3 ms·

When I worked there, it was already very difficult to book a time for a massage, and you got one massage every year for free, and had to pay for any additional

When I worked there, it was already very difficult to book a time for a massage, and you got one massage every year for free, and had to pay for any additional ones. I never got one. The "benefit" of massages was already pretty much gone (except in name).

paulcole 4y ago
What years did you work there?
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  2018-2021, I was recent.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
Yep people need to understand that as a perk, this wasn't much. People were not getting free massages (which I guess they got in the early days the company maybe?) It just meant they'd bring a massage therapist on site, which you could book for your own $$ and get at a pretty reasonable rate, and I guess it wasn't looked down on that you would do this during the work day. But bookings were also often hard to get. And, yeah, some free massage points got deposited once a year for your birthday (most people I knew didn't ever use them.)
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  Altho the massage therapists were hardly used by alot of people and maybe that's due to them being booked out or difficult to obtain bookings. I still think Google/Facebook/Twitter are just giant daycare centers for adult babies. This is a generalisation but it's what it seems like when you have these people posting 'day in the life of twitter' 'day in the life as a google yelp elitist', etc. Where it seems like majority of the day is spent pampering oneself than actually working. We hear about these US jobs with perks, 200k salaries, shares, benefits bumping packages to like 500k etc, while outside of the US (atleast for me) we work hard for our salaries which pale in comparison.
  - bawolff 4y ago
    > I still think Google/Facebook/Twitter are just giant daycare centers for adult babies Its just a way to pay people in things that aren't money. After a certain point more $$$ becomes meaningless to most people (its just a number at some point) and these types of perks give more bank for their buck in attracting workers than upping salaries.
    - philliphaydon 4y ago
      > these types of perks give more bank for their buck in attracting workers than upping salaries. Is there really a shortage of people wanting to work at these big companies regardless of perks tho?
      - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
        Compensation at Google went up over the years. A lot of the serious perks were put in in the early days when Google was a much smaller company scrambling to try to get the brightest people it could. Honestly most of us who came later were merely riding the coat-tails of that era. Also 'base' compensation at Google was never that high when I was there. It was the RSUs that made it a very prosperous place to work. And those take a few years to vest and get you up into Really Good Money territory. So in the meantime, perks are key in retention. But the key point is that Google is just swimming in stupid amounts of $$ from ad revenues. Not spending good $$ on employee retention and compensation would actually have deleterious effects on morale. Most jobs are just slinging protobufs around and keeping those $$ systems up and running-- but those systems are important to Google. People saying Google is irresponsible with money probably haven't looked at the balance sheet. They can spend boatloads on compensation and still make more money than almost any other company.
  - kevinmchugh 4y ago
    If you're talking about TikTok videos, those are recruitment tools and I don't expect they're representative.
    - 4y ago
- bushbaba 4y ago
  I worked at google in the mid 2010s. It was definitely a perk then with many colleagues booking massages every 2-3 weeks for free.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    Yeah by the time I got there in 2011 it was certainly not free.
    - incomplete 4y ago
      worked there 2003-2011. massages were definitely not free, but heavily subsidized (something like $30 for an hour session). awesome fact: some time in the late 2000s after years of trying, the masseuses were converted from contract to full-time, complete w/benefits and all the perks of being a real 'googler'! :) don't know if that's still the case, but it was kinda awesome that the masseuses fought for this and won.
      - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
        was never like that (fulltime masseuse) in our Waterloo office. Was always provided by a third party massage service company that came in a couple times a week.
ciceryadam 4y ago
ExxonMobil Prague Corporate office has onsite massages: https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/locations/czech-republic/our-exxonmobil-czech-republic-culture#Employees https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/locations/czech-republic/ou... Afaik you can have a 30 min session every month for free. Over here it's not that unusual of a perk to have even for non-IT desk jockey jobs.
- distances 4y ago
  I used to take a massage roughly every second week, as a normal developer in a normal European company. You would pay half of the cost and company the other half, which meant my part was 10€. I felt it's a cheap way to keep neck issues at bay, benefiting everyone. Seems pointless to label it as something extravagant.

