My wife and I, both now-retired former Microsoft employees, were discussing such a topic just this morning (in relation to a HN headline that will become evident in a moment). Basically, I was commenting that we both worked at MS in that brief moment of time that employees were treated really well, like they really wanted us to stay there. The beer at morale events was small, local breweries (Mac and Jack's, typically). The morale events themselves were on a regular cadence. More t-shirts than I had days to wear them. Need a new monitor? If it's been a few years, "go ask your admin", and one just shows up. Yes, we had private offices. Some big things, like the offices, but also a lot of little, popsicle-like things that added up to, "wow, I feel like they want me here."
Then the morale events started becoming less frequent. The beer went from local to Bud and Bud Light. Then according to my wife, it went from Bud to Kirkland (the brand you find at Costco). Morale budget went from $WHATEVER to $40/head/year. Even the employee stock purchase plan discount went from 15% to 10%. You can look up the famous "shrimp and weenies" memo at Microsoft. I was on board with that, we didn't need shrimp. But now they don't even get the weenies.
And now Meta is recording your every keystroke and mouse movement, and I'm sure if they even get beer, it's no better than Microsoft has. Employees seem to be viewed as a liability now, or at best, code-producing cows to be milked out there in the open office feed lot. I don't care how much it pays these days, I've tasted how it could be, and no amount of money would get me back. All because companies can't spend an extra $100-$200 on their >$200K employees.
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.
>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.
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.
>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.
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.
> 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.
I think this conflates symptoms and causes. You'd still be a code producing cow with a craft brew in your hand. $200 fun budgets, IME, doesn't help that and more often is another sort of obligation.
I resent such spending for the most part, as cheap psyops. A few official beers or pizzas do not have a salient morale effect on a team that works together all day, at least in my experience. Neither do cute Slack callouts or Employees of the Month. For me, even a significant cash bonus is a cheap shortcut compared to the actual signal of appreciation of an actual raise. It's my salary that makes me feel like a valued team member, not a slice of cold pepperoni.
I look at such things similarly, and have never felt like "team building exercises" were particularly valuable. I'm working with these people on the products we build for hours every day; I don't need to do an escape room with them to "team build".
That said, I have to recognize that this may be partially because of my personality. I don't "do great" at mixers like this. I'd rather go home and be with my family than drink beer—regardless of label—in a corporate setting. People describe me as charismatic and engaging one-on-one, but I'm awkward and unhappy at a big crowd event.
But there are other people whom I think get a lot of value and connections out of them! So it's kinda hard for me to say.
Downgrades in quality, though, stick out like a sore thumb. "I didn't really like going to these things before, but at least they had good beer." It can also be a real "it's the thought that counts" sort of thing. When you show me that you're willing to spend less on me, it sends a signal, sometimes stronger than if you'd never spent anything on me in the first place.
The problem with free is that people get entitled. You can see some examples in this thread.
"Everybody likes free. But free can be dangerous, too. Today's show is about what happens when you take something that was free and you give it a price. That is a highly risky move. And the damage can be enormous."
This theory comes from what Kano calls delighters. In the 1980’s Noriaki Kano came up with the a product framework called the Kano model.
Touchpoints come in three ways. Delighters as already mentioned, a popsicle delivered to your room, or a chocolate on your pillow. Then there are performance needs. In the case of a hotel this could be the quality of the view, or the case of an employee the basic wage, and then next is the basic needs. Using the hotel example this would be something like the air conditioning.
You complain if it does not work, but nobody writes a review about how perfect the aircon was.
Then the morale events started becoming less frequent. The beer went from local to Bud and Bud Light. Then according to my wife, it went from Bud to Kirkland (the brand you find at Costco). Morale budget went from $WHATEVER to $40/head/year. Even the employee stock purchase plan discount went from 15% to 10%. You can look up the famous "shrimp and weenies" memo at Microsoft. I was on board with that, we didn't need shrimp. But now they don't even get the weenies.
And now Meta is recording your every keystroke and mouse movement, and I'm sure if they even get beer, it's no better than Microsoft has. Employees seem to be viewed as a liability now, or at best, code-producing cows to be milked out there in the open office feed lot. I don't care how much it pays these days, I've tasted how it could be, and no amount of money would get me back. All because companies can't spend an extra $100-$200 on their >$200K employees.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...
That said, I have to recognize that this may be partially because of my personality. I don't "do great" at mixers like this. I'd rather go home and be with my family than drink beer—regardless of label—in a corporate setting. People describe me as charismatic and engaging one-on-one, but I'm awkward and unhappy at a big crowd event.
But there are other people whom I think get a lot of value and connections out of them! So it's kinda hard for me to say.
Downgrades in quality, though, stick out like a sore thumb. "I didn't really like going to these things before, but at least they had good beer." It can also be a real "it's the thought that counts" sort of thing. When you show me that you're willing to spend less on me, it sends a signal, sometimes stronger than if you'd never spent anything on me in the first place.
So, back to local breweries? /s
"Everybody likes free. But free can be dangerous, too. Today's show is about what happens when you take something that was free and you give it a price. That is a highly risky move. And the damage can be enormous."
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/08/794592539/episode-386-the-cos...
Touchpoints come in three ways. Delighters as already mentioned, a popsicle delivered to your room, or a chocolate on your pillow. Then there are performance needs. In the case of a hotel this could be the quality of the view, or the case of an employee the basic wage, and then next is the basic needs. Using the hotel example this would be something like the air conditioning.
You complain if it does not work, but nobody writes a review about how perfect the aircon was.
Whether you do that with a popsicle or with the staff and infrastructure of a $700/night hotel room is kind of a wash.