Google's "free food" is not free

I'm writing a post on salary negotiation today, so I zeroed in on two supporting details here that you should remember for later: when pressed on price, savvy negotiators said:<p>1) Give us some time to think about it.<p>2) We are going to re-focus the discussion on a different compensation lever where we can present something you're already going to get as if it were a new incentive justifying your concession on a lever you're currently interested in.<p><i>You can do both of these as a job seeker.</i><p>(For example, if you have extra-curricular interests like many desirable tech employees do, the extra-curricular interests can be used to justify an increase in your compensation vis-a-vis a hypothetical employee who punches out of the Internet at 5 pm. It doesn't particularly matter that you're going to continue blogging and OSS regardless of the outcome of this negotiation, you just frame the discussion such that that becomes newly discovered value which gives the other party something to hang their hat on for getting you that last $10,000.)

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.<p>Ive seen perks too many times used against employees. (The following rant is nothing towards Google - never worked there.)<p>- 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.<p>- Unrestricted vacation days can mean you don't really get any vacation because its always crunch time.<p>- 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.<p>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.

Pretty much spot on of course, anyone who was at Google 'before' can trace the dots to today.<p>One of the benefits of a generous set of perks is that management can adjust the expense once they get close to the end of the quarter so that the 'numbers come out right.' Google is losing that ability. It makes things like their Q4 'miss' [1] more likely.<p>It is of course entirely Google's prerogative on how they spend their money. And if you look at their Q4 results [2] they deposited 2.97 <i>billion</i> dollars into the bank in cash based on the work done by their 32,467 employees. That is $91,477 in cash for the 90 days that ended December 31st. Lets say every employee ate 3 gourmet meals a day, at a cost of $15+$25+$50 or $90, and consumed another $25 in snacks so $115 per employee per day. (and those are gonna be some fat employees!) That is 32,467 x $115 x 90 days or $335 million dollars. Or about 11 cents of each dollar they dropped into the bank. The numbers of course reflect the costs that a typical restaurant would charge that was profitable, and $25 a day in snacks? That is probably way beyond what most anyone would eat so these numbers are way over if anything.<p>But at some point between the original prospectus where Larry and Sergei told potential investors that they were going to spend a lot on perks like this so get used to it; to today, where sometimes elaborate explanations about social consciousness and environmental justice precede the denial of those perks. Someone decided the company's interest was to build a cash pile, not invest in quality of life benefits for the rank and file. Sad really, they are the kind of company that can afford to do it, and now they choose not to. So much for being different.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/technology/googles-strong-results-less-than-expected.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/technology/googles-strong-...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://investor.google.com/earnings/2011/Q4_google_earnings.html" rel="nofollow">http://investor.google.com/earnings/2011/Q4_google_earnings....</a>

I read a previous article by her about no one being able to like Apple products after Android and decided she has a totally warped view of reality. I was there when they handed out Android phones. I still use an iPhone. Many Google employees use iPhones. No one has ever given me crap about it, and I haven't seen anyone look at anyone funny in any way.<p>I mean, Google gives MacBook Airs/MacBook Pros to every employee for christsakes.<p>And if you want to know how the recruiters talk you into accepting a lower salary, it isn't the value of the food, it's the value of Google's bonuses. Google HR talks to you about "Total Compensation" and the dollar value of the food is not (AFAIK) part of this discussion.<p>Personally for me, I have no complains about my salary, but the real reason I decided to work for Google was the chance to work on world class infrastructure with access to an incredible pool of talented people, plus the culture.<p>Google is the only large corporation I've worked at (and I've worked at others like IBM and Oracle), that didn't feel so much like a suffocating bureaucracy, and whose employees generally care about trying to do the right thing, and care about openness and honesty.<p>You've all no doubt seen the Steve Yegge rant. That's par for the course on Google internal mailing lists, and I like the fact that people challenge management frequently with rants like this.

I find myself in a weird situation, in that I find this writer's writing intriguing exactly because of how much I vehemently disagree with almost all of it. It's like somehow it manages to push all the wrong buttons, in a very precise way. Usually when I read things that I disagree with it doesn't really prod at me, but for some reason almost this entire blog does. The controversy this blog always digs up on really minor topics makes me think I'm not the only one.<p>I think what always strikes me in her writing is the lack of any empathy in any of the rants/complaints. When I read credible arguments, I always feel like there's a bit of understanding involved, as in "these people think this, for certain reasons we've actually bothered to explore and will treat fairly, but it turns out this other thing is the case because.."<p>The problem is, if you don't bother to look into the other side of things, you can't have real understanding. I saw nothing in that article as to /why/ google might have done what they did, only some really petulant complaints and vague innuendo about "rogue contractors". I got the same impression from other posts, like where she accused ruby programmers of being "hipsters", because, you know, obviously you can just do everything in C++ so why bother to learn something new?

