[doomslice]

They cut non-business critical travel which many employees for some reason felt was a perk of the job. I heard second hand that some employees would do "office tours" just to try the lunches at the different offices (under the guise of doing some in person meetings that certainly could have been done online). Cutting that kind of wasteful travel is necessary in an economic slowdown (and even necessary before that).

[whatshisface]

Perhaps necessary in an economic slowdown when you're a paper company with 2% margins... Let's be honest, Google does not "have" to do anything. They're just trying to grab some pennies.

The interesting part is that they felt the pennies nearest at hand were in their employee perks, rather than in expanding their business. That is always a bad sign even if the company we're talking about is as profitable as Google.

Not every business needs the best people working there, nor does every business need its employees to be highly motivated - it's a valid move in the extreme for Google to transition to being like SAP, but I can't believe all of the people in this thread that are defending that they have a right to do it without asking what their executives know that makes it seem so appealing.

[dc-programmer]

That is pretty decadent actually. Financials aside, I do believe frivolous activity like that creates a culture of unseriousness