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Snacks and other tchotchkes have become de rigueur in SV: I haven't had to buy my own lunch or snack for 8+ years now. With the pandemic in force and the prosp
by rmk 6y ago
Snacks and other tchotchkes have become de rigueur in SV: I haven't had to buy my own lunch or snack for 8+ years now.
With the pandemic in force and the prospect of going into an office itself coming into question, companies will have to stop relying on the (lazy but admittedly effective) lure of free snacks and lunch. Good times.
On the whole, I agree with you: when I see people crumpled up in bean bags and picking at salad on picnic tables in companies' 'Come work with us' webpages, I get the chills. How very juvenile! But we all know that the industry feeds on a steady influx of juveniles and there's a new batch every summer!
- romanoderoma 6y agoTo be fair with my employers, they usually paid for my lunches or had a cafeteria, usually not free, but very affordable. It's good to have the option, it's not what drives my decisions. I have no problem with people that see it as a bonus, to each his own, it simply doesn't matter much to me. But maybe SV corporate culture has gone a little bit too far on it.
- rmk 6y agoA lot of the old-school employers run subsidised cafeterias. Cisco used to, back in the day. Pretty decent choices and reasonable pricing, until they started whittling down options making the cafes pretty unattractive compared to surrounding eateries in Milpitas (this was during the '09 recession). I know that Apple still runs them but they are of course notoriously thrifty (I'm pretty sure they don't subsidise as heavily as others). Same with Yahoo. Not sure if we had to pay, but it was pretty reasonable. Soon after that first recession, I started seeing a trend of catered food at smaller places, and completely in-house operations at the larger places. That trend has kept up until the pandemic struck.