8 ms·

Some interesting quotes from Dropcam's CEO last year: “Our business model is very straightforward. I think if your business model is not straightforward, it ve

by jmduke 12y ago

Some interesting quotes from Dropcam's CEO last year: “Our business model is very straightforward. I think if your business model is not straightforward, it veers into potentially being unethical, if you look at things that are quote-unquote ‘free.’ None of the people who work here want to work on something that works like that. They look at it as tricking the user, when [a company is] turning around and using some part of the user’s data to make revenue." and "He thinks the lavish perks at many technology companies, especially the free on-campus meals, are a disguised form of mind control, designed to get employees to work 12- or 14-hour days." http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2013/04/23/dropcam-ceos-beef-with-brogramming-late-nights-and-free-dinners/?single_page=true http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2013/04/23/dropcam-ceos...

npizzolato 12y ago
Funny how quickly things change when someone offers to hand you a lot of money. Granted, someone's opinions can change, but I feel like the first quote especially describes a personal philosophical value that wouldn't change on a whim.
- jeroen 12y ago
  "Dropcam will come under Nest’s privacy policy, which explains that data won’t be shared with anyone (including Google) without a customer’s permission. Nest has a paid-for business model and ads are not part of our strategy. In acquiring Dropcam, we’ll apply that same policy to Dropcam too." Looks like nothing will change about that straightforward business model.
  - thesausageking 12y ago
    While technically accurate that statement is really misleading. Nest makes a significant amount of revenue from utility companies who pay up to $50 per thermostat per year for Nest agreeing to turn down their usage during peak times. This is a very different model than paying someone for a product. While you buy Nest's product, you are still the product (and selling you is a better business for them long-term).
    - CrosseyeJack 12y ago
      Nest has only recently started operating in the UK so I don't think that any UK energy companies have yet jumped onto that bandwagon. But still I must ask for a source for your claim. Does the owner of the nest have the option to override such feature? Just because I have a nest in my home doesn't mean my home is well suited to kill the heating during peak times. Yeah it might save me a few quid and the energy company a bunch more killing my heating during peak times. But I am not going to sit in a cold house just because the energy company decide what is best for me. If I can override it or disable it. far enough. But that is like your ISP killing your connection because everyone in your street is watching netflix at the same time you are trying to just have a few good irc take rooms open at the same time. In a pay per use case (which most net connections don't) we are used to pay what we use. If I need my house heated because I am cold, I want to be able to heat my home.
      - radiorental 12y ago
        Throwing a guess out there... I think this applies more to Air Conditioning usage in the US. I'm an expat in MA, my company sends out a few emails in the summer along the lines of 'we are reducing our energy consumption at the request of the power provider, all non essential lighting will be turned off and cooling systems tuned to 'optimal' temperatures' this is to avoid brownouts. If I recall, the same does no happen in the UK other than everyone making a cuppa at a break in coronation st. (o;
    - prezjordan 12y ago
      So the utility company pays their customers, who in turn lower their bills by using less energy? Why?
      - maxerickson 12y ago
        During high demand the utility may be purchasing the energy for rates much higher than they are collecting from the customer.
      - thesausageking 12y ago
- enneff 12y ago
  The latter quote about the free food is just an ignorant comment. I'm sure once the guy talked to some actual Googlers and saw how it really plays out, his fears were assuaged. (It's true that my free Google lunch keeps me at work around lunch time, but I don't feel pressure for me to work beyond the 38 hours a week they pay me for. In fact, Google has a lot of programs to help its employees maintain a good work/life balance. Of course there are crunch times, but I feel free to spend less time working at other times to balance it out.)
  - hueving 12y ago
    38 hours? Are you not salaried?
    - _delirium 12y ago
