4 ms·

The Power of a Free Popsicle (2018)

107 points by NaOH 5mo ago

mikestew 5mo ago
My wife and I, both now-retired former Microsoft employees, were discussing such a topic just this morning (in relation to a HN headline that will become evident in a moment). Basically, I was commenting that we both worked at MS in that brief moment of time that employees were treated really well, like they really wanted us to stay there. The beer at morale events was small, local breweries (Mac and Jack's, typically). The morale events themselves were on a regular cadence. More t-shirts than I had days to wear them. Need a new monitor? If it's been a few years, "go ask your admin", and one just shows up. Yes, we had private offices. Some big things, like the offices, but also a lot of little, popsicle-like things that added up to, "wow, I feel like they want me here." Then the morale events started becoming less frequent. The beer went from local to Bud and Bud Light. Then according to my wife, it went from Bud to Kirkland (the brand you find at Costco). Morale budget went from $WHATEVER to $40/head/year. Even the employee stock purchase plan discount went from 15% to 10%. You can look up the famous "shrimp and weenies" memo at Microsoft. I was on board with that, we didn't need shrimp. But now they don't even get the weenies. And now Meta is recording your every keystroke and mouse movement, and I'm sure if they even get beer, it's no better than Microsoft has. Employees seem to be viewed as a liability now, or at best, code-producing cows to be milked out there in the open office feed lot. I don't care how much it pays these days, I've tasted how it could be, and no amount of money would get me back. All because companies can't spend an extra $100-$200 on their >$200K employees.
- bch 5mo ago
  > The beer went from local to Bud and Bud Light. Then according to my wife, it went from Bud to Kirkland (the brand you find at Costco) So, back to local breweries? /s
  - mikestew 5mo ago
    sigh, have your upvote. :-)
  - soupfordummies 5mo ago
    Huge upgrade though ;)
- superfrank 5mo ago
  It's insane to me how big companies don't realize how far these little things go. I worked at a publicly traded company worth tens of billions of dollars where I had to escalate to the VP level to get reimbursed when I paid for our team to send flowers to one of our team members after his mother was murdered. Expensing books, courses, or equipment is essentially out of the question and getting approval for team events requires a business related reason and are regularly denied. I worked at a 50 person company where on my first day I arrived and there was a company logo'd Patagonia jacket on my desk and a small bottle of Veuve Clicquot. I worked at a different just allocated every team $100 per person every 6 months and said, "Do something with it. The only rules are you can't just pocket it and it has to be spent as a team." The large company paid me triple what those other companies did, which is why I stayed for nearly 8 years, but in my head they're the cheap bastards who didn't care about their employees. I have such better memories of the companies who paid me far, far less, but set aside a few hundred bucks a year to do something special. I understand the big tech company mindset of, "If we're paying you half a million dollars a year you should be able to buy your own damn beer", but I think they forget that their employees are human and often it really is the thought that counts.
  - shimman 5mo ago
    The companies realize this, your mistake is expecting capitalists to not exploit labor. If you want actual improved working conditions, there is only one path that has proven to work and it involves organizing with other workers while resisting your bosses through whatever means you feel comfortable with. The US has one of the most violent labor histories on the planet for a reason. The elites in this country absolutely do not like relinquishing control to an accountable public. There is a reason why the constitution was written as a document to benefit a minority of slavers, just like there is a reason why you don't get time-and-a-half when you're on-call as a tech worker; a group of undemocratic individuals want to hold dominion over your life while shaking you down for everything you're worth.
    - andersonpico 5mo ago
      Programmers are the easiest target: they're the group most averse to organizing; their bosses, however, are not.
- delichon 5mo ago
  I resent such spending for the most part, as cheap psyops. A few official beers or pizzas do not have a salient morale effect on a team that works together all day, at least in my experience. Neither do cute Slack callouts or Employees of the Month. For me, even a significant cash bonus is a cheap shortcut compared to the actual signal of appreciation of an actual raise. It's my salary that makes me feel like a valued team member, not a slice of cold pepperoni.
