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by j_baker 5673 days ago
This all looks excellent. I'm not sure about the debt management part though.

First of all, something about your math just isn't right:

"All employees who want to sign up to the programwill have a percentage of their debt paid off each fortnight. So instead of getting$70,000/year they might get $23,000/ year and be debt-free in the next 4 years."

Why would I spend a total of $188k to pay off an average of $24k in student loans in 4 years? I mean, I know that interest rates are a bitch and all, but that's a bit much. Plus, I don't know where you guys are located, but $23k/year in San Francisco isn't a whole lot. I understand that these are probably all hypothetical numbers, but you might want to choose numbers that are a little bit less scary.

Another thing:

"If groups of employees live, work and party together our hope is that they will love their entirelifestyle, not just their work."

...I don't think it's necessary to be that intimate with my coworkers. In fact, it could arguably be bad to encourage people to be that close. A workplace needs some level of conflict to discourage groupthink, and it's much easier to disagree with someone you're paid to do a job with than someone who's your best friend and roommate.

2 comments

I agree with j_baker -- I was thinking that this document was kind of nice until I got to the part where everyone has to take a holiday together. No matter how you tweak this, what it means is that the company is impinging on the employee's personal life and leisure time.

Another thing to remember is that there's a difference between personal and work relationships. You can (and should!) have great work relationships with people who you have little in common with, personally.

"Forced fun" is always as bad as it sounds.

Definitely agree with these points. I will make it more clear that these would be optional things that the company put on rather than mandatory corporate events. I would hate those.
Agreed. I haven't thought the numbers through properly at all. Essentially I just like the idea of helping our employees out more than your average company by trying to get them into a strong financial position. I will need to do a lot more research into this area.