      Salaried Google employees, officially at least, work a full-time schedule according to the local standard workweek, which varies by jurisdiction. That's 40 hours in the US/UK offices, 37 hours in the Denmark offices, 38 hours in the Australian offices, etc. And enneff's profile indicates he's in Australia.
      - hueving 12y ago
        Interesting. I know several Googlers in the SV area and none of them work on a 40/hr schedule like that. They work like a regular salaried person where they just do the appropriate amount of work to get their tasks completed on schedule. Sometimes they will have a relaxed week where they only work ~20 hours and other times they will be in a code sprint and do 60-70 hours.
        _delirium 12y ago
        I meant average, yeah, not necessarily that you work the same hours every week. However countries also vary a bit in how normal it is for people to work outside of a standard daytime, M-F workweek. I think even in the U.S., it's only really in the Valley (and maybe also in NYC finance) where a regular salaried job has wild week-to-week variations in working hours. Occasional variations, yes, but in most industries it's expected that you'll work standard hours most of the time (e.g. 8-5, M-F), deviating only when there is some major issue. Every engineering company I've heard of works like that, for example. The main exception is that people do do quite a bit of email outside of work hours. There are all sorts of practicalities that rely on a predictable work schedule: scheduling your carpool, arranging childcare dropoff/pickup, etc. How does that work in the tech industry? Do people at Google not have carpools, kids, etc.?
- streblo 12y ago
  Read the last section of the article.
- general_failure 12y ago
  I have said this many times before - everyone's ethics has a price. You just need to find the price. (Yeah yeah, there are exceptions in history but I am talking of the norm)
- navjot 12y ago
  Not really that funny. Most humans aren't brands. They change opinions and views based on new information.
Swizec 12y ago
> "He thinks the lavish perks at many technology companies, especially the free on-campus meals, are a disguised form of mind control, designed to get employees to work 12- or 14-hour days." Is there actually honestly anyone out there who doesn't think so? I mean, is it really disguised even? We give you stuff, you make your life revolve around the company. It's a very straightforward exchange in my opinion. Hell, people have directly said to me in interviews "We want this company to be all you think about" when explaining why they'd prefer to hire me full-time rather than part-time.
- samstave 12y ago
  I've often thought about this problem: On the one hand, you want to provide perks that offset personal cost to your employees AND reduce the amount of time it takes for them to do something like lunch with the result in increased productivity (ostensibly simply due to removing factors such as travel-time-to-lunch-place). The company store comes to mid, as well. There are many great benefits that companies do provide: free commute costs (bus, bike and ferry service) as well as on-site food... Perhaps a way to quash any misgivings about such services would be to provide a daily per diem for services as pay, where you get the per diem pay UNLESS you partake of the companies service instead. So you badge into each service and thus get that per-diem pay redacted from your check. If you use NONE of the company's services, then you get that same portion of pay back. This also has its problems, though. ---- What I would far prefer, though, is tech services system that companies can buy into: Want your employees to be able to bus from SF to MTN VIEW: pay in and let them badge into that service. Why should all the tech giants run separate services that are basically all the same routes? Let a company run that, and let ANY company add users and pay based on badging. Let companies have a "groupon" of sorts for restaurants in their area, where the per-diem lunch allowance is spendable at any restaurant within a radius of the office. The employee will get a % of their meal paid for by the company, and they pay for anything they personally want over the base? Allow for perks that are not walled to the campus/office/etc. Heck, Path.com employees had a monthly Uber allowance they could spend... This should be encouraged in Silicon Valley, to allow startups to share services at a discount which both provides revenue, data, testing, users, validation, etc....
rdl 12y ago