  - RobotToaster 5mo ago
    The issue is companies are getting too stingy for even cheap psyops now.
    - moate 5mo ago
      The fear of the guillotine has been lost...
  - glhaynes 5mo ago
    I look at such things similarly, and have never felt like "team building exercises" were particularly valuable. I'm working with these people on the products we build for hours every day; I don't need to do an escape room with them to "team build". That said, I have to recognize that this may be partially because of my personality. I don't "do great" at mixers like this. I'd rather go home and be with my family than drink beer—regardless of label—in a corporate setting. People describe me as charismatic and engaging one-on-one, but I'm awkward and unhappy at a big crowd event. But there are other people whom I think get a lot of value and connections out of them! So it's kinda hard for me to say. Downgrades in quality, though, stick out like a sore thumb. "I didn't really like going to these things before, but at least they had good beer." It can also be a real "it's the thought that counts" sort of thing. When you show me that you're willing to spend less on me, it sends a signal, sometimes stronger than if you'd never spent anything on me in the first place.
    - zippyman55 5mo ago
      The team building seems fun the first time but then you start seeing the same stuff year after year and it gets so old.
- bluedino 5mo ago
  I thought this would mention Microsoft taking away free sodas https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/ https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...
- treis 5mo ago
  I think this conflates symptoms and causes. You'd still be a code producing cow with a craft brew in your hand. $200 fun budgets, IME, doesn't help that and more often is another sort of obligation.
- edmundsauto 5mo ago
  Here’s my steel man. Wall Street hates the entitlement that they perceive from soft coders. They don’t like companies not constantly putting downward pressure on costs, which is why those other companies do it. Notice how these benefit reductions get a lot of coverage? It sends a signal to Wall Street that the company can control costs. And Zuck doesn’t care about the stock price from quarter to quarter, except that a low stock price will cause a Dead Sea effect of the best and brightest. That in turn will cause a talent spiral. So they make symbolic cuts so Wall Street keeps the stock juiced so the RSU incentivized employees stay.
- canucker2016 5mo ago
  I would have thought that getting rid of private (or semi-private) offices, the largest, most conspicuous "free popsicle", would have been the death knell for the old Microsoft - the beancounters are running the asylum now. see https://www.geekwire.com/2019/microsoft-says-goodbye-past-demolition-begins-original-buildings-ahead-big-renovation/ https://www.geekwire.com/2019/microsoft-says-goodbye-past-de... for a virtual walkthrough, see https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20250708-00/?p=111357 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20250708-00/?p=11...
- socalgal2 5mo ago
  I'm guessing they all get this way. I don't know if it's inevitable or not. When I first worked at Google ~20 years ago it was a company that trusted its employees. You needed something it was assumed you knew best and they gave it to you. New machine, 2nd machine, more storage, monitor, cables, whatever. Over time it all disappeared. First they got rid of the "hardware depots". They were like small computer stores. They merged them with "tech stops" the place where you got tech support. In that change the number of things available went down. Over time they took it down further and further. There are no tech stops now (I think). They used to have bins of cables and power supplies. If you needed one take it. Instead they built expensive kiosks you have to badge in to get one. I can only guess some ex-employee started the kiosk machine and got a friend still at Google to given them a lucrative contract to build these stupid machines. Then they removed stuff from the machines. I needed a power supply recently. They don't exist in the machines. I ended up having to go to the nearest store to purchase one so I get could get work done and then fill out a bunch of stuff to expense it. Given what they pay engineers it probably cost them $300-$600 for a $50 part. I'm not totally blaming the company. Plenty of bad employees abused trust and that always slowly erodes what a company allows/supports.
uxhacker 5mo ago
