I imagine comparing benefits across companies is hard, but there are some weird, arbitrary things here that don't make sense. Example:<p>Looking at Salesforce, it's got three big red X's next to "Free Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner". Ok, so I guess Salesforce doesn't have these things (and notably, the red X makes it seem like Salesforce is being "dinged" for this). But then I look at Microsoft, and it has "Free Snacks" and "Free Drinks" listed with green check marks next to them. But then it doesn't list "Free Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner" at all. Does Microsoft offer free meals? If yes, why isn't it listed? If no, still why isn't it listed, but with a red X next to it, like Salesforce? This is the case for a lot of companies and benefits.<p>Other stuff seems wrong or very situational. Stuff like "On-site gym" is highly dependent on your office location, and I see companies that have a red X next to it when I know for a fact that many of their offices do have gyms, while I know that some of the companies that have it listed with a green check do not have gyms at all office locations.<p>Also, all of the health insurance stuff is pretty meaningless without more info about the actual insurance offered, and there's a lot of missing information about supplemental insurance, or other uncommon forms of insurance like legal group insurance.<p>edit: I see now that the way this works is based on user submissions, and you can choose "Null", "Benefit Available", and "Benefit Not Available". IMO, "Null" shouldn't be an option at all. Either a company offers some form of the benefit or it does not. There is no "blank".
Looking at this dataset, the balance of benefits here seems more tailored to deferring children (eg. egg freezing) vs. embracing children and providing benefits to make it easier to have them (eg. in-office daycare, part time work schedules). I wish these employers would focus more on the latter and build upon benefits they already offer like parental leave instead of incentivizing the delaying of children to further one’s career.<p>Edit: upon reflection, even free meals outside of lunch are not really a meaningful benefit to parents who want to have those meals with their families.
Some information about how good the benefits actually are would be useful. It always made me sad how much of my day I had to waste standing in line to get the "free food". On most days I just got a grab-and-go sandwich to eat at my desk, while other people would spend 20 minutes waiting in line and 40 minutes eating it (and then waiting another 20 minutes to get coffee). I didn't mind doing that on special occasions, but an hour lost per day to get "free" food was just too much for me. ("They're only hurting themselves by making them wait, they're paying for that hour" I hear you say. That is not really true. It really depends on whether or not your team is okay with losing an hour a day, and if you think you can get a good performance review by working 7 hours a day instead of 8. They are happy to keep you around "meeting expectations" at level 4 on some boring project that doesn't matter. If you want more pay or a better project, you have to find time sinks and eliminate them. The power is in your hands, and yours alone.)<p>I also ran into a fun experience with the health insurance. I needed surgery, and had it pre-approved. It was in fact approved. When the bill showed up, they decided they weren't going to pay it. I opened a ticket to get the issue fixed, and they dragged me along until the deadline for further appeals was reached, at which point the case was closed and I wrote a check for $30,000 to my doctor. Bet they don't mention that caveat when Fortune is reviewing them for "best place to work".<p>All of these benefits sound good on paper, but there is always a caveat. There is no such thing as a free lunch!
FAANGs have changed the compensation game in SF Bay Area, making joining startups for potential financial gains pointless. Benefits are just icing on the cake.<p>I wonder what techniques startups are using to recruit quality talent in the Bay Area.
I don't know if it is expressing some sort of bias, but some of the companies seem to be purposely expressed in a "negative" fashion, by including red X's for "missing" benefits, but those exclusions don't seem to be uniform?<p>A couple examples:<p>- Uber has a bright red "X" beside "Sick Time", seemingly to imply that working at Uber gives you no sick days. However you also have "Unlimited PTO (Vacation/Personal days), so this just seems misleading (at best)<p>- Neither Uber nor LinkedIn offer "On-Site Tire Replacement" or "On-Site Car Wash / Detailing", but this is only explicitly called out under Uber<p>It appears that only Uber, Amazon, and Salesforce have _any_ "missing benefits" explicitly highlighted, which feels very misleading.
I personally think that Microsoft benefits are more pragmatic, realistic, and usable even if they rank lowest on the comparison. A lot of the stuff Google offers, is icing on the cake.<p>The problem is that there are loopholes in health insurance, that unless you have extensive experience and a keen eye, you will miss the financial tricks.<p>For example, in my state, we have the highest amount of surprise bills (usually out-of-network billing) in the US, statistically. I have a family member who was considering getting a plan that was $100 cheaper per month, but had a very high out of network billing cap.<p>But, if you have health conditions, making a spreadsheet like this goes a long ways: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/diabetes/comments/9xwvl4/usa_i_created_and_am_sharing_a_spreadsheet_for/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/diabetes/comments/9xwvl4/usa_i_crea...</a><p>But, things should not be this way. It is chaotic to have to worry about healthcare costs like this.
When I load the site, I get Google, Facebook and Microsoft selected by default. If I deselect Microsoft and re-select it, for some reason Google disappears. Is this a bug?<p>Happens on both Firefox on Ubuntu as well as Safari on my iPhone.
I wonder how they're computing total effective monetary value, especially when it comes to 401k contribution. For instance, it has MSFT as 50% up to 19500 (it should actually be 100% up to 20000, but I digress), but a total effective benefit of just over 10k. I'd put the 401k contribution multiplier at >=1, but they clearly have it much less than that.<p>Really what would make more sense is allowing customization of how much you value particular benefits (i.e. free dinner means nothing to me, if not negative, because it also means you're "expected" to stick around for it)
"On-site mother's room" is not a distinguishing benefit. It's a legal requirement in at least California and New York, to my knowledge.
I like the idea but some of these comparisons are strange. Why does one company have 2 benefits listed in a category with green checkmarks while another has several more benefits listed under the same category with red X's? It seems like all of them should have the same red X's?
This is the most inane comment but it's kind of bugging me that they're misaligned, the same benefit as number 1 for one company and 3rd for another