I don't really mind staying late at the office (with has gigabit nLayer, a 4K monitor, free drinks and snacks, etc.) vs. at home (which has comcast, and is pretty small). The commute between the locations is a pain, but otherwise I have no real difference between "being online doing whatever I want to do" at home vs. at the office. Right now, I'm working on a TC article and some conference talks on independent research. I'll probably drive home once the traffic is done. I'll go to my co-presenter's house Saturday night to work on the talks again. The "work vs. personal" distinction is really secondary to me, compared to "stuff I want to do, vs. stuff I'm forced to do"; work-related projects are just as often "want to" as home projects are "forced to".
shiven 12y ago
He thinks the lavish perks at many technology companies, especially the free on-campus meals, are a disguised form of mind control, designed to get employees to work 12- or 14-hour days. WTF is wrong with people!?! I'd work my butt off at a place that provides thrice-a-day healthy, delicious, diverse, vegetarian (for me) meals, on-site gym and sleeping pods!! Hell, I'd have surely done that when I was a decade younger! I hate cooking and it is ridiculously expensive to buy food with my dietary constraints in the open market. Especially food that is not only delicious but also healthy in the long term. Why is there this utterly misguided hatred against "company food"? Even after breaking down my yearly compensation to an hourly rate, I bet there will be a marginal difference in the money the company makes by keeping me working the extra hours and the price I'd pay for buying such food everyday (remember, I hate to cook). Plus, nobody forces you to eat that food, if you really prefer cooking your own food or buying it from elsewhere, keep doing that. I really feel that good, healthy food is an awesome incentive and stigmatizing it reeks of a bloody first world problem.
- insaneirish 12y ago
  > I'd work my butt off at a place that provides three-a-day healthy, delicious, diverse, vegetarian (for me) meals > Even after breaking down my yearly compensation to an hourly rate, I bet there will be a marginal difference in the money the company makes by keeping me working the extra hours and the price I'd pay for buying such food everyday Any company providing you multiple meals per day for free is getting the better end of the bargain. Make no mistake about it. It's an arbitrage between the cost of cooking labor + cooking material vs. your labor. In other words, you're getting the short end of the stick. People do not value perks rationally. If they did, they would deny every last one of them.
  - prostoalex 12y ago
    Assumption here being that by refusing corporate food just anybody can go home and whip up a great healthy meal.
  - shiven 12y ago
    In other words, you're getting the short end of the stick. People do not value perks rationally. If they did, they would deny every last one of them. How many people value anything rationally? Ever? As humans we are programmed to be pain averse. I hate foraging for and/or cooking my food. I consider it an utter waste of my time and breath. Yes, I care about my health, but don't have the money to pay an arm and a leg for a personal chef, or even plan meals. In short, I want to eat well (tasty+healthy), but without any direct effort on my part. That is the pain I am averse to. If a company can remove that pain, for me it is a fair exchange, even if in a most superficial manner. Give and Take. Plus, no exchange in life is perfectly equivalent. Is it?
cenhyperion 12y ago
I'd gladly work an 11 hour day at a company that provided food if two of those hours were meals (lunch and dinner) and another hour was time spent in the gym/playing games. That's 8 hours of work, and three hours of free recreation that would have cost me a non-trivial sum of money elsewhere. I just wouldn't want that to be expected.
colordrops 12y ago
I hate to be cynical, but I think this statement is a well calculated PR move to make people comfortable with one of the most invasive possible devices there is. You are giving Google access to an always-on camera in your house!
jsolson 12y ago
> "He thinks the lavish perks at many technology companies, especially the free on-campus meals, are a disguised form of mind control, designed to get employees to work 12- or 14-hour days." I can't agree with this, and I have some experience with both sides of it. I have worked at a company that does not provide much of anything in the way of perks (Amazon) and a company which is known for them (Google). I've NEVER felt pressured to put in more hours at Google, while at Amazon it was more or less a constant of existence. As with all anecdotes, your mileage may vary, but I think it has little to do with the perks and more to do with broader company culture. At Amazon, the lack of perks and long hours become badges of honor that you share with your peers. Looking back on it, it feels rather toxic.