I worked at a place with free food and this exact thing happened. At first it was order any two meals off seamlessweb.com a day. Then it was order one meal, which meant people ordered enough food for two or three meals once a day. Then there were spending limits. Then there was a "town hall meeting" the CEO claimed he had been doing some investigations an came across a worker who was drinking ten cans of coke a day. Out of concern for our health, they would be eliminating all beverages except water coolers. Then meals were only free for certain people. Then free meals went away.<p>It is easy to eliminate these kinds of perks because many people will be in favor of cost cutting. Not so for salary, not many people will argue in favor of across the board salary cuts. I'll take salary every time.

The author complains that she was dissatisfied with her offer six years prior but took the job anyway. Then it turns into a rant about how she was robbed of her entitlements.<p>"But what happens when the economy improves? Those wounds will never heal. Anyone with half a brain will say "hey, these guys are evil!" and will bail for greener pastures."<p>Because they don't have bagels in the microkitchen Google is evil?<p>As someone who works at Google, I can assure you that the microkitchens are overflowing with drinks, snacks, fruits, coffees, and candies, The cafeterias are plentiful(24 in mountain view alone) and the food is incredibly delicious, even for a foodie like myself.<p>Plus, the pay is very competitive. The author must not have stuck around for this:<p><a href="http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-11-09/tech/30024423_1_google-ceo-googlers-eric-schmidt" rel="nofollow">http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-11-09/tech/30024423...</a><p>It's unfortunate that her experience didn't end well, but this article comes across as hyperbolic and catty.

Google is located in an area where there aren't many restaurants close by. By offering on-site lunches, they keep the employees on campus. So instead of wasting, say, 1.5 hours getting to MtView, hunting for parking, waiting at a restaurant, eating, getting back into your car, etc., the employees just walk over to the cafe, still in work mode; or even better, take the lunch back to their offices.<p>Even if Google gets 1 hour of work per employee per day out of this arrangement, the lunch more than pays for itself.<p>So people shouldn't naively think that Google (or, for that matter, any other company) offers these perks out of the goodness of their heart; it's because it makes fiscal sense to keep employees on campus, working.

Google claims to want to hire smart people.<p>Google claims to these ostensibly smart people during the hiring process that the 'free food' is worth <i>(cough)</i> 20 <i>grand</i> in salary?!<p>I sense a disturbance in the force.

The real lesson for employees is to ignore the cash value of the perks when evaluating offers. Perks can be taken away, but cutting salaries is much more controversial.

I have worked at both Google and Facebook and this was an annoyance for everyone. People would come into the job and be promised the normal salary+benefits and then be told about the unlimited Odwalla and Aldale being open all day and how the food is amazing and then suddenly the most profitable companies in the world "realize" that these things are expensive, cut back, and expect something other than to have their world class employees go somewhere where they are treated a bit better. I will never understand not continuously investing in your employees, especially at the best companies on earth.

Negotiator: Our free lunch costs us about 15 to 20k per year per employee, so add at least 15k to our offer to find it's true value.<p>Me: If I were left to my own devices I would make myself a PB and J sandwich and have an apple every day. That comes down to about $2 a day for lunch. So there's 365 days in a year, take away about 104 for weekends, and you are left with about 261 free lunches a year. Hence to me the free lunch is only worth about $522. Just so you know, that's not a lot of money.<p>Fun fact: It doesn't actually matter if you really would have PB&#38;J every day.

One thing this article doesn't point out: it wasn't Google who argued that the supposedly lower salary was offset by food - it was a person (sure, an employee or contractor of Google). Perhaps this person was reading from a recruiting script sanctioned by management. But it wasn't the big overarching company that made this argument to the author - it was a person.<p>Recruiters often have the wrong incentive structure. They have numbers to hit - and so they use classic high pressure tactics (exploding offers, "accept the offer now" durring the offer, misinformation, tricks) to convince people to accept. It's unfortunate that the recruiter's goals don't line up with the applicant's, but it's true. How one fixes that isn't obvious to me tonight.<p>I also hate the victim mentality when an employee no longer feels like they're getting what they want from their employer. If you don't like what you're getting, if the economic transaction is no longer acceptable, leave. (I respect employment laws, I think everyone should treat each other, I don't condone abusive behavior or manipulation) Employees aren't victims trapped by evil employers, they're participants in an economic transaction. If the transaction is no longer as profitable as one at another company, then that doesn't make the employer bad or wrong, it's simply time to move on.<p>(I worked at Google for 5 years, I left in April 2011. And when I went back for lunch one day in November with former coworkers, I had the best meal I'd had since I left.)

