[superfrank]

It's insane to me how big companies don't realize how far these little things go.

I worked at a publicly traded company worth tens of billions of dollars where I had to escalate to the VP level to get reimbursed when I paid for our team to send flowers to one of our team members after his mother was murdered. Expensing books, courses, or equipment is essentially out of the question and getting approval for team events requires a business related reason and are regularly denied.

I worked at a 50 person company where on my first day I arrived and there was a company logo'd Patagonia jacket on my desk and a small bottle of Veuve Clicquot. I worked at a different just allocated every team $100 per person every 6 months and said, "Do something with it. The only rules are you can't just pocket it and it has to be spent as a team."

The large company paid me triple what those other companies did, which is why I stayed for nearly 8 years, but in my head they're the cheap bastards who didn't care about their employees. I have such better memories of the companies who paid me far, far less, but set aside a few hundred bucks a year to do something special. I understand the big tech company mindset of, "If we're paying you half a million dollars a year you should be able to buy your own damn beer", but I think they forget that their employees are human and often it really is the thought that counts.

[joe_mamba]

>I worked at a 50 person company where on my first day I arrived and there was a company logo'd Patagonia jacket on my desk and a small bottle of Veuve Clicquot.

I have the opposite experience and mindset. Companies I worked for would cheap out on salaries, but would buy random knick knacks, jackets, food and drinks for the workers, making the young naive version of me thinking that the company values us even though we were all working below market wages, while the CEO had a massive house and a supercar. Turns out that pizza, coke and a softshell jacket every year is much much cheaper than a yearly wage increase.

Now, I worked for a company who last year cut all the parties, food, drinks, team events, 3 year HW refresh cycle, even the color printers, to ensure we'll still get to keep above average salaries through the tremulous times our industry is going through. Absolute respect. I'd rather have more money to pay the ever increasing bills, than pizzas and a 50 Euro softshell jacket.

>I understand the big tech company mindset of, "If we're paying you half a million dollars a year you should be able to buy your own damn beer", but I think they forget that their employees are human and often it really is the thought that counts.

I wonder if it's possible to tell this story on how dehumanizing it felt to not get free beer with a half million dollar salary, to an average laborer, with a straight face, and expecting any reciprocating "working class" empathy.

[dullcrisp]

The point is it’s not about the monetary value of the perks but about the attitude. If you used to get donuts in the break room on Fridays or get a card on your birthday or whatever, and then management decided you don’t need donuts you’d feel about the same way.

[joe_mamba]

>If you used to get donuts in the break room on Fridays and then management decided you don’t need donuts you’d feel about the same way.

When they took away our daily free biscuits and hazelnut wafers from the break room, I was happy since it meant less sugar and carbs in my diet. My waistline was thankful. I'd rather they cut the junk food than stuff like salaries.

I really don't value small freebies anymore, in fact now it's a red flag to me. A small startup I recently interviewed at proudly showed off the free sweets, drinks fridge and pool table in the break room, but wanted to pay me 50k Euros/year for a senior product owner. They can shove those perks up their bum with that salary.

[dullcrisp]

Okay pretend I said baby carrots if you prefer.

I’m sure some companies do cynically provide perks to try to buy or dazzle people, but I don’t think that that’s the only reason that anyone does it.

[jakeydus]

Let’s say a tin of the queen’s biscuits and hazelnut treacle candies and turkish delight and jupiter jumpers runs 10 quid/day. 250 workdays a year means that one perk cost $2500. I guarantee it had an outsized impact on morale. Company of 100 employees means that cutting that perk earned everyone an extra $25/year. Yay!

[joe_mamba]

> Company of 100 employees means that cutting that perk earned everyone an extra $25/year.

And when you cut other things, the savings add up since such cuts never come alone.

Spending tends to go uncontrolled when the company is in the green, and then multiple cuts come all at once when the company is in the red.