by jmduke 12y ago

npizzolato 12y ago

Funny how quickly things change when someone offers to hand you a lot of money. Granted, someone's opinions can change, but I feel like the first quote especially describes a personal philosophical value that wouldn't change on a whim.

jeroen 12y ago
"Dropcam will come under Nest’s privacy policy, which explains that data won’t be shared with anyone (including Google) without a customer’s permission. Nest has a paid-for business model and ads are not part of our strategy. In acquiring Dropcam, we’ll apply that same policy to Dropcam too." Looks like nothing will change about that straightforward business model.
- thesausageking 12y ago
  While technically accurate that statement is really misleading. Nest makes a significant amount of revenue from utility companies who pay up to $50 per thermostat per year for Nest agreeing to turn down their usage during peak times. This is a very different model than paying someone for a product. While you buy Nest's product, you are still the product (and selling you is a better business for them long-term).
  - CrosseyeJack 12y ago
    Nest has only recently started operating in the UK so I don't think that any UK energy companies have yet jumped onto that bandwagon. But still I must ask for a source for your claim. Does the owner of the nest have the option to override such feature? Just because I have a nest in my home doesn't mean my home is well suited to kill the heating during peak times. Yeah it might save me a few quid and the energy company a bunch more killing my heating during peak times. But I am not going to sit in a cold house just because the energy company decide what is best for me. If I can override it or disable it. far enough. But that is like your ISP killing your connection because everyone in your street is watching netflix at the same time you are trying to just have a few good irc take rooms open at the same time. In a pay per use case (which most net connections don't) we are used to pay what we use. If I need my house heated because I am cold, I want to be able to heat my home.
    - radiorental 12y ago
      Throwing a guess out there... I think this applies more to Air Conditioning usage in the US. I'm an expat in MA, my company sends out a few emails in the summer along the lines of 'we are reducing our energy consumption at the request of the power provider, all non essential lighting will be turned off and cooling systems tuned to 'optimal' temperatures' this is to avoid brownouts. If I recall, the same does no happen in the UK other than everyone making a cuppa at a break in coronation st. (o;
  - prezjordan 12y ago
    So the utility company pays their customers, who in turn lower their bills by using less energy? Why?
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      During high demand the utility may be purchasing the energy for rates much higher than they are collecting from the customer.
    - thesausageking 12y ago
enneff 12y ago
The latter quote about the free food is just an ignorant comment. I'm sure once the guy talked to some actual Googlers and saw how it really plays out, his fears were assuaged. (It's true that my free Google lunch keeps me at work around lunch time, but I don't feel pressure for me to work beyond the 38 hours a week they pay me for. In fact, Google has a lot of programs to help its employees maintain a good work/life balance. Of course there are crunch times, but I feel free to spend less time working at other times to balance it out.)
- hueving 12y ago
  38 hours? Are you not salaried?
  - _delirium 12y ago
    Salaried Google employees, officially at least, work a full-time schedule according to the local standard workweek, which varies by jurisdiction. That's 40 hours in the US/UK offices, 37 hours in the Denmark offices, 38 hours in the Australian offices, etc. And enneff's profile indicates he's in Australia.
    - hueving 12y ago
      Interesting. I know several Googlers in the SV area and none of them work on a 40/hr schedule like that. They work like a regular salaried person where they just do the appropriate amount of work to get their tasks completed on schedule. Sometimes they will have a relaxed week where they only work ~20 hours and other times they will be in a code sprint and do 60-70 hours.
      - _delirium 12y ago
        I meant average, yeah, not necessarily that you work the same hours every week. However countries also vary a bit in how normal it is for people to work outside of a standard daytime, M-F workweek. I think even in the U.S., it's only really in the Valley (and maybe also in NYC finance) where a regular salaried job has wild week-to-week variations in working hours. Occasional variations, yes, but in most industries it's expected that you'll work standard hours most of the time (e.g. 8-5, M-F), deviating only when there is some major issue. Every engineering company I've heard of works like that, for example. The main exception is that people do do quite a bit of email outside of work hours. There are all sorts of practicalities that rely on a predictable work schedule: scheduling your carpool, arranging childcare dropoff/pickup, etc. How does that work in the tech industry? Do people at Google not have carpools, kids, etc.?
streblo 12y ago
Read the last section of the article.
general_failure 12y ago
I have said this many times before - everyone's ethics has a price. You just need to find the price. (Yeah yeah, there are exceptions in history but I am talking of the norm)
navjot 12y ago
Not really that funny. Most humans aren't brands. They change opinions and views based on new information.

Swizec 12y ago

> "He thinks the lavish perks at many technology companies, especially the free on-campus meals, are a disguised form of mind control, designed to get employees to work 12- or 14-hour days." Is there actually honestly anyone out there who doesn't think so? I mean, is it really disguised even? We give you stuff, you make your life revolve around the company. It's a very straightforward exchange in my opinion. Hell, people have directly said to me in interviews "We want this company to be all you think about" when explaining why they'd prefer to hire me full-time rather than part-time.

samstave 12y ago
I've often thought about this problem: On the one hand, you want to provide perks that offset personal cost to your employees AND reduce the amount of time it takes for them to do something like lunch with the result in increased productivity (ostensibly simply due to removing factors such as travel-time-to-lunch-place). The company store comes to mid, as well. There are many great benefits that companies do provide: free commute costs (bus, bike and ferry service) as well as on-site food... Perhaps a way to quash any misgivings about such services would be to provide a daily per diem for services as pay, where you get the per diem pay UNLESS you partake of the companies service instead. So you badge into each service and thus get that per-diem pay redacted from your check. If you use NONE of the company's services, then you get that same portion of pay back. This also has its problems, though. ---- What I would far prefer, though, is tech services system that companies can buy into: Want your employees to be able to bus from SF to MTN VIEW: pay in and let them badge into that service. Why should all the tech giants run separate services that are basically all the same routes? Let a company run that, and let ANY company add users and pay based on badging. Let companies have a "groupon" of sorts for restaurants in their area, where the per-diem lunch allowance is spendable at any restaurant within a radius of the office. The employee will get a % of their meal paid for by the company, and they pay for anything they personally want over the base? Allow for perks that are not walled to the campus/office/etc. Heck, Path.com employees had a monthly Uber allowance they could spend... This should be encouraged in Silicon Valley, to allow startups to share services at a discount which both provides revenue, data, testing, users, validation, etc....