This is the second post from this blog I've had the displeasure of reading on HN, and both of them make this person seem to be a congenital malcontent.

You could also use this as a potential lever in discussing future compensation increases. If they claimed perk x was worth $y but now they are scaling it back to $z then $y-z should be put back into your base as you no longer receive the perk.

I was at Google's campus last month for lunch.<p>The food is better quality than a Las Vegas buffet with all the trimmings, except it's all free.<p>The author complaining about Google being "evil" for cutting back or "screwing the employee" is so incredibly ridiculous and so self-entitled it sickens me.<p>It's like someone complaining that the company used to drop free $100 bills on the ground, but now they're only dropping $50s. The employees were "WOUNDED" because they closed a few locations, or they had to wander an extra 30 ft for donuts? For F*CK'S sake get a grip! The food there is pretty damn good and if you don't like it, there's something wrong with you, not Google. Too bad they closed a couple of locations and you have to walk an extra 30 seconds or be in line an extra 2 mins. IT'S FREE FOOD AND IT'S GOOD.

It is amusing that Google offers "free lunches". I wonder how many compensation discussions include the quip, "there is no such thing as a free lunch".<p>Just out of curiosity, does Google gross up salaries for tax purposes? I really think the IRS needs to crack down on companies using excessive perks as non-taxable compensation.<p>If Google is using the perks to justify a "lower but equivalent salary" then they should be paying taxes on the non-cash compensation. If they are not, then Google is taking advantage of a shady tax dodge.

Organisation must focus on paying people well and then they must just leave people on their own. We are clever enough to know how to figure out what to do with our money. We can buy our own food, snacks and ice cream if we want to.<p>Instead, every company that I've seen so far seems to come up with every possible reason to pay people as little as they can. Generally its like this, "Hey we are giving you x,y,z perks and you sit around in a beautiful office so the peanuts we pay is sufficient, now get back to work and slog for us until your bones hurt."<p>Companies know damn well, that not everyone is eating these Ice creams, drinking coffee of eating stomach full everyday. And not everyone is taking the free transport. Some will, not all. On an average they pay every body less for these reasons, and the money they save by not paying in cash but by perks is often huge.<p>Salary offers are the most fraudulent documents. Minus taxes, and some other 'hidden' deductions which always exist. Because most companies have a component of salary with string attached. What you get in hand is always close to 50% of what is promised on paper.<p>This is every where, no matter which company you will every work at.

$15k / 250 business days, that would be $60 per day AND they would get the food at much lower prices then you do when you sit in a restaurant. Really? If it was a random company that kind of BS would put me off working there big time.

Employment isn't a transaction, it is a relationship. If one is not being paid enough nothing prevents revisiting the discussion.<p>Having said that, I don't see a lot of advice on the topic online. Obviously after spending some time at a company you have a better idea of what the talent level is like and where the money goes, so you should be able to negotiate better with the extra information, and the history of what you've done.

At the end: <i>Or, worse, they'll assign blame to "rogue contractors" and say it was never their policy to do that. Right.<p>Now where have we heard that before? Rogue contractors?</i><p>I may be wrong, but... Is she implying that (in her personal opinion), Google knew and instructed them about OpenStreetMap sabotage? That's controversial at least.<p>Edit: I mean, I'm not defending anyone, but without proofs, I think that's a very harsh sentence.

The most important rule of salary negotiation: Always let them make an offer first. If you're lucky it's higher than what you would have proposed, so you'll just accept it. If it's lower you just continue to negotiate.

There's a possibility that a lot of un-eaten food was being wasted, so Google cut back to reduce food waste.<p>ie. being green.<p>Lot of conjecture in this article.

I found it interesting that their claimed value of 15-20k a year went unquestioned. At ~300 days a year, that's $60 a day. I'd value free food at a quarter of that at most.

