7 ms·

Jesus Christ. I eat well and spend maybe $400 a month on groceries and food. I’ve heard that Google recruiters attempt to con potential employees into some ri

• Izkata 5y ago
  Likewise here, I'm floating around $300-350/month at the store, and that includes non-food consumables like tissues and cleaning supplies.
  • gmadsen 5y ago
    Thats pretty extreme. I am usually around $800 a month, but that includes about 2 meals a week at casual restaurants with friends.
    • jjoonathan 5y ago
      (Context: replying to gray post) Whenever a pissing contest about grocery prices happens (and don't kid yourself, if a number has been mentioned it's not a question of when but rather an indication that the pissing has begun) you must quote a lower number than the previous person. It doesn't need to be true, it doesn't need to include critical qualifying information like location and tradeoffs, it doesn't even need to be particularly likely -- but it must be lower. So it is written. Here, I'll demonstrate: I only spend $250 per month on groceries and I cannot imagine the disgusting excess that could possibly lead anyone to waste a single cent more!
    • lupire 5y ago
      For how many people?
      • gmadsen 5y ago
        Just me. Granted I don't feel the need to save as much as I can in this department. I like quality meat that is not from a factory farm and vegetables. Probably $500 on groceries and $300 on going out to eat.
• radec 5y ago
  I'm glad others are shocked by that $60/day on food. I would say food takes up the largest percentage of my expenses and $60 is easily 5 days worth of food for two.
  • stjohnswarts 5y ago
    Lol I spend about 5-10$ a day on food. Where do these people eat at lol
    • AlotOfReading 5y ago
      Going to guess SF, where those are not overly expensive prices for eating out with a drink at each meal.
      • stjohnswarts 5y ago
        I like cooking and tend to prep on a Sunday, and then midweek on Wednesday if I'm bored. I live in Austin, TX. I don't usually eat out at all except the occasional outing with friends. Of course I'll splurge on the weekend depending on what's going on. That said I tend to eat the "zone diet" that stuck with me even after I lost a bunch of weight on it. It isn't particularly "hard" to find food to fit that scheme. Of course you have to not mind reheating food :) . I'm a fairly rugged individual and don't really need froufrou food every day https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/meal-prep-recipes-week-ahead/ https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/meal-prep-recipes-wee...
    • YinLuck- 5y ago
      You can barely get a single meal at McDonalds with $10, what is with the frugality signaling in this thread? I've never cooked a meal, and I never intend to. Why? For the same reason I don't grow my own veggies or keep my own chickens. Its low productivity labor. If you're posting on this site and cook your own food because its a hobby for you, great. If you're doing it to save money, you are probably being stupid with your time.
    • Cookingboy 5y ago
• shkkmo 5y ago
  The key part there is "buying prepared food". 60 per day is much more reasonable if you eat out or get takeout/delivery every meal.
• vostok 5y ago
  It sounds about right to me if you don't like cooking. Note that the cost is for prepared food. Buying raw ingredients and cooking them yourself is cheaper in terms of explicit dollar costs, but if you don't enjoy cooking then you also need to assign some monetary value for having to do something that you don't like. I think I would enjoy taking a break and cooking so free food is probably not worth $60 to me personally. It's not crazy to think that my employer gets a benefit of more than $60 through increased productivity by providing me with free food though.
• trainsplanes 5y ago
  Reading FAANG employees talk about food prices makes me realize the old "It's one banana. What could it cost, $10?" is something that was written based on reality.
  • TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    When I worked at Google I so rarely paid for food that I began to completely ignore the cost of food when I did pay for it. It just didn’t seem to matter much.
  • giantrobot 5y ago
    At Apple Park lunch at Cafe Macs could easily run $10-15 (without a drink) depending on what station you ordered from. The food there was good but not exactly cheap. The campus was really too big to leave for lunch unless you arrived at some stupid early hour to park underground below your office. It's a 10-15 minute walk to the south parking garage and then at least a 10 minute drive to the closest places to eat and none of those are cheaper than the cafe. So unless you're bringing food from home you can pretty easily hit $20 for lunch per day. I doubt Cafe Macs is running a huge profit but the cost for employees is non-trivial.
    • Cthulhu_ 5y ago
      And I thought spending up to eight euros for a warm meal (I'd have a sandwich in the evening) was stretching the budget.
      • pjmlp 5y ago
        Actually that is cheap. I am used to pay at least 10 euros, for food + drink, unless I go to one of those special lunch time deals or street food places. And since I am Portuguese, evenings is also a proper meal, so make it twice for the days I happen to dine outside as well.
        • galangalalgol 5y ago
• Lewton 5y ago
  What’s your hourly wage and how much time do you spend preparing food?
  • lupire 5y ago
    And do you get overtime pay if you don't cook your own food?
