7 ms·

Isn’t the purpose of the free food to make you spend more time at work? Seems logical that the alternative is more time at home.

lazyasciiart 8y ago
But it's not free time at home. It's time cooking and meal planning and grocery shopping. And maybe that's with family and friends, but for many people it's probably done alone.
- Insanity 8y ago
  I would expect that for many people, especially those with kids, dinner is a time for getting together with the family.
  - hopler 8y ago
    That's the fantasy, yes. In reality, a professional working parent usually gets home after the kids eat.
    - Insanity 8y ago
      I feel like this might depend on the culture, and how late you usually eat dinner etc.. Because well, kids usually don't tend to cook for themselves so the parents end up cooking for them and eating with them. That might be my bubble though, my friends / family have jobs that allow them to leave work around 5-ish and with school ending somewhere between 4-5, it's not that much after the kids are home. (or they pick up the kids after school).
      - lazyasciiart 8y ago
        Kids definitely can and do cook for themselves? I've also known families who would make and freeze dinners for the week so the kids just had to reheat them on weekdays. Or one parent gets home earlier and has dinner with the kids, but the other one will be later.
  - lazyasciiart 8y ago
    Eating dinner, sure. Cooking and shopping and planning? Less so.
nindalf 8y ago
I don’t work for Google but my employer serves food. This is not true in my experience. Folks finish dinner at 6 and gtfo. Or they pack the food in containers on their way out and eat at home. Having the option of eating lunch within the office means I can spend less time on it and go home sooner. Same productivity, but less time spent at work.
smueller1234 8y ago
Free food is what you make of it. If your income as a Google engineer is so tight that you have to make sure you get the most out of breakfast and dinner, go for it (but also maybe have a long hard think). The culture may well vary between sites, but this idea that Google (and others) exclusively employ fresh college grads and try to embrace then 24x7 just isn't true. We have families just like anyone else, and they matter to us every bit as much as everyone else's families matter to them. I for my part am happy that I get a healthy, hot meal for lunch so dinner can be a quick snack when I get home, so I have more time with the kids. The alternative is more time spent on chores. Please stop spreading these tired tropes.
- njepa 8y ago
  That is mostly the food part though. I don't think anyone is questioning whether having a quality cafeteria at work is a good idea. It is the incentive to stay at work, especially dinner which can make working late become not working late enough. I am not sure what you mean by the cost? I can't imagine people would care about that.
- swozey 8y ago
  The fact that I don't have to exert ANY energy to decide on where to go for lunch vs. working downtown and having to decide between the same 5 places or spending 20 minutes pulling out and back into parking garages is very nice, and I'm nowhere near a recent college grad. Dinners also nice for those of us without anyone to go home to eat with. I absolutely hate the "Whats for lunch today?" shuffle.
- randomsearch 8y ago
  You haven’t discredited my assertion at all. If you can eat faster, you get back to work faster. An early breakfast or tasty late dinner at work is a temptation to spend more time there. I had a quick google and I’m not alone in my opinion. I’m not criticising the practice, it makes business sense and employees can choose not to use it.
Itaxpica 8y ago
Free food was originally introduced to Google in part because there were so few food options near the Mountain View campus that people were driving a half hour each way to spend twenty minutes eating. So yes, the goal was to get people to spend more time at work, but the alternative was “time spent sitting in traffic” rather than “time spent at home”. (The other major driver behind food was supposedly the fact that the founders were PhD students and had found that some of their best ideas had arisen from informal discussions with other researchers over lunch, so they wanted to create an environment where employees had that same opportunity)

lazyasciiart 8y ago

But it's not free time at home. It's time cooking and meal planning and grocery shopping. And maybe that's with family and friends, but for many people it's probably done alone.

Insanity 8y ago
I would expect that for many people, especially those with kids, dinner is a time for getting together with the family.
- hopler 8y ago
  That's the fantasy, yes. In reality, a professional working parent usually gets home after the kids eat.
  - Insanity 8y ago
    I feel like this might depend on the culture, and how late you usually eat dinner etc.. Because well, kids usually don't tend to cook for themselves so the parents end up cooking for them and eating with them. That might be my bubble though, my friends / family have jobs that allow them to leave work around 5-ish and with school ending somewhere between 4-5, it's not that much after the kids are home. (or they pick up the kids after school).
    - lazyasciiart 8y ago
      Kids definitely can and do cook for themselves? I've also known families who would make and freeze dinners for the week so the kids just had to reheat them on weekdays. Or one parent gets home earlier and has dinner with the kids, but the other one will be later.
- lazyasciiart 8y ago
  Eating dinner, sure. Cooking and shopping and planning? Less so.

nindalf 8y ago

I don’t work for Google but my employer serves food. This is not true in my experience. Folks finish dinner at 6 and gtfo. Or they pack the food in containers on their way out and eat at home. Having the option of eating lunch within the office means I can spend less time on it and go home sooner. Same productivity, but less time spent at work.

smueller1234 8y ago

Free food is what you make of it. If your income as a Google engineer is so tight that you have to make sure you get the most out of breakfast and dinner, go for it (but also maybe have a long hard think). The culture may well vary between sites, but this idea that Google (and others) exclusively employ fresh college grads and try to embrace then 24x7 just isn't true. We have families just like anyone else, and they matter to us every bit as much as everyone else's families matter to them. I for my part am happy that I get a healthy, hot meal for lunch so dinner can be a quick snack when I get home, so I have more time with the kids. The alternative is more time spent on chores. Please stop spreading these tired tropes.

njepa 8y ago
That is mostly the food part though. I don't think anyone is questioning whether having a quality cafeteria at work is a good idea. It is the incentive to stay at work, especially dinner which can make working late become not working late enough. I am not sure what you mean by the cost? I can't imagine people would care about that.
swozey 8y ago
The fact that I don't have to exert ANY energy to decide on where to go for lunch vs. working downtown and having to decide between the same 5 places or spending 20 minutes pulling out and back into parking garages is very nice, and I'm nowhere near a recent college grad. Dinners also nice for those of us without anyone to go home to eat with. I absolutely hate the "Whats for lunch today?" shuffle.
randomsearch 8y ago
You haven’t discredited my assertion at all. If you can eat faster, you get back to work faster. An early breakfast or tasty late dinner at work is a temptation to spend more time there. I had a quick google and I’m not alone in my opinion. I’m not criticising the practice, it makes business sense and employees can choose not to use it.

Itaxpica 8y ago

Free food was originally introduced to Google in part because there were so few food options near the Mountain View campus that people were driving a half hour each way to spend twenty minutes eating. So yes, the goal was to get people to spend more time at work, but the alternative was “time spent sitting in traffic” rather than “time spent at home”. (The other major driver behind food was supposedly the fact that the founders were PhD students and had found that some of their best ideas had arisen from informal discussions with other researchers over lunch, so they wanted to create an environment where employees had that same opportunity)