The thing about the free meals is that empirical evidence suggests that they get more bang for their engineering buck. I found out first hand that if you feed

The thing about the free meals is that empirical evidence suggests that they get more bang for their engineering buck. I found out first hand that if you feed me, I'll be in the office a lot longer. I will still work the same amount because I will take more frequent breaks to stretch my day out to accommodate dinner. When I actually do work, I'm well rested and well fed. I'm easily over $10 dollars worth more productive and I used a lot my extra break time to attend mind-expanding Tech Talks. It would be more expensive NOT to provide free food! That said, this is also one of the key reasons I chose Microsoft. I actually like spending some fraction of my life off campus being a normal person.