[edblarney]

One one side: yes.

And BTW - this has nothing to do with defense industry, it's just 99% of business is like this.

Business could do a lot more to make a more fun environment.

On the other hand ...

Google is a 'de-facto' monopoly, and they print money. They are super, super rich, and literally have billions more than they know what to do with.

So it's easy to justify a lot of extra expenses. And these things can be expensive.

Lastly - let's not be so naive. Much of the reason many of these things are offered is so that you 'never have to leave the office'. 'Free lunch' was a cold, hard, Google style calculation: the time it took to 'drive to resto and back' was wasted time, it was cheaper to give people food than have them waste this time.

Years ago, my friend interviewed at Google, and they lauded all the 'free clothes' that you could take, which were often used 'the next day' as employees 'stayed the night'. Sleeping over at the office was a relatively common practice, and as such, there's going to arguably be some pressure to work insane hours. Which is completely against the law. We lambast conditions in factories in China, and just because Google workers earn a bit more does not mean that the practice is any less problematic, when the vast majority of the surpluses are going to 'the factory owners'.

[hota_mazi]

> 'Free lunch' was a cold, hard, Google style calculation: the time it took to 'drive to resto and back' was wasted time, it was cheaper to give people food than have them waste this time.

No, it's not. If it was, all companies would do it. And they would probably just give away sandwiches and call it a day instead of setting up dozens of gourmet cafeterias with different themes and chefs at the helm throughout their campuses.

Google loses millions of dollars every day in free food.

Why do they do it? Because that's how the company started and even after the IPO and the accountability that came with it, the founders stuck with their decision to put the employees first and the shareholders second

[edblarney]

"No, it's not. If it was, all companies would do it."

No, this is false.

Google employees productivity, as measured in earnings/capita, is significantly greater than most other companies.

Google does not 'lose money' on the policy, if it was a 'net loser', they would end it.

It's effectively part of the total incentive package.

If it costs them $20/day per person, that's an extra $4K/year per person, if it increases productivity by only 2% it's an obvious winner based on that easy calculation alone.

Google has billions of dollars they don't know what to do with, and their effective cost of capital is very low. Anything they can do to materially lift output - that doesn't cost zillions - is probably worth it.

[refulgentis]

It's absolutely untrue that the lunches are about saving time. Please note the work/life balance commentary in the article. You're jumping to high-minded ideological explanations that confirm your bias based on facts you've unilaterally created.

[edblarney]

No, I'm 'jumping' to my memory, because I worked 5km from Google roughly 16 years ago when the practice started, and I remember specifically reading about how Google decided to introduce lunch, specifically, and it was a calculation. I wish I had the reference.

[euyyn]

> Google is a 'de-facto' monopoly, and they print money. They are super, super rich, and literally have billions more than they know what to do with.

> So it's easy to justify a lot of extra expenses

I see how it can look like that from outside, but from within Google is pretty serious about expenses and costs. All the perks and benefits are an investment to acquire and retain the employees, and to allow them to be as productive as possible.

Remember as an example that Google stock doesn't give dividends: all profits are reinvested in the projects.

[edblarney]

" Google is pretty serious about expenses and costs"

Which validates my point: the value of the 'free food' is a calculation. It's based on employee productivity gains, retainment etc.. If it wasn't an economic value-add, it would be canned.

"Google stock doesn't give dividends: all profits are reinvested in the projects"

Sorry to be picky but this statement is not true at all.

1) It does not matter whether a company pays dividends, or a company retains the earnings for shareholders. Economically - they are equivalent. In practice, companies get valued a little bit differently ... but financially they are equal.

2) A company that 'reinvests all profits in projects' is called a 'non profit' - and would mean a share price of $0. :) :) :)

[euyyn]

The definition of retaining earnings is reinvesting profits in the company's projects; I'm not sure what made you think only non-profits do it. It's pretty common for companies that are growing. In any case, that was just one easy way to show you you're wrong in thinking this:

> [Google] literally have billions more than they know what to do with

Google knows exactly what to do with it, and from my understanding hasn't ran out of business ideas for that since its founding.

[edblarney]

"The definition of retaining earnings is reinvesting profits in the company's projects;"

No, it's not.

More importantly - your statement that "Google re-invests all profits in projects" is definitely not true, moreover, it's relationship to 'dividends' is not relevant at all.

"Google knows exactly what to do with it, and from my understanding hasn't ran out of business ideas for that since its founding."

Again, not true.

That any company has such a large war chest is strong evidence that they have no clue how to spend it.

Yes - it's important to have a fund for acquisitions and to take on unforeseen threats, but it's generally accepted that near monopoly providers have this problem.

Microsoft had so much money relative to earnings at one point - that financial analysts started to treat it as a 'fund' as opposed to a product company - and use different metrics to understand it's efficiency.

These companies have very low capital efficiencies, and all that money is seen as a drag on many measures of efficiency, which is why they are strongly pushed to return the money to shareholder - who can put it to work more effectively elsewhere.

Google has absolutely no idea what to do with at least 1/2 of assets that it is sitting on, which is why they are sitting on them.

Put another way:

If Google did have amazing, high-ROI projects to invest in, they situation would be the opposite: they would be spending it all - and likely taking on debt (because it's very cheap right now) - which would be a way to leverage their 'amazing projects' quite dramatically and to make more money.

'High growth' companies should almost always be leveraging up, because that's how they can get the most out of whatever it is that they are doing. Same for companies that can forecast consistent returns.

If your 'business idea' is getting more ROI than your 'cost of capital' then the more you lever up, the more money you make.

But no. Google has nowhere to spend the money.