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Have companies been laying off the cooks and not paying rent? Otherwise the reduced food bill isn't that much of a saving.

dogman144 6y ago
Not sure! My original point is just that the framing from WSJ doesn't capture accurate compensation factors well. To your point: I think that's irrelevant/off topic. There's probably a theoretical % of employees who could go remote that in turn will make a company move office space or fire cooks. Otherwise, those are fixed costs and don't come into the picture here. I don't think either % get hit for the class of SWE I'm referring too, so it's just lost benefits to the SWEs.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  Well the company is still paying for the benefits they offered you, you just can't use them. I see both sides of the argument but we're in unprecedented territory here and in the end what's "fair" has little no to impact on the outcome of negotiations.
  - dogman144 6y ago
    They're paying for the benefits still, but unless a certain % of SWEs go remote, there's diminishing costs per SWE to provide the benefits. You have to consider the scale the benefits "get provided at." At a certain point, it costs the same to feed premium salad to 500 engineers as it does 575 engineers (no idea if this is the math, but conceptually yeah). A cook can make 600 or 700 gallons of soup without much difference or new purchases required: huge vat of soup is 2/3 vs. 3/4 full. If the % of remote engineers hit a level such that cooks have to buy new soup bowls, idle hand cooks, or offices with cavernous empty halllways, then yeah, you're back under diminishing costs/eng and need to scale down.
legerdemain 6y ago
Palantir did, as early as last year, to create an impression of belt-tightening among its employees in preparation for the IPO. Fired the kitchen staff, dropped the lease on its kitchen facility, and switched to Sodexo or someone like them to bring in hot meals. Made it much easier to cut contracts during the pandemic!

dogman144 6y ago

Not sure! My original point is just that the framing from WSJ doesn't capture accurate compensation factors well. To your point: I think that's irrelevant/off topic. There's probably a theoretical % of employees who could go remote that in turn will make a company move office space or fire cooks. Otherwise, those are fixed costs and don't come into the picture here. I don't think either % get hit for the class of SWE I'm referring too, so it's just lost benefits to the SWEs.

colinmhayes 6y ago
Well the company is still paying for the benefits they offered you, you just can't use them. I see both sides of the argument but we're in unprecedented territory here and in the end what's "fair" has little no to impact on the outcome of negotiations.
- dogman144 6y ago
  They're paying for the benefits still, but unless a certain % of SWEs go remote, there's diminishing costs per SWE to provide the benefits. You have to consider the scale the benefits "get provided at." At a certain point, it costs the same to feed premium salad to 500 engineers as it does 575 engineers (no idea if this is the math, but conceptually yeah). A cook can make 600 or 700 gallons of soup without much difference or new purchases required: huge vat of soup is 2/3 vs. 3/4 full. If the % of remote engineers hit a level such that cooks have to buy new soup bowls, idle hand cooks, or offices with cavernous empty halllways, then yeah, you're back under diminishing costs/eng and need to scale down.

legerdemain 6y ago

Palantir did, as early as last year, to create an impression of belt-tightening among its employees in preparation for the IPO. Fired the kitchen staff, dropped the lease on its kitchen facility, and switched to Sodexo or someone like them to bring in hot meals. Made it much easier to cut contracts during the pandemic!