By my former place when sales crashed, they removed the color printers throughout the company(amongst many other things) and only kept the B/W ones and I thought that was stupid until they said it saved 22K/quarter which seemed insanely wasteful. So you see, it's never just 25$/year when the cuts come, it's always a lot more.

[CalRobert]

Honestly as a compulsive eater I hate free food, especially junk food. Similarly I imagine free beer is tough for alcoholics.

[lmm]

> Now, I worked for a company who last year cut all the parties, food, drinks, team events, 3 year HW refresh cycle, even the color printers, to ensure we'll still get to keep above average salaries through the tremulous times our industry is going through. Absolute respect. I'd rather have more money to pay the ever increasing bills, than pizzas and a 50 Euro softshell jacket.

It's amazing how you can do without the necessities of life, provided you have the little luxuries. Yes, money is always good. But a company that isn't willing to spend a small amount of money on "frivolous" things that have a disproportionate impact on the daily experience of working for them is either an ineffective company, or one that genuinely doesn't value its employees.

> I wonder if it's possible to tell this story on how dehumanizing it felt to not get free beer with a half million dollar salary, to an average laborer, with a straight face, and expecting any reciprocating "working class" empathy.

Oh look, now the mask comes off.

[joe_mamba]

>It's amazing how you can do without the necessities of life, provided you have the little luxuries.

No, I need good shelter and top end medical care, more than I need a pizza party with co-workers after work. I'm not 17 anymore to think unlimited fast food and Mountain Dew is the most amazing thing in life.

> But a company that isn't willing to spend a small amount of money on "frivolous" things

This is ZIRP VC funded bay area tech bro logic, who thinks money is infinite.

The problem with uncontrolled endless "small amounts of frivolous things" is that when you're a large company, it keeps ballooning adding up over time, to eventually enormous costs, adding to the cost of doing business which could just go to employee wages instead or discounts to customers to stay competitive. If your company industry is hit hard now (like mine was), by global events, you gotta cut all that if you want to keep people employed and survive as a company.

>Oh look, now the mask comes off.

What mask. Can you be more vague?

[superfrank]

First, I want to fully acknowledge that these are tech bro problems that barely register in the grand scheme of things. I spent the first half of my adult life working minimum wage service industry jobs and more of my social circle than not are not in tech, so I fully get how entitled this sounds to anyone outside of big tech.

With that out of the way, I think you misinterpreted my comment a bit. I wasn't saying that want a nice jacket and a small bottle of Veuve over a decent salary. I was saying that the fact that they took time to do something a little bit special and unique created a positive memory.

I think if I give slightly contrasting stories it'll illustrate my point. At the company I talked about that gave me the Veuve bottle on the first day, the Patagonia jacket that I got was the same one the CEO had and regularly wore. I also learned later when I found a box of small Veuve bottles in a storage closet that the CEO chose that brand because he personally liked Veuve for special occasions. Whether intended or not, I remember feeling valued because it didn't feel like these were cheap knick knacks to keep the workers happy. The fact that he actually liked these things made them feel like a real gift and that was very humanizing.

On the other hand, I was at another company where they gave everyone somewhat cheap jackets for a big event and then the exec team showed up in brand new, matching, leather jackets for the same event. That kind of pissed me off because it basically said, we're too good for the gift we just gave you.

Like I said in the last comment, I don't really care about the things, it's the thought that counts.

So when I talk about the "buy your own damn beer" thing, I'm not saying I want a pizza party instead of a raise. I'm saying that if the company is in financial trouble and we need to cut the perks to make pay, that's fine. If the company telling employees they can't afford a few six packs while reporting record profits and the CEO is buying a new Lambo then that's a totally different story. If a company is penny pinching for no reason and they're fine sending that signal, then it's their prerogative, but given how much companies spend on recruiting talent, I feel like if shelling out an extra $200/yr in a way that feels even a little bit personalized is a no brainer.