This theory comes from what Kano calls delighters. In the 1980’s Noriaki Kano came up with the a product framework called the Kano model. Touchpoints come in three ways. Delighters as already mentioned, a popsicle delivered to your room, or a chocolate on your pillow. Then there are performance needs. In the case of a hotel this could be the quality of the view, or the case of an employee the basic wage, and then next is the basic needs. Using the hotel example this would be something like the air conditioning. You complain if it does not work, but nobody writes a review about how perfect the aircon was.
- fugaziboutit 5mo ago
  > You complain if it does not work, but nobody writes a review about how perfect the aircon was. This one is more often called a 'hygiene factor'.
wxw 5mo ago
There’s a lot of value in making someone feel cared for. Whether you do that with a popsicle or with the staff and infrastructure of a $700/night hotel room is kind of a wash.
bluedino 5mo ago
Does DoubleTree still give you fresh-baked cookies when you check in?
- hawaiianbrah 5mo ago
  At least as of a couple years ago, yes.
- dcminter 5mo ago
  Yes, we stayed at one near ORF a few weeks ago. We thought the staff were weirdly enthusiastic about a not very good mass produced cookie actually. Might stay there again, but not because of the gimmick.
compiler-guy 5mo ago
The problem with free is that people get entitled. You can see some examples in this thread. "Everybody likes free. But free can be dangerous, too. Today's show is about what happens when you take something that was free and you give it a price. That is a highly risky move. And the damage can be enormous." https://www.npr.org/2020/01/08/794592539/episode-386-the-cost-of-free-doughnuts https://www.npr.org/2020/01/08/794592539/episode-386-the-cos...
- alexpotato 5mo ago
  Todd McFarlane was on the Tim Ferriss podcast and he had a great line: "If you offer people $5 worth of value and charge them $6, they are going to be mad. If you offer them $9 worth of value for $9, they are going to think you are amazing."
bayareabadboy 5mo ago
for me the takeaway is more if I have a business what can I do for my customers like offer a free popsicle that can keep them happy and coming back cheaply Speaking as someone on a salary. Idk.
alexpotato 5mo ago
This reminds me of an Undercover Boss episode (I think for Cinnabon). The COO had mandated no more than 30 seconds per customer so that the line kept moving. When she went undercover, she realized that 30 seconds was barely enough time to ring up the customer, hand them their order and move on to the next customer. Great from an efficiency standpoint but terrible for customer relations as the cashier didn't even have time to say "Thank you for shopping with us!" or "How is your day going?" etc. It's a good reminder that optimizing too much for one metric (e.g. line speed, short term profits etc) can lead to worse outcomes in the long term. On the flip side, a few extra minutes of time and effort from an employee can turn a "nice stay" into " we are customer FOR LIFE!"
alexpotato 5mo ago
Some excellent examples of this - Danny Meyer (founder of Shake Shack and Eleven Madison Park) has a wonderful book about customer service [0] - Derek Sivers CD Baby customer note [1] - Rory Sutherland talking about San Pellegrino canned soda vs Fanta [2] 0 - https://amzn.to/4nuREQ8 https://amzn.to/4nuREQ8 1 - https://sive.rs/cdbe https://sive.rs/cdbe 2 - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uHBrEk7h9uA https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uHBrEk7h9uA
linsomniac 5mo ago
My old accounting firm used to give you, when you picked up your taxes, a Crunch bar if you owed money and a Payday bar if you were getting money back. It was silly, but I still think about them every time I do taxes. I haven't used them in ~15 years because I quit the business I was co-owner of, but it's absurd how effective spending around a buck for candy bars was. We were spending something around a grand for business taxes, international taxes and US tax prep with them, so it was a drop in the bucket.
Brendinooo 5mo ago
>Transitions are the most undervalued and underexplored moments. I remember when my tenth grade English teacher put the fear of God in all of us on the first day of school, then was a totally different, nice, and wonderful person for the rest of the year (apart from an incident with the substitute, a different story for a different comment). She knew what she was doing!
aaron695 5mo ago
[dead]
tim-tday 5mo ago
I worked at a FAANG company. Our first day experience was terrible. (Nobody knew where to go or where they belonged, hardware and desks were regularly not provisioned by day one). I made it my personal mission to make it suck less. I once drove 2.5hrs in traffic so I could meet my intern as he emerged from first day training. I didn’t have the idea formalized, but I intuited the importance of that defining moment. I’m thrilled to see the idea fleshed out and given a name. This might become my new cornerstone of customer service.

