4 ms·

One thing that bothered me when I interviewed at Google is how much they talked up the perks. Everything from free shuttle service to free food, to all of these

One thing that bothered me when I interviewed at Google is how much they talked up the perks. Everything from free shuttle service to free food, to all of these "extracurricular" perks like movies, laundry/drycleaning, hair cuts, etc. The campus felt designed to suck more work hours out of you. If I go play ping pong for an hour, do I now owe that hour to the company later? If I'm working past 5, will I be inclined to keep working because I can just go grab a free bite to eat later? My current employer offers a few perks. We have pool tables, video games, etc. But you'll pretty much never find people using them because they're busy working. Seems like mostly a recruiting tool and little more. That's why I'm perfectly fine staying home and not utilizing the cool office space. I didn't use that stuff anyway.

munificent 5y ago
Googler here. I can speak to my experience, but others have their own. > The campus felt designed to suck more work hours out of you. Another way to describe it is that the campus is designed to suck more employees away from the competition. If you assume the existence of an employee as a given, then the only reason for a perk must be to extract more labor from that employee. But that's not how Google is looking at it. They're trying to convince good employees to work for them instead of other tech companies. Those perks exist to keep the grass greener on Google's side of the fence instead of Facebook/Apple/Amazon/etc. This provides an entirely rational/economic answer for nice perks without needing overtime to justify them. (There are, of course, also plenty of non-financial justifications for the perks.) In the Google offices I've worked in, they tend to be almost completely empty by 6:00. > If I go play ping pong for an hour, do I now owe that hour to the company later? My experience is that different employees have different feelings about that. Some do, some don't. Personally, I don't feel I owe the company another 30 minutes if I go outside for a walk because the walk tends to reinvigorate me and increase my productivity. But I would probably feel weird if I was playing a game for a significant period of time more than once a week or so. > If I'm working past 5, will I be inclined to keep working because I can just go grab a free bite to eat later? Some do, but dinner is extremely low-key compared to lunch. On the rare times I've been around at dinner time, the cafes are mostly empty with just a few partaking.
- shagie 5y ago
  > Another way to describe it is that the campus is designed to suck more employees away from the competition. If you assume the existence of an employee as a given, then the only reason for a perk must be to extract more labor from that employee. There are so many stories out there of people getting a "side gig" while working remote. The "working at two companies at once" is a real concern for tech companies - where IP assignment can create legal nightmares. One of the simplest ways to prevent this is to make it not feasible for a 2nd job to be held. If you're in the office for 8h for 3 days a week, it is not practical to be able to hold a second job at the same time. For companies with larger or more secretive initiatives and products these ideas are likely more reasonable. The tech companies know that they've got people who are "coasters" who are doing the minimum and collecting a pay check - they don't want to continue to enable to them to have multiple jobs that they're coasting in.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    > There are so many stories out there of people getting a "side gig" while working remote. Sounds like the job simply isn't attractive enough. Why would I waste time as a second job when helping my employer will result in a stock price increase that I'll make capital gain on?
  - munificent 5y ago
    From a market efficiency perspective, these people working side hustles are a net win. If they are able to keep both employers happy with their productivity, where is the downside?
logicalmonster 5y ago
I can understand Silicon Valley deciding to offer these services. The "free services" are designed to keep you at your desk working longer. You don't need to rush out and waste part of the day if you have an intense craving for a certain type of food or need to get a haircut or do laundry. And a lot of great developers are young, fresh out of university, and the only thing they know in life is either having parents or a campus provide everything they need in life and living a semi-managed existence. Offering everything to developers is just a natural extension of that lifestyle. But I'd respect a company far more that just paid you over the market rate, didn't shell out as a company for extra services, and let you use your own money to decide what services you needed to manage your own life. As far as the office toys go (video games, pool tables, etc) there are very few times I've seen them used in any office outside of a planned holiday or office party. That said, I like some of that stuff as a decoration even if it's rarely used. It reminds me that there's more to life than just working.
- shagie 5y ago
  > But I'd respect a company far more that just paid you over the market rate, didn't shell out as a company for extra services, and let you use your own money to decide what services you needed to manage your own life. As a programmer, our job is to make decisions all the time - how to design the software. That leads to decision fatigue ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue ). One part of that is "if people are making choices that aren't important to work, they're less productive at work." Here's a decision to make - what do you have for breakfast? Where do you go for lunch? And so on... Granted, these are trivial decisions to make - but they're decisions none the less. What if... the company could give you catered breakfasts and lunches? Or even to the point of back in the dot com boom I recall tales of a big tech company that even allowed you to set the billing address for things like rent and the like and it would be a payroll deduction with the company handling it for you. Those extra services are certainly there to entice and ensnare people who don't make those decisions themselves... but they're also there to try to improve productivity.
908B64B197 5y ago
> The campus felt designed to suck more work hours out of you. Yes! That's the point. If you think there are 10x devs out there and that your company is capable of attracting them, then paying extra to remove friction to get a little bit of extra time out of them is worth more than an ever increasing headcount with regular devs. > If I go play ping pong for an hour, do I now owe that hour to the company later? No. Engineering isn't about hours, it's about results. If playing an hour of ping pong means the next 3 hours will be more productive for the players and they will be more creative it's an investment. I've seen tough bugs get solved by engineers going on a walk when they were absolutely stuck. > My current employer offers a few perks. We have pool tables, video games, etc. But you'll pretty much never find people using them because they're busy working. Seems like mostly a recruiting tool and little more. That's why I'm perfectly fine staying home and not utilizing the cool office space. I didn't use that stuff anyway. A company won't just become Google by buying beanbag chairs and getting a ping pong table. That's cargo culting [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

