[moocow01]

Maybe Im just a calculating, cold, emotionless engineer but when it comes to pay packages Ive stopped caring about the fancy 'perks'. I only try to gauge how much Ill get paid, how much Ill enjoy the work and learn, and how many hours Ill be putting in.

Ive seen perks too many times used against employees. (The following rant is nothing towards Google - never worked there.)

- Free food and onsite amenities usually is a sign that they want you there for extra long hours and that you'll probably need to use that stuff.

- Unrestricted vacation days can mean you don't really get any vacation because its always crunch time.

- Fancy employee outings are not so thrilling to me - I like my coworkers but I already spend the majority of my waking hours with them.

I'm not trying to completely debase the value of these things - I'm just saying that in terms of negotiating salary I weight these types of perks at 0 or negative dollars.

[jaggederest]

The most bitter pill from my previous job was hearing "we don't track vacation" right up until the day I noticed my pay was low from the last pay period and when I asked why, the answer was "you took too much vacation".

[vidarh]

Same here - perks are stuff I expect to come on top of the salary I ask for. If they try to make the perks an excuse to offer me less, I'll turn around and ask them to rather drop the perks and pay me more, or I'll go somewhere else.

It actually turns me off a company if they offer unusually large perks, as they do need to claw the money back somewhere, and usually it will be salaries, and the reason companies use perks is because employees on average tends to be really bad at judging their actual monetary value.

[mdkess]

This is somewhat of a tangent, but free lunch is a very important perk for me (note: I don't work at Google). For $15 a day, I could order in food every day and effectively have free lunch, wherever I worked. But I also wouldn't - in the back of my mind, I'd know that the $90 could be used to go and see the opera or a Broadway show, so I'd cook, or go and eat at Subway or whatever. So I'm not sure what I value that perk at, but I think just not having to even think about the lunch part of my day is important. I would weigh this as a positive, say a $5000 benefit.

The company that I work at has "no vacation policy". Honestly, that makes me the most hesitant, and to be honest, I don't really like that policy. However, senior management has been very good in two regards: they take vacations, and they encourage people to take vacations. So it does seem to work out. We're small right now, so it works, but I could see it being very easy to get wrong.

[_delirium]

On the first one, Google seems at least a little less blatant about it; there are tech companies that offer free dinner, but only starting at a relatively late hour, like 7pm, which is pretty clearly a perk for people who stay late. Although someone I know works at a place with a policy like that, and just works his 8-hour day 10am-7pm (with an hour break for lunch), stopping by for dinner on the way out, so it works for some sleep schedules without actually putting in overtime.

[knarf_navillus]

I worked at a place like this. They served dinner at 7-8pm, and you only got it if you worked at least 10 hours that day. I remember one day, one of the managers suggested that we up it to 12. "We're spending $30,000 a year on food; it's ridiculous." Yeah, but considering all of the extra hours you're getting out of people, paying an extra portion of a salary per year doesn't seem like a bad deal.

[lrobb]

>> Fancy employee outings

Or even more atrocious to me, are the 48 hour up all night over the weekend "code jams"... Jeez people, get a life.

[tomjen3]

I get free breakfast and lunch which combined with living alone means I don't have to cook -- so I note that down as a saving of about an hour a day.

[overgryphon]

Health insurance is where I care about the fancy perks. If I'm reliant on my company for health insurance, it had better be good health insurance or I'm looking elsewhere.

[michaelochurch]

Maybe I'm just a calculating, cold, emotionless engineer but when it comes to pay packages I've stopped caring about the fancy 'perks'. I only try to gauge how much I'll get paid, how much I'll enjoy the work and learn, and how many hours I'll be putting in.

Well, that's normal and smart. You go to work for the work, not the diversions. I don't think I've ever played an XBox during working hours; if there's any possibility that I'll be more interested in XBox than in doing my job at 11:30 am, there are bigger issues, either with me or with the job.

What happens as you get older is that you learn to see through the bullshit. Things that matter: career development, interesting work, co-workers you'll learn from, fairness, recognition, company vision, and a functioning management environment. Things that don't: perks you can buy on the market for a couple hundred bucks.

Free food and onsite amenities usually is a sign that they want you there for extra long hours and that you'll probably need to use that stuff.

I can look at this one both ways. If the company will do my laundry for me, it saves me 30 minutes a week. I'll gladly spend an additional 30 minutes on work (which I generally enjoy) in exchange for not having to do 30 minutes of chores. That said, even better would be to have the perk in extra cash so I can buy my own housework services (which two adults with demanding careers will have to do anyway).

Unrestricted vacation days can mean you don't really get any vacation because its always crunch time.

There's a non-evil incentive for companies to switch to untracked vacation. It saves them money on vacation cash-in, and it also removes the economic incentive for employees not to take any vacation. A $100,000-per-year job with two weeks of paid vacation is actually equivalent to a $104,000 job without paid vacation and with penalties for taking more than 10 days off. The "two weeks' paid vacation" is actually a Hawaiian Shirt Day, a negative space establishing that "career" people won't take more time off than that (since unpaid leave is frowned upon).

Truly untracked vacation (meaning that if you take 6 weeks' worth of vacation but do 15% better work in the other 46, you're in good standing) is worth a 5-10% pay cut for me.

The best way to learn the value of money (immense when you don't have enough, but very low once you have enough of it) is to work on Wall Street for a few years and learn first-hand that millionaires (and "millionaire" means $1m/year, not $1m net worth) aren't any happier than the rest of us. I actually think it can be invaluable for some people to work in the vicinity of seriously rich people just to learn that lesson.

Fancy employee outings are not so thrilling to me - I like my coworkers but I already spend the majority of my waking hours with them.

I'm with you. I'm 28, married, and will probably be having kids in 4-6 years. Office Christmas parties don't appeal to me. I'd rather spend the time with my friends or family.

It's great to hang out with your co-workers after work. I've learned an incredible amount from after-work drinks and (now that I can't tolerate alcohol, for health reasons) discussions in classes and board-game nights. But it should be organic and elective. I don't like the "forced" kind-- the socially mandatory drinking that you see in finance, the wild office Christmas parties. I can see the appeal of that stuff at 22, but not at 28 (much less 35+).

[moocow01]

Funnily enough I fit your profile... 28, married, likely to have kids in relatively near future.

I think the perks are a lot like the thrill of buying something new. When your just entering the workforce they seem fantastic - almost unimaginable. When you've been surviving on ramen in your early twenties, free food at a tech company makes it sound like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. Then when you initially get those perks, they usually are somewhat fun. Then as the 'new car smell wears off' you realize that the fundamentals of the job (like what you mentioned) are really 99% of what makes it good or bad.

[kisielk]

Interesting thoughts on the Christmas parties. I guess the smallish company I work at (~40 people) has a different demographic because are Christmas parties definitely seem more low key, family oriented affairs. I think the average age in the office is still in the early 30s, we just don't really have any hardcore partiers or anything. I actually quite appreciate the opportunity to get together with everyone in a purely social setting and talk about stuff other than work.

[mjwalshe]

And dont forget that the Taxman will want to tax you on benefits in kind - or they will be if they are doing their job right

[mdkess]

You don't get taxed on free food at work.