107 points by NaOH 5mo ago

My wife and I, both now-retired former Microsoft employees, were discussing such a topic just this morning (in relation to a HN headline that will become evident in a moment). Basically, I was commenting that we both worked at MS in that brief moment of time that employees were treated really well, like they really wanted us to stay there. The beer at morale events was small, local breweries (Mac and Jack's, typically). The morale events themselves were on a regular cadence. More t-shirts than I had days to wear them. Need a new monitor? If it's been a few years, "go ask your admin", and one just shows up. Yes, we had private offices. Some big things, like the offices, but also a lot of little, popsicle-like things that added up to, "wow, I feel like they want me here." Then the morale events started becoming less frequent. The beer went from local to Bud and Bud Light. Then according to my wife, it went from Bud to Kirkland (the brand you find at Costco). Morale budget went from $WHATEVER to $40/head/year. Even the employee stock purchase plan discount went from 15% to 10%. You can look up the famous "shrimp and weenies" memo at Microsoft. I was on board with that, we didn't need shrimp. But now they don't even get the weenies. And now Meta is recording your every keystroke and mouse movement, and I'm sure if they even get beer, it's no better than Microsoft has. Employees seem to be viewed as a liability now, or at best, code-producing cows to be milked out there in the open office feed lot. I don't care how much it pays these days, I've tasted how it could be, and no amount of money would get me back. All because companies can't spend an extra $100-$200 on their >$200K employees.