[soco]

I think the underlying story here is the transparency: if they cut the shrimp and are able to back that decision in the open, people will understand and accept it. If everything is geting cut randomly (or is not there) and you only hear "we must spare" while the CxO bonuses and share prices show otherwise, the reception will be quite different. And if even basic work-related stuff like laptop upgrade or trip costs are blocked (or feel like that), then no reasoning in the world can fix the bad morale: it just shows disregard to the actual work.

[jon_richards]

> What's great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.

Andy Warhol

[Yoric]

When I was a manager in a start-up, ages ago, I argued the CEO against handing a (small) one-off bonus to one of my team members, and rather went shopping for a nice gift with the same sum. One of them was purely a transaction, the other one was a gift.

I believe that I was right.

[jtokoph]

I was once gifted a $100 bottle of alcohol after a project finished. I don’t drink much booze. I would have rather had the $100.

It very much depends on the gift.

[zippyman55]

We gave out frozen turkeys. Terrible gift if you do not cook.

[vrighter]

at a startup i worked on they gave everyone a ps4, but also the option to exchange it for cash

[K0balt]

I think maybe there are fundamentally different slots that employers fill in people’s perceptions. For myself, I will never imagine that a company cares about me even in some ephemerally meaningful way. No amount of perks or even pay will change that. There are individuals perhaps that care, but an organisation does not have the capacity for caring and overtures aping loyalty come off as disingenuous.

I value compensation and comforts as inducements to align my incentives to the needs of the organisation and as enablers, but I would never confuse incentive alignment with some kind of emotional or empathetic bond or contract.

I don’t feel any way about organisations because they don’t feel about me.

But I understand that some people do.

I do feel some way about goals, projects, people, even teams insofar as a group of people closely aligned can have its own emotional character, but at the level of an organisation that has goals that need not be aligned with my well being, I just don’t catch feelings of any kind.

By observation, though, I think many people seek parental, familial, or community surrogate relationships in work culture. It seems to me that with vanishingly rare exceptions this always leads to disappointment or something worse… it seems like wilful ignorance of the incentives at play, or maybe a misunderstanding of genuine social bonds.

People don’t bond because of how wonderful they are, they bond because they seem useful to each other in some way. If your value is as a producer, that’s a very transactional relationship that should not be confused with genuine interdependence of trust.

[shimman]

The companies realize this, your mistake is expecting capitalists to not exploit labor.

If you want actual improved working conditions, there is only one path that has proven to work and it involves organizing with other workers while resisting your bosses through whatever means you feel comfortable with.

The US has one of the most violent labor histories on the planet for a reason. The elites in this country absolutely do not like relinquishing control to an accountable public. There is a reason why the constitution was written as a document to benefit a minority of slavers, just like there is a reason why you don't get time-and-a-half when you're on-call as a tech worker; a group of undemocratic individuals want to hold dominion over your life while shaking you down for everything you're worth.

[superfrank]

> If you want actual improved working conditions, there is only one path that has proven to work and it involves organizing with other workers while resisting your bosses through whatever means you feel comfortable with.

Clearly that isn't true. I've worked at plenty of companies that treated me very well that didn't require organized resistance to get. I was literally talking about two of them in the comment you're responding to. You mention "there is a reason why you don't get time-and-a-half when you're on-call as a tech worker", but I've worked at companies who did that. Shit, Google does that. Your claim that "the only way" forward is for workers or organize and resist is undermined a bit by the fact that one of the largest tech companies on earth already does the thing that you're claiming can only be achieved by organized resistance.

If you like the idea of unionization that's great. I'm not particularly against it for other people, but it's not a magic wand. I spent a chunk of my life working as a checker at a unionized grocery store and I've never felt more like just a piece of meat than at that job and that feeling came from both the way my employer treated me AND the way the union treated me.

Like I hinted at before, I don't really want to join a union. I'm not going to stand in other people's way if that's what they want, but it wasn't for me. My experience was that it was kind of just trading one master for another. I just want to spend $250 on lunch for my team for Bob's birthday and I don't think a union is going to help with that.

[andersonpico]

Programmers are the easiest target: they're the group most averse to organizing; their bosses, however, are not.