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
• marcyb5st 5y ago
  I work for Google and live in Switzerland where food is really expensive so my situation doesn't generalize well. However, if 1) I cook all my food, and 2) try to have a healthy diet I spend easily the equivalent of 30USD/day. Going to a restaurant sets you back around the same amount per meal. So, assuming I work 200 days/year going to the office and get free food would save me 6k USD/year (also assuming I cook 100% off my meals). That kind of money would pay for holidays or other stuff. Finally, my back of the envelope math didn't include the time I spend cooking and all the "premium" stuff I get at the office like fancy drinks and snacks, which I usually don't buy when WFH.
  • gspr 5y ago
    And you live in a country with a really nicely developed public transport infrastructure, so you don't go through the nightmarish car commutes that most USians probably have in mind. When I lived in CH, I did not mind the days I had to commute – it was mostly a relaxed trainride where I could get work done 75% of the time. I really think a lot of this debate is colored by Americans thinking of the American commute.
    • marcyb5st 5y ago
      Indeed. My commute was/is between 15 and 20 minutes door to door so I really don't mind the buffers between home/office!
    • sepin4 5y ago
      Most of Europe has relatively nice public transport. I used to read books while on my way to work. That was 1.5-2 hours per day for my library. My previous office was 30 minutes walking distance from my home. Great way to wake up as opposed to coffee. While I was in the US, they had scarcely any sidewalks. Only in big cities it seemed appropriate to walk to somewhere.
    • elzbardico 5y ago
      On the other side, Europeans tend to think that there is only the US and Europe in the world. American-style long commutes are the reality in most of Asia, Latin America and the larger African cities. If anything, Europe is the exception.
• lrvick 5y ago
  My wife and I were spending maybe $1000/mo on takeout -and- we had free lunches at offices until the pandemic. Once I committed to WFH life, it became a logical next step to double down on the freedom aspects and start my own consulting firm. That meant I needed long term thinking. I learned to cook more often and turned my entire front yard into a garden. Overall I would say WFH has been net healthier on my mind and wallet.
  • papito 5y ago
    I am a huge proponent of Blue Apron (or a similar service). Have been a customer for 7 years now. It cuts down on grocery waste (do I NEED 1 liter of sherry vinegar to cook one thing?), and you pick up a ton of techniques that may not be chef-advanced but very useful in every-day cooking.
    • OJFord 5y ago
      > do I NEED 1 liter of sherry vinegar to cook one thing? It will last years though, do you NEED to cook only one thing with it?
      • papito 5y ago
        That's just an example. Most of the ingredients that I buy without meal kits usually just go bad, there is no saving money justification there, especially in NYC where groceries are more expensive.
        • OJFord 5y ago
          I think this is an 'occasionally cooking' problem. If you cook frequently enough then it's just not an issue; there's always something with not much good life left, sure, but that's what you use next. If course if you don't cook it's not a problem either, so it's probably unfortunately the cause of some reluctance. Maybe kits help that.
  • throwaway2037 5y ago
    Wow. Thank you to share. How much garbage does this produce just from packaging? I cringe at packaging waste from takeaway. That is my number one reason to avoid it. (To be clear: I don't live in a place that uses remotely "eco-friendly" packaging like pressed recycled light cardboard and balsam[sp?] wood utensils!)
• belatw 5y ago
  Consider a significant number of Googlers are upper middle class kids, possibly on the spectrum, who go straight from the ivy league to google’s cafeteria. These made up numbers seem reasonable and accurate to them because they never had to take care of themselves in the real word.
  • Mauricebranagh 5y ago
    Don't ivy league students have to cook for themselves?
    • ghaff 5y ago
      Many people at college generally do not have access to a kitchen.
      • OJFord 5y ago
        If that's true at all it definitely needs an 'in the US' qualifier - it's surprising to me in the UK, and even more surprising we would be so different in that regard. Is the cooked-for-you food free?
        • ghaff 5y ago
          >Is the cooked-for-you food free? It's broadly true in the US as far as I know for on-campus university housing. (Off-campus housing and fraternities/sororities are often different.) Anything but free. Meal plan requirements vary. Where I lived undergrad, we had a kitchen for a suite of rooms although I ate out a fair bit. (Many dorms did not have cooking facilities though.) Both places I went for grad school (which were actually both Ivy League) had no cooking facilities of any type.
        • vageli 5y ago
          > Is the cooked-for-you food free? It's not free, you are required to pay for a meal plan when you are on campus dormitory housing.
• yawnxyz 5y ago
  lol I'm doing a bootstrapped startup. I ate: a can of tuna, peanut butter, greek yogurt, protein powder-based shake, and watermelon yesterday... maybe at a total cost of $3-5??
  • throwaway2037 5y ago
    You only missed ramen in that list! (Are you "ramen profitable" yet?)