bch 5mo ago
> The beer went from local to Bud and Bud Light. Then according to my wife, it went from Bud to Kirkland (the brand you find at Costco) So, back to local breweries? /s
- mikestew 5mo ago
  sigh, have your upvote. :-)
- soupfordummies 5mo ago
  Huge upgrade though ;)
superfrank 5mo ago
It's insane to me how big companies don't realize how far these little things go. I worked at a publicly traded company worth tens of billions of dollars where I had to escalate to the VP level to get reimbursed when I paid for our team to send flowers to one of our team members after his mother was murdered. Expensing books, courses, or equipment is essentially out of the question and getting approval for team events requires a business related reason and are regularly denied. I worked at a 50 person company where on my first day I arrived and there was a company logo'd Patagonia jacket on my desk and a small bottle of Veuve Clicquot. I worked at a different just allocated every team $100 per person every 6 months and said, "Do something with it. The only rules are you can't just pocket it and it has to be spent as a team." The large company paid me triple what those other companies did, which is why I stayed for nearly 8 years, but in my head they're the cheap bastards who didn't care about their employees. I have such better memories of the companies who paid me far, far less, but set aside a few hundred bucks a year to do something special. I understand the big tech company mindset of, "If we're paying you half a million dollars a year you should be able to buy your own damn beer", but I think they forget that their employees are human and often it really is the thought that counts.
- shimman 5mo ago
  The companies realize this, your mistake is expecting capitalists to not exploit labor. If you want actual improved working conditions, there is only one path that has proven to work and it involves organizing with other workers while resisting your bosses through whatever means you feel comfortable with. The US has one of the most violent labor histories on the planet for a reason. The elites in this country absolutely do not like relinquishing control to an accountable public. There is a reason why the constitution was written as a document to benefit a minority of slavers, just like there is a reason why you don't get time-and-a-half when you're on-call as a tech worker; a group of undemocratic individuals want to hold dominion over your life while shaking you down for everything you're worth.
  - andersonpico 5mo ago
    Programmers are the easiest target: they're the group most averse to organizing; their bosses, however, are not.
delichon 5mo ago
I resent such spending for the most part, as cheap psyops. A few official beers or pizzas do not have a salient morale effect on a team that works together all day, at least in my experience. Neither do cute Slack callouts or Employees of the Month. For me, even a significant cash bonus is a cheap shortcut compared to the actual signal of appreciation of an actual raise. It's my salary that makes me feel like a valued team member, not a slice of cold pepperoni.
- RobotToaster 5mo ago
  The issue is companies are getting too stingy for even cheap psyops now.
  - moate 5mo ago
    The fear of the guillotine has been lost...
- glhaynes 5mo ago
  I look at such things similarly, and have never felt like "team building exercises" were particularly valuable. I'm working with these people on the products we build for hours every day; I don't need to do an escape room with them to "team build". That said, I have to recognize that this may be partially because of my personality. I don't "do great" at mixers like this. I'd rather go home and be with my family than drink beer—regardless of label—in a corporate setting. People describe me as charismatic and engaging one-on-one, but I'm awkward and unhappy at a big crowd event. But there are other people whom I think get a lot of value and connections out of them! So it's kinda hard for me to say. Downgrades in quality, though, stick out like a sore thumb. "I didn't really like going to these things before, but at least they had good beer." It can also be a real "it's the thought that counts" sort of thing. When you show me that you're willing to spend less on me, it sends a signal, sometimes stronger than if you'd never spent anything on me in the first place.
  - zippyman55 5mo ago
    The team building seems fun the first time but then you start seeing the same stuff year after year and it gets so old.
bluedino 5mo ago
I thought this would mention Microsoft taking away free sodas https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/ https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...
treis 5mo ago
I think this conflates symptoms and causes. You'd still be a code producing cow with a craft brew in your hand. $200 fun budgets, IME, doesn't help that and more often is another sort of obligation.
edmundsauto 5mo ago
Here’s my steel man. Wall Street hates the entitlement that they perceive from soft coders. They don’t like companies not constantly putting downward pressure on costs, which is why those other companies do it. Notice how these benefit reductions get a lot of coverage? It sends a signal to Wall Street that the company can control costs. And Zuck doesn’t care about the stock price from quarter to quarter, except that a low stock price will cause a Dead Sea effect of the best and brightest. That in turn will cause a talent spiral. So they make symbolic cuts so Wall Street keeps the stock juiced so the RSU incentivized employees stay.
canucker2016 5mo ago
I would have thought that getting rid of private (or semi-private) offices, the largest, most conspicuous "free popsicle", would have been the death knell for the old Microsoft - the beancounters are running the asylum now. see https://www.geekwire.com/2019/microsoft-says-goodbye-past-demolition-begins-original-buildings-ahead-big-renovation/ https://www.geekwire.com/2019/microsoft-says-goodbye-past-de... for a virtual walkthrough, see https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20250708-00/?p=111357 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20250708-00/?p=11...
socalgal2 5mo ago
I'm guessing they all get this way. I don't know if it's inevitable or not. When I first worked at Google ~20 years ago it was a company that trusted its employees. You needed something it was assumed you knew best and they gave it to you. New machine, 2nd machine, more storage, monitor, cables, whatever. Over time it all disappeared. First they got rid of the "hardware depots". They were like small computer stores. They merged them with "tech stops" the place where you got tech support. In that change the number of things available went down. Over time they took it down further and further. There are no tech stops now (I think). They used to have bins of cables and power supplies. If you needed one take it. Instead they built expensive kiosks you have to badge in to get one. I can only guess some ex-employee started the kiosk machine and got a friend still at Google to given them a lucrative contract to build these stupid machines. Then they removed stuff from the machines. I needed a power supply recently. They don't exist in the machines. I ended up having to go to the nearest store to purchase one so I get could get work done and then fill out a bunch of stuff to expense it. Given what they pay engineers it probably cost them $300-$600 for a $50 part. I'm not totally blaming the company. Plenty of bad employees abused trust and that always slowly erodes what a company allows/supports.

uxhacker 5mo ago

This theory comes from what Kano calls delighters. In the 1980’s Noriaki Kano came up with the a product framework called the Kano model. Touchpoints come in three ways. Delighters as already mentioned, a popsicle delivered to your room, or a chocolate on your pillow. Then there are performance needs. In the case of a hotel this could be the quality of the view, or the case of an employee the basic wage, and then next is the basic needs. Using the hotel example this would be something like the air conditioning. You complain if it does not work, but nobody writes a review about how perfect the aircon was.

