[yakaccount4]

I think there's a large pool of good talent that can't fully be trusted to do the right thing (not slack off), but can be employed successfully with sufficient guardrails (return to office).

Loosely related anecdote why I feel so:

For a while right after Apple started its mandatory RTO and ramped up Caffe Macs, the soda "grab n go" sections had an honor system - you paid your $1.25 for a coke and went on your way. Apparently there was a _lot_ of petty theft of drinks, so they have a person with an iPad check you off now, and I assume theft has basically plummeted since there's far less employees brazen enough to just barge off with one without checking off their name.

So maybe the RTO is effective in someway? Or maybe the real lesson is that the soda should have been free to begin with.

[galdosdi]

You have to.... pay... for soda... at Apple? What the hell?

[teaearlgraycold]

Same at Nvidia. But it's subsidized. The argument I heard is it reduces food waste.

[IntelMiner]

Call it the Apple tax

[azinman2]

You have to pay for food and drink. It’s not like Google etc.

[samplatt]

Sorry; not understanding your outrage here. You expect your work to provide you with free soda? Or you expect a FAANG company in particular to do so?

[nine_k]

There is a classic text [1] about exactly this, the free soda.

In short, when a company starts to pay attention to such petty details as the cost of soda, which must be a rounding error in the cost of running an office of a decent engineering company, it's a signal that the culture has changed. With that change, best engineering talent often leaves towards places where priorities are still aligned with lofty goals, not bean-counting.

(Disclaimer: of last 10 companies I've worked for, only two did not offer free soda, due to being 100% remote.)

[1]: https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...

[Corrado]

I worked at the KFC/YUM! headquarters for 10 years. When I started, we had free soda in the lobby of the building. It was great for those late afternoon doldrums and a group of us would often walk down 5 flights of stairs to get a pick-me-up.

About 3 years before I left they removed the soda machines. My understanding was that it only cost about $30k / year and most of that was for cups & lids. We even had an executive that was willing to pay for it out of their budget. No go.

It turns out that the catering company that supplied food to the building didn't like losing out on the soda money. So they told KFC/YUM! to remove the free soda option, and they did. It really was the beginning of the end.

It's not so much that the soda was gone it was the thought of it. That free soda actually solved quite a few programming problems, or at least allowed us to solve them on our way downstairs. It also let us work harder/later than we normally would by giving us that afternoon journey. It's positive effect was much greater than it's financial cost.

[samplatt]

Thanks for the explanation. It makes sense, but is entirely foreign to me (at least for soda). In my history of 20 years of software/DBA in the Australian mining/construction industry, most have had free coffee but none have had free soda. Though two did free Friday-afternoon beer and pizza.

My current place has free instant coffee (until it runs out) and everyone who wants to push for more than that is viewed with 'tall poppy syndrome'.

[galdosdi]

Yes, free basic cheap commodity drinks and snacks are bare minimum for a FAANG-class employer, and every other FAANG-class employer I'm familiar with goes well above and beyond that.

Even my first job out of college as a boilerroom MSP sysadmin earning $40k in manhattan gave us free soda (the only benefit lol)

I mean, even if you work as a mechanic at a body shop, there is often free coffee in an old pot in the break room, it's not that crazy.

But outside of that context, no of course I don't expect/care if my employer provides me with free soda. I don't even drink it.

It just seems weirdly cheapskate for a supposed FAANG-class employer.

[pompino]

I'd rather receive benefits in cash than paying some vendor tens of thousands of dollars to stock useless items.

[galdosdi]

I actually kind of agree as I am not even a soda drinker, but that was not the point. The point is the message it sends. And it really doesn't cost that much on a per-employee basis -- I would guess some employees might consume a six pack per day, valued at $5, and some others might consume nothing, valued at $0, so average that to maybe say $3 or $4. This is less than that employee already paid out of pocket to commute themselves to work. And having some basic food/drink taken care of centrally is more efficient in terms of saving time stocking up, going and buying more during break, etc.

But most of all, it's just the message. All the other "nice" employers do it, even some pretty "basic" employers do (not surprising, this is a very cheap perk, only a little more expensive than breakroom coffee), so if you don't, it you look like a cheapskate. Like what else are you cheaping out on?

I also don't drink much coffee, but would see it as a red flag if they cut costs by getting rid of the coffee in the break room, and that's a red flag that would hold even if I was working as a retail cashier (that's not an industry where free break room coffee is standard, but it's not unusual, so while I wouldn't care if a company never offered it, if I was a cashier at a company that had it, and then they took it away, the message would be obvious -- we are preparing to cut costs at the expense of your work life, our company is no longer growing, jump ship if you can)

[pompino]

Sure, you could cap the expense per-employee so its a non-issue. I was thinking about benefits in general that nobody cares about or uses. But even if they use it, snacks/food can get expensive real quick.

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-free-cafeteria-lun...

[sys_64738]

I remember when Oracle took over Sun and they brought in the free soda drinks where you can grab a can and they're constantly replenished. I brought in a backpack and filled it then took it home. After a week of doing that I had all these soda cans to drink but I realized I didn't like soda anymore. Larry is the best.

[thefz]

> I think there's a large pool of good talent that can't fully be trusted to do the right thing (not slack off)

Ever worked in an office? At any corporation size no one works 8 hours a day and if you want to slack, there are plenty opportunities in the office as well. Hell, you can spend the whole day there without doing ANYTHING.

So that is a non-point for me, slackers gonna slack.

[ryandrake]

I knew a guy whose daily routine was something like:

9:25 - Arrival (cafeteria stopped serving breakfast at 9:30.

9:30-10:15 - Breakfast

10:15-11:30 - A lot of walking around the office, having business-sounding conversations with others but really getting nothing done.

11:30-1:00 - Out for lunch.

1:00-3:00 - Sneak out to car in the parking lot for a nap.

3:00-3:30 - Daily standup. Vaguely talk about how he’s “merging code” or “updating library dependencies” this week.

3:30-4:00 - At desk working.

4:00-5:30 - Doing his walk-around-talk-arounds through the office hallways again.

5:30-6:00 - At his desk again!

6:00 - Cafeteria starts serving dinner. Grabs a bunch of food, throws it in his backpack, and heads to the parking lot.

This went on for years. The other teammates joked that he must have blackmail dirt on the boss because it was obvious to everyone that he wasn’t doing anything and nobody seemed to care. He was there when I joined the company and was there when I left, years later. He may very well be still there today, merging code.

[dijit]

There are less serious versions of the same thing that people might unintentionally do.

09:25 - arrive.

09:30 - 10:00; breakfast

10:00 - 10:30; standup

10:30 - 11:00; Coffee after standup

11:00 - 11:30; checking emails before lunch

11:30 - 13:00; lunch

13:00 - 13:30; food coma, better just check some emails

13:30 - 14:00; coffee and a chat

14:00 - 15:00; maybe some actual work

15:00 - 15:45; someone needs help, they come over and have a chat

15:45 - 16:30; maybe some more work

16:30 - 17:00 wrap up, go home, urgently write some emails and expect a response before you arrive 09:25 tomorrow.

I've seen this, a lot of this.

[supportengineer]

Cokes are 2.25 now

[yakaccount4]

I'm a coke zero guy

[dvfjsdhgfv]

I'm sorry but the example you gave for your argument makes no sense at all. Most people here have tasks and daily meetings where these tasks are discussed or at least briefly mentioned (in other words, your "iPad guy" is already there).

If someone is slacking, it is immediately visible. Can you abuse the system by providing fake explanations for why one task takes so long? Of course, but you can do the same whether you work remotely or not, and this can also be easily verified in both cases.