munificent 5y ago

Googler here. I can speak to my experience, but others have their own. > The campus felt designed to suck more work hours out of you. Another way to describe it is that the campus is designed to suck more employees away from the competition. If you assume the existence of an employee as a given, then the only reason for a perk must be to extract more labor from that employee. But that's not how Google is looking at it. They're trying to convince good employees to work for them instead of other tech companies. Those perks exist to keep the grass greener on Google's side of the fence instead of Facebook/Apple/Amazon/etc. This provides an entirely rational/economic answer for nice perks without needing overtime to justify them. (There are, of course, also plenty of non-financial justifications for the perks.) In the Google offices I've worked in, they tend to be almost completely empty by 6:00. > If I go play ping pong for an hour, do I now owe that hour to the company later? My experience is that different employees have different feelings about that. Some do, some don't. Personally, I don't feel I owe the company another 30 minutes if I go outside for a walk because the walk tends to reinvigorate me and increase my productivity. But I would probably feel weird if I was playing a game for a significant period of time more than once a week or so. > If I'm working past 5, will I be inclined to keep working because I can just go grab a free bite to eat later? Some do, but dinner is extremely low-key compared to lunch. On the rare times I've been around at dinner time, the cafes are mostly empty with just a few partaking.

shagie 5y ago
> Another way to describe it is that the campus is designed to suck more employees away from the competition. If you assume the existence of an employee as a given, then the only reason for a perk must be to extract more labor from that employee. There are so many stories out there of people getting a "side gig" while working remote. The "working at two companies at once" is a real concern for tech companies - where IP assignment can create legal nightmares. One of the simplest ways to prevent this is to make it not feasible for a 2nd job to be held. If you're in the office for 8h for 3 days a week, it is not practical to be able to hold a second job at the same time. For companies with larger or more secretive initiatives and products these ideas are likely more reasonable. The tech companies know that they've got people who are "coasters" who are doing the minimum and collecting a pay check - they don't want to continue to enable to them to have multiple jobs that they're coasting in.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > There are so many stories out there of people getting a "side gig" while working remote. Sounds like the job simply isn't attractive enough. Why would I waste time as a second job when helping my employer will result in a stock price increase that I'll make capital gain on?
- munificent 5y ago
  From a market efficiency perspective, these people working side hustles are a net win. If they are able to keep both employers happy with their productivity, where is the downside?

logicalmonster 5y ago

I can understand Silicon Valley deciding to offer these services. The "free services" are designed to keep you at your desk working longer. You don't need to rush out and waste part of the day if you have an intense craving for a certain type of food or need to get a haircut or do laundry. And a lot of great developers are young, fresh out of university, and the only thing they know in life is either having parents or a campus provide everything they need in life and living a semi-managed existence. Offering everything to developers is just a natural extension of that lifestyle. But I'd respect a company far more that just paid you over the market rate, didn't shell out as a company for extra services, and let you use your own money to decide what services you needed to manage your own life. As far as the office toys go (video games, pool tables, etc) there are very few times I've seen them used in any office outside of a planned holiday or office party. That said, I like some of that stuff as a decoration even if it's rarely used. It reminds me that there's more to life than just working.

shagie 5y ago
> But I'd respect a company far more that just paid you over the market rate, didn't shell out as a company for extra services, and let you use your own money to decide what services you needed to manage your own life. As a programmer, our job is to make decisions all the time - how to design the software. That leads to decision fatigue ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue ). One part of that is "if people are making choices that aren't important to work, they're less productive at work." Here's a decision to make - what do you have for breakfast? Where do you go for lunch? And so on... Granted, these are trivial decisions to make - but they're decisions none the less. What if... the company could give you catered breakfasts and lunches? Or even to the point of back in the dot com boom I recall tales of a big tech company that even allowed you to set the billing address for things like rent and the like and it would be a payroll deduction with the company handling it for you. Those extra services are certainly there to entice and ensnare people who don't make those decisions themselves... but they're also there to try to improve productivity.

908B64B197 5y ago

> The campus felt designed to suck more work hours out of you. Yes! That's the point. If you think there are 10x devs out there and that your company is capable of attracting them, then paying extra to remove friction to get a little bit of extra time out of them is worth more than an ever increasing headcount with regular devs. > If I go play ping pong for an hour, do I now owe that hour to the company later? No. Engineering isn't about hours, it's about results. If playing an hour of ping pong means the next 3 hours will be more productive for the players and they will be more creative it's an investment. I've seen tough bugs get solved by engineers going on a walk when they were absolutely stuck. > My current employer offers a few perks. We have pool tables, video games, etc. But you'll pretty much never find people using them because they're busy working. Seems like mostly a recruiting tool and little more. That's why I'm perfectly fine staying home and not utilizing the cool office space. I didn't use that stuff anyway. A company won't just become Google by buying beanbag chairs and getting a ping pong table. That's cargo culting [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult