[unity1001]

Some of the criticism doesn't make sense: Providing food, amenities, even accommodation has been a method with which private and state organizations around the world used to cut their costs and better the life standards of their members since the dawn of the modern economy after the industrial revolution.

Especially for organizations that have thousands of employees in one location, providing a cafeteria can be much cheaper for both the employees and the organization than thousands of employees going out to eat in private establishments at lunch time. The organization providing housing to employees to work around the bloated real estate sector can also be beneficial to the employeees and the organization. Similarly, Apple mulling its own health services is a good idea - they can reduce their costs and increase quality of life.

Its economies of scale after all. If you have tens of thousands of organization members in a location, it becomes an economy of scale that can reduce every member's and organization's costs directly.

If you do not provide such services to your members using economies of scale inside your organization and instead leave it to the free market by giving monetary compensation instead, you can bet that the free market will do everything in its power to suck all of that monetary compensation out of the hands of the employees by providing the minimum service in return to maximize profit.

[ben7799]

This used to be handled by having a non-free cafeteria.

The cafeteria will still be cheaper for employees than going out to restaurants, and it will be cheaper than the company picking up the tab for everyone.

It used to be common to make a lunch and bring it to work too.

This recent stuff that tech workers are entitled to a free meal at work or to go spend an hour+ to go to a restaurant for lunch every day is a very new thing.

[unity1001]

> This used to be handled by having a non-free cafeteria.

Well, if the food can be provided for cheap enough, it may make more sense to give it away free than to handle all the accounting hassle.

> This recent stuff that tech workers are entitled to a free meal at work or to go spend an hour+ to go to a restaurant for lunch every day is a very new thing.

Its not. It was a practice very widespread in most of the world's social democracies, especially in government organizations, in order to lift up the life standards of the members. Its still used in a lot of countries. The US has 'rediscovered' it through the tech companies. Just like its 'rediscovering' company-provided housing and all the other tangible benefits that the rest of the world still practices instead of leaving their employees to the mercy of the market.

[DrScump]

>The US has 'rediscovered' it through the tech companies.

It's only spoken of in the media positively in the context of newer tech companies.

My first programming job was at a defense contractor no doubt considered "stodgy" by the cool kids. Their newest office building was environmentally friendly (~70% naturally lit), and its cafeteria complex was large, well-managed and had both innovative and healthy options (e.g. a pay-by-the-ounce salad bar).

This was in 1983.