or 8 anyway, and it provides a little incentive to stay another hour. I haven’t seen this in other industries.
- TAForObvReasons 8y agoInvestment banking does this as well, and they cover late meals.
- arethuza 8y agoMy cynicism about law firms makes me wonder if things like "free car service" can be charged back to clients.
- chrisseaton 8y agoWhy's that cynical? If the client's work is causing the need for the transport then isn't it appropriate to charge it to the client?
- arethuza 8y agoThe activity isn't cynical - my view of why law firms (particularly large law firms) do things is very cynical - based upon many unhappy experiences.
- smileysteve 8y agoI mean, in the end, the clients are paying for everything the firm does, right? Who is paying for snacks? Eventually, the clients (or the vc, who is hoping the clients will eventually pay for them).
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- TimTheTinker 8y agoI suspect these perks also vary significantly by geographic location. At my company (Southern CA, inland empire), they only started offering free made-to-order coffee drinks in the break rooms about 4 years ago, but the company has been seeing steady growth and has been financially healthy since it was founded in the late 1960s.
- TheCoelacanth 8y agoIt's not what the perks are that you need to look at; it's the change in the perks. If someone decides that they need to cut free coffee, that probably means that they were looking for things to cut because coffee is too cheap for someone to bother cutting under normal circumstances.
- WWLink 8y agoOn pay gaps and snacks: I've seen the opposite! Companies that pay less tend to have more spartan (and dated) facilities, cheap toilet paper, and no snacks. I've heard of some companies even having "water clubs" and "coffee clubs" where you opt in to having some money taken out of your check for water/coffee to be provided for your team!
- perl4ever 8y agoMy experience: 1. Legal IT: Keurig machine and lots of free K-cups 2. Health insurer: free coffee, but only two communal pots in the morning which get stale and burnt later on. 3. Federal gov contractor: Keurig machine but you had to buy your own k-cups. 4. Hospital: Keurig machine but no free K-cups, but then they added a fancy coffee vending machine that grinds coffee for less than a dollar a serving. I haven't worked anywhere where the snacks are free, although a few of them have had vending machines.