[alsetmusic]

A couple days after Tim Cook stepped into the CEO position, he reversed a Jobs policy and announced that the company would begin matching employee donations to charities. I considered this a fairly classy and subtle way to signal that he wasn't going to lie down on the job (it had been requested many times on company mailing lists).

Source: I was on those lists.

[tajen]

As a French person without the culture of corporate donations, I'm both wondering why it was seen as negative that Apple didn't match? Shouldn't they redirect donations to people they prefer?

[athenot]

It's just another perk that's customary in large US corporations.

By comparison, it's like the ticket repas and chèques vacances in the French companies—getting subsidies for food and vacations would look quite odd to Americans.

Different cultures, different perks.

[thaumasiotes]

> getting subsidies for food and vacations would look quite odd to Americans

Silicon Valley companies frequently subsidize food for their employees.

[milge]

Because it's a tax writeoff and the more time workers are at the office, the more work is getting done. Or so the managerial thought process goes.

[distances]

In many European countries it would probably be considered a taxable benefit for the employee, and would increase the employee taxes. Just as a background why some things are different across the pond.

[Analemma_]

It's a taxable benefit in the US too, I'm not sure where the parent's "tax writeoff" comment is coming from. Google actually got in some trouble recently for not reporting their free food to the IRS.

[thaumasiotes]

I'm just saying, I don't think food subsidies look "quite odd" to Americans, I think they look fairly normal.

[mcphage]

It's very unusual outside of Silicon Valley.

[alsetmusic]

Certain teams at Apple get free dinners to boost morale when working late. This included a pretty nice catered meal once a week in my department. No doubt, this is common at industry leaders.

[mikeash]

That's not so much a perk as it is very cheap overtime pay. It would be a perk if they gave you dinner even when you leave at 5PM.

[alsetmusic]

There was nothing stopping us from eating and going home. It's not as though someone was keeping watch over us and demanding work for food. I always felt respected and appreciated.

[retox]

Seems incredibly self entitled to me. Why should your employer shell out money for whatever their employees decide? I don't understand it at all. What if you want to donate a controversial charity?

If you feel that strongly about a charity double your own donation.

[lukeschlather]

You seem to have this notion that employees are asking for handouts. They aren't. They're saying, "Hey, I would like a $5k raise. I know you're planning on giving it to me anyway, but I wanted to point out that if you do it in the form of charitable matching, the company will only have to reduce its income by $4700 to give me that $5k raise, since the matching is tax-deductible."

The company essentially gets to offer me more money at no cost to them if they structure their compensation this way. You could be very transparent with this and simply allow employees to direct the company to put money into charity (with the tax going to the charity instead of the government) but it's probably easier for the accountants to simply do matching with a cap, which is why you see companies do it this way.

[Cacti]

It's not everything. Usually there is a list of acceptable national charities for things like heart disease, diabetes, MS, education, poverty alleviation, etc. Chances are you'd recognize every one on the list. Sometimes employees vote on that list, sometimes it's mostly set by HR.

[mikestew]

"Usually"? My experience with companies large and small has been that if it's a 501(3)c, they're on the "list". For instance, unless you live in western WA, I guarantee the "chances" you'd "recognize" the animal shelter to which we divert our employer match is zero. Now if your chosen charity is "Whitey Uber Alles", meh, maybe it might be an issue. Don't know from experience, who's going to say "no" to an animal shelter?

It boils down to a tax write-off that allows the company to look charitable. But there's a lot of benefit along the way, so who cares of the motivation?

[retox]

I see, thanks for the insight.

[st3v3r]

Couldn't you say the same thing about any perk? "Oh, you want more vacation time? Seems incredibly self entitled to me." "Oh, you want free coffee? Seems incredibly self entitled to me."

[srtjstjsj]

It shows management sharing decision-making with employees.

[ewzimm]

They just didn't donate to anybody, which looks bad when the founder of your biggest competitor is also the world's biggest-spending philanthropist.

[protomyth]

Was there a list of what were acceptable charities for the match?

[vitd]

There are a number of companies set up specifically to help with matching grants. See Benevity, Double the Donation, etc.

https://www.benevity.com https://doublethedonation.com

EDIT: They generally keep lists of charities that most companies find acceptable to donate to.

[protomyth]

The first one has certificate problems and the second doesn't provide a customer list (probably a good thing). I was specifically asking if Apple had a list of charities that it found acceptable for matching donations.