paulcole 4y ago

What years did you work there?

pclmulqdq 4y ago
2018-2021, I was recent.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

Yep people need to understand that as a perk, this wasn't much. People were not getting free massages (which I guess they got in the early days the company maybe?) It just meant they'd bring a massage therapist on site, which you could book for your own $$ and get at a pretty reasonable rate, and I guess it wasn't looked down on that you would do this during the work day. But bookings were also often hard to get. And, yeah, some free massage points got deposited once a year for your birthday (most people I knew didn't ever use them.)

philliphaydon 4y ago
Altho the massage therapists were hardly used by alot of people and maybe that's due to them being booked out or difficult to obtain bookings. I still think Google/Facebook/Twitter are just giant daycare centers for adult babies. This is a generalisation but it's what it seems like when you have these people posting 'day in the life of twitter' 'day in the life as a google yelp elitist', etc. Where it seems like majority of the day is spent pampering oneself than actually working. We hear about these US jobs with perks, 200k salaries, shares, benefits bumping packages to like 500k etc, while outside of the US (atleast for me) we work hard for our salaries which pale in comparison.
- bawolff 4y ago
  > I still think Google/Facebook/Twitter are just giant daycare centers for adult babies Its just a way to pay people in things that aren't money. After a certain point more $$$ becomes meaningless to most people (its just a number at some point) and these types of perks give more bank for their buck in attracting workers than upping salaries.
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    > these types of perks give more bank for their buck in attracting workers than upping salaries. Is there really a shortage of people wanting to work at these big companies regardless of perks tho?
    - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
      Compensation at Google went up over the years. A lot of the serious perks were put in in the early days when Google was a much smaller company scrambling to try to get the brightest people it could. Honestly most of us who came later were merely riding the coat-tails of that era. Also 'base' compensation at Google was never that high when I was there. It was the RSUs that made it a very prosperous place to work. And those take a few years to vest and get you up into Really Good Money territory. So in the meantime, perks are key in retention. But the key point is that Google is just swimming in stupid amounts of $$ from ad revenues. Not spending good $$ on employee retention and compensation would actually have deleterious effects on morale. Most jobs are just slinging protobufs around and keeping those $$ systems up and running-- but those systems are important to Google. People saying Google is irresponsible with money probably haven't looked at the balance sheet. They can spend boatloads on compensation and still make more money than almost any other company.
- kevinmchugh 4y ago
  If you're talking about TikTok videos, those are recruitment tools and I don't expect they're representative.
  - 4y ago
bushbaba 4y ago
I worked at google in the mid 2010s. It was definitely a perk then with many colleagues booking massages every 2-3 weeks for free.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Yeah by the time I got there in 2011 it was certainly not free.
  - incomplete 4y ago
    worked there 2003-2011. massages were definitely not free, but heavily subsidized (something like $30 for an hour session). awesome fact: some time in the late 2000s after years of trying, the masseuses were converted from contract to full-time, complete w/benefits and all the perks of being a real 'googler'! :) don't know if that's still the case, but it was kinda awesome that the masseuses fought for this and won.
    - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
      was never like that (fulltime masseuse) in our Waterloo office. Was always provided by a third party massage service company that came in a couple times a week.

ciceryadam 4y ago

ExxonMobil Prague Corporate office has onsite massages: https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/locations/czech-republic/our-exxonmobil-czech-republic-culture#Employees https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/locations/czech-republic/ou... Afaik you can have a 30 min session every month for free. Over here it's not that unusual of a perk to have even for non-IT desk jockey jobs.

distances 4y ago
I used to take a massage roughly every second week, as a normal developer in a normal European company. You would pay half of the cost and company the other half, which meant my part was 10€. I felt it's a cheap way to keep neck issues at bay, benefiting everyone. Seems pointless to label it as something extravagant.