3 ms·
This is a good cautionary tale and one I've seen played out in the tech industry with food. Even in the 80's it wasn't uncommon for a tech company to have a "be
by ChuckMcM 7y ago
This is a good cautionary tale and one I've seen played out in the tech industry with food. Even in the 80's it wasn't uncommon for a tech company to have a "beer bust" on Friday's where drinks and snacks were served as a social gathering for employees at the end of the work week. It was a turning point in employee relations when the VP of HR at Sun cancelled the weekly beer bust. Similarly at Google when they decided to scale back the legendary "mini-kitchens" full of snacks, "healthy alternatives" that were slowly pared down.
One sociologist I read wrote, and I'm paraphrasing, "Sharing food with another is an action of great significance. Evolutionary, the sharing of food by hunter gatherers was more significant than sex in establishing a mutually bonding relationship." They went on to discuss the importance that meals played in our history and why we "throw a feast" to welcome heroes, and the Jesus' "big reveal" happened at a meal.
The main point was that when you share food with someone you trigger a very ancient and well established mechanism. Conversely, when you stop sharing food with someone, you signal their ancient brain "I don't trust you any more, we aren't friends."
Now whether or not that thought/emotion comes to the surface, it's very clear that the for many people the change from "sharing food with you" to "not sharing food with you" changes how they see their relationship with you. What is perhaps worse is that the damage is instant and irreversible. Even if you start sharing again, the people you stopped sharing with, even temporarily[1], will no longer feel the same trust that they felt before.
At tech companies those people leave and eventually you have all employees who only remember the current system and so you're at a new "normal."
Bottom line, taking away "free" food is waaaay more impactful on company morale/relationships than you would ever imagine unless you had researched it. Thus, it happens over and over again. And even though I know a company is just trying to make me like it by giving me free food, I can't keep myself from being positively effected by it. That response is buried somewhere deep inside my head that doesn't allow for excision.
[1] Yes, there are ways to temporarily stop and not disconnect but that involves messaging before one stops sharing to both provide the external reason for the change and the conditions on which the change would revert back to sharing.
- hhmc 7y agoYour comment about the hidden impact of cancelling snacks reminds me of this article: https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/ https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...
- ChuckMcM 7y agoYup, and to Steve's point "The sodas were just the wake-up call.", it was more than a wake up call. As the paper explained, to stop sharing food with someone forces them to re-evaluate their relationship to you. They can't help it, it's thousands of years of behavioral training that kicks in and says, "This person no longer likes/trusts me, what should I do now?"
- refurb 7y agoI immediately thought of company perks as another good example of this. I can remember when my company was trying to spend less, so they took away an employee perk. Now this employee perk was kind of ridiculous (no other company paid for it) and it wasn't that popular (a few people used it). However, when they took it away? Holy crap were people pissed. This is one of the big lessons for me early in my career. Before you do something, ask yourself if you're prepared to do it forever. Sometimes it doesn't matter, but sometimes it does and you'll be better off if you never do it in the first place versus doing it and then taking it away.
- ja27 7y agoWe went through this. When 2008 hit the company stopped providing free sodas and bottled water for our office of only about 30 people. I was damn close to just buying them myself but it was crazy how upset a few people making moderately insane amounts of money would get over not getting a $1/day benefit.
- ChuckMcM 7y agoI completely relate to both of these. My experience is that you get a mix of people saying "just give me the money, I'll decide if I want to spend it on snacks" and people who say "I really like that snacks are available, please keep them." From a financial perspective its pretty hard "move the needle" on an engineers salary with free snacks and drinks. Median engineering salary in the Bay Area is more than $100K. So assuming the engineer was consuming $20 of snacks per day, 5 days a week 50 days a year, that is $5,000 per year per engineer. Not surprisingly there was lots of data on this at Google which I got a chance to review when I made a big stink about the switch in juice vendors. Not something I could share but it looked exactly like I expected it to look, sort of a power log curve where most people were way under the average and a much much smaller number were way over. That they couldn't manage the people who filled up their back packs with food and drinks for their family before they went home each night was telling on a number of levels. Of course the IRS and New York Times are all about how this "under the table benefit is robbing us of income tax" is pretty predictable as well. [1] https://www.indeed.com/career/engineer/salaries/San-Francisco-Bay-Area--CA https://www.indeed.com/career/engineer/salaries/San-Francisc...
- listenallyall 7y agoKeep in mind that, according to your post, it was the VP of HR, not Finance, that shut it down. Sun didn't end the outings for financial reasons -- the HR dept decided, unfortunately, that it was legally prudent to stop serving alcohol and to end the encouragement of socializing between employees.
- ChuckMcM 7y agoYup, the unfortunately named Crawford Beverage.
- travisjungroth 7y agoIt’s important to remember that companies are staffed by primates.