fugaziboutit 5mo ago
> You complain if it does not work, but nobody writes a review about how perfect the aircon was. This one is more often called a 'hygiene factor'.

wxw 5mo ago

There’s a lot of value in making someone feel cared for. Whether you do that with a popsicle or with the staff and infrastructure of a $700/night hotel room is kind of a wash.

bluedino 5mo ago

Does DoubleTree still give you fresh-baked cookies when you check in?

hawaiianbrah 5mo ago
At least as of a couple years ago, yes.
dcminter 5mo ago
Yes, we stayed at one near ORF a few weeks ago. We thought the staff were weirdly enthusiastic about a not very good mass produced cookie actually. Might stay there again, but not because of the gimmick.

compiler-guy 5mo ago

The problem with free is that people get entitled. You can see some examples in this thread. "Everybody likes free. But free can be dangerous, too. Today's show is about what happens when you take something that was free and you give it a price. That is a highly risky move. And the damage can be enormous." https://www.npr.org/2020/01/08/794592539/episode-386-the-cost-of-free-doughnuts https://www.npr.org/2020/01/08/794592539/episode-386-the-cos...

alexpotato 5mo ago
Todd McFarlane was on the Tim Ferriss podcast and he had a great line: "If you offer people $5 worth of value and charge them $6, they are going to be mad. If you offer them $9 worth of value for $9, they are going to think you are amazing."

bayareabadboy 5mo ago

for me the takeaway is more if I have a business what can I do for my customers like offer a free popsicle that can keep them happy and coming back cheaply Speaking as someone on a salary. Idk.

alexpotato 5mo ago

This reminds me of an Undercover Boss episode (I think for Cinnabon). The COO had mandated no more than 30 seconds per customer so that the line kept moving. When she went undercover, she realized that 30 seconds was barely enough time to ring up the customer, hand them their order and move on to the next customer. Great from an efficiency standpoint but terrible for customer relations as the cashier didn't even have time to say "Thank you for shopping with us!" or "How is your day going?" etc. It's a good reminder that optimizing too much for one metric (e.g. line speed, short term profits etc) can lead to worse outcomes in the long term. On the flip side, a few extra minutes of time and effort from an employee can turn a "nice stay" into " we are customer FOR LIFE!"

alexpotato 5mo ago

Some excellent examples of this - Danny Meyer (founder of Shake Shack and Eleven Madison Park) has a wonderful book about customer service [0] - Derek Sivers CD Baby customer note [1] - Rory Sutherland talking about San Pellegrino canned soda vs Fanta [2] 0 - https://amzn.to/4nuREQ8 https://amzn.to/4nuREQ8 1 - https://sive.rs/cdbe https://sive.rs/cdbe 2 - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uHBrEk7h9uA https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uHBrEk7h9uA

linsomniac 5mo ago

My old accounting firm used to give you, when you picked up your taxes, a Crunch bar if you owed money and a Payday bar if you were getting money back. It was silly, but I still think about them every time I do taxes. I haven't used them in ~15 years because I quit the business I was co-owner of, but it's absurd how effective spending around a buck for candy bars was. We were spending something around a grand for business taxes, international taxes and US tax prep with them, so it was a drop in the bucket.

Brendinooo 5mo ago

>Transitions are the most undervalued and underexplored moments. I remember when my tenth grade English teacher put the fear of God in all of us on the first day of school, then was a totally different, nice, and wonderful person for the rest of the year (apart from an incident with the substitute, a different story for a different comment). She knew what she was doing!

aaron695 5mo ago

[dead]

tim-tday 5mo ago

I worked at a FAANG company. Our first day experience was terrible. (Nobody knew where to go or where they belonged, hardware and desks were regularly not provisioned by day one). I made it my personal mission to make it suck less. I once drove 2.5hrs in traffic so I could meet my intern as he emerged from first day training. I didn’t have the idea formalized, but I intuited the importance of that defining moment. I’m thrilled to see the idea fleshed out and given a name. This might become my new cornerstone of customer service.