rdl 12y ago

I don't really mind staying late at the office (with has gigabit nLayer, a 4K monitor, free drinks and snacks, etc.) vs. at home (which has comcast, and is pretty small). The commute between the locations is a pain, but otherwise I have no real difference between "being online doing whatever I want to do" at home vs. at the office. Right now, I'm working on a TC article and some conference talks on independent research. I'll probably drive home once the traffic is done. I'll go to my co-presenter's house Saturday night to work on the talks again. The "work vs. personal" distinction is really secondary to me, compared to "stuff I want to do, vs. stuff I'm forced to do"; work-related projects are just as often "want to" as home projects are "forced to".

shiven 12y ago

He thinks the lavish perks at many technology companies, especially the free on-campus meals, are a disguised form of mind control, designed to get employees to work 12- or 14-hour days. WTF is wrong with people!?! I'd work my butt off at a place that provides thrice-a-day healthy, delicious, diverse, vegetarian (for me) meals, on-site gym and sleeping pods!! Hell, I'd have surely done that when I was a decade younger! I hate cooking and it is ridiculously expensive to buy food with my dietary constraints in the open market. Especially food that is not only delicious but also healthy in the long term. Why is there this utterly misguided hatred against "company food"? Even after breaking down my yearly compensation to an hourly rate, I bet there will be a marginal difference in the money the company makes by keeping me working the extra hours and the price I'd pay for buying such food everyday (remember, I hate to cook). Plus, nobody forces you to eat that food, if you really prefer cooking your own food or buying it from elsewhere, keep doing that. I really feel that good, healthy food is an awesome incentive and stigmatizing it reeks of a bloody first world problem.

insaneirish 12y ago
> I'd work my butt off at a place that provides three-a-day healthy, delicious, diverse, vegetarian (for me) meals > Even after breaking down my yearly compensation to an hourly rate, I bet there will be a marginal difference in the money the company makes by keeping me working the extra hours and the price I'd pay for buying such food everyday Any company providing you multiple meals per day for free is getting the better end of the bargain. Make no mistake about it. It's an arbitrage between the cost of cooking labor + cooking material vs. your labor. In other words, you're getting the short end of the stick. People do not value perks rationally. If they did, they would deny every last one of them.
- prostoalex 12y ago
  Assumption here being that by refusing corporate food just anybody can go home and whip up a great healthy meal.
- shiven 12y ago
  In other words, you're getting the short end of the stick. People do not value perks rationally. If they did, they would deny every last one of them. How many people value anything rationally? Ever? As humans we are programmed to be pain averse. I hate foraging for and/or cooking my food. I consider it an utter waste of my time and breath. Yes, I care about my health, but don't have the money to pay an arm and a leg for a personal chef, or even plan meals. In short, I want to eat well (tasty+healthy), but without any direct effort on my part. That is the pain I am averse to. If a company can remove that pain, for me it is a fair exchange, even if in a most superficial manner. Give and Take. Plus, no exchange in life is perfectly equivalent. Is it?

cenhyperion 12y ago

I'd gladly work an 11 hour day at a company that provided food if two of those hours were meals (lunch and dinner) and another hour was time spent in the gym/playing games. That's 8 hours of work, and three hours of free recreation that would have cost me a non-trivial sum of money elsewhere. I just wouldn't want that to be expected.

colordrops 12y ago

I hate to be cynical, but I think this statement is a well calculated PR move to make people comfortable with one of the most invasive possible devices there is. You are giving Google access to an always-on camera in your house!

jsolson 12y ago

> "He thinks the lavish perks at many technology companies, especially the free on-campus meals, are a disguised form of mind control, designed to get employees to work 12- or 14-hour days." I can't agree with this, and I have some experience with both sides of it. I have worked at a company that does not provide much of anything in the way of perks (Amazon) and a company which is known for them (Google). I've NEVER felt pressured to put in more hours at Google, while at Amazon it was more or less a constant of existence. As with all anecdotes, your mileage may vary, but I think it has little to do with the perks and more to do with broader company culture. At Amazon, the lack of perks and long hours become badges of honor that you share with your peers. Looking back on it, it feels rather toxic.