I'm having a hard time sympathizing. At the end of her negotiation, this was the state of the world: the company didn't want to go any higher, and some handwaving about how much food was worth was enough to convince her to fold.<p>Why bother calculating "effective salary"? Personally, anything that isn't cold, hard cash I view as tangential to my compensation. Even options are questionable - sometimes the salary hit over 4+ years is comparable to the additional options' value. Sure, perks can make the work environment nicer. I'll take that into consideration given competing offers. But it seems silly to attempt to fix a monetary value on these things that the company has no contractual requirement to fulfill.

Has rachelbythebay ever written a post that is <i>not</i> about bashing Google as evil or all engineers as sexist?<p>Notice what she does not mention: Google massively increased salaries during the same time period, including the 10% across the board bump.

I always think it's interesting when companies try to negotiate compensation by perks... They're basically giving away more cash.<p>"Well our health benefits are worth $15,000 a year, you know. It's a very good plan."<p>My answer is always "Wow, I didn't know you guys thought I was worth X+$15,000, I'll take that in cash, thanks." My health plan is comparable and costs me $200 a month + $1500 a year in deductibles, tax free.

My only comment after reading this story. Is he seriously complaining about having to walk around and hunt for food, (donuts) rather then finding it in a kitchen next to his desk? If that's the case I would be complaining about the lack of a good gym at Google instead.

I wish the company I work would offer me free meals. Not only free meals but an infrastructure and environment where I could spend more time in my intellectual growth and personal achieviements. Of course all this requires an huge investment not only in buildings but in human resources (someone has to do the dirty work).<p>If some company offered me free food, nice, clean and complete bathrooms, restrooms, libraries, lockers, an office arranged in manner where I could work without any disturb in trade of less but still acceptable salary I would accept it.<p>If they cut me on sallary I would not mind but if they took me the free food completely I would be pissed off.

This reminds me a lot of one company I worked for. While I can understand cutting costs when the economy is bad, his last question hits the spot: "But what happens when the economy improves?"

The whole idea of free food is not good. I'd prefer to have a wide variety of the highest quality food and pay something reasonable for it.<p>I really don't want an incentive to maximize my consumption of food. What matters is how much you enjoy what you do it and being as healthy as you can be.<p>Caffe Macs at Apple does it well. The healthiest options are clearly subsidized, and desserts are not.

This is SOP for negotiation. Candidates do this shit too, trying to claim some sort of inflated salary boost for every thing they give up from their previous employer. It's a game and the lesser negotiator loses out.

Kind of a first-world problem.<p>A lot is made of a company 'culture', and frequently perks are pointed out. Well, sorry, culture is what is left when the chips are down, the perks are gone, and its time to work your way out of the hole.<p>At Google, as the article said, when perks dried up folks left. Those folks were never part of their culture, they were what's known as freeloaders.<p>So why not be a freeloader? I don't know, I just feel kind of sticky when I find myself in that position. I would much rather be part of a small company, doing whatever it takes to be successful because its MY company.

better perks can mean less money. this is not news.

<i>Sure, go ahead and screw the employees while the economy is bad. They'll stay on and grumble about it, because they can't go anywhere.</i><p>People got laid off and were unable to find work, possibly ending their careers, and you're complaining about bagels being cut? Seriously?

It's an advertised perk so sure. Just like they might convince you to work somewhere because it's more geographically convenient for you or it has a day care. It offers better quality of life in lieu of cash money. I know cash is what most americans want. They want it over better health care or fairer lifestyle. But some people just want to live more comfortably instead of being able to tell people how many "figures" they make.<p>As for the cuts, maybe they decided to be more "honest" and cut that program and just give new hires more money?

Wow, no thanks. I'd prefer they skip the bi-weekly trip to Whole Foods and I'll keep the $20k.

So I multiplied the $30/day by the 9,600 employees in Mountain View and New York by the 251 days Google is open every year. Remember that Google probably spends a lot more than this, because there are employees outside those offices, and because visitors are there all the time eating.<p>The grand total: By our guesstimate, Larry and Sergey are spending at least $72,288,000 per year to fill their workers' pie-holes. How can they afford to do that? Easy, of course: Last year Google (GOOG) earned $4.2 billion.

STOP THE PRESSES!

ITT an ex-google employee complains about google cutting some on-campus cafe hours and morning bagels/donuts being more difficult to find. Complains that during the job offer they mentioned food as a perk. Yawn.

Came here to say this... as a former google intern... if this was your reasoning for hating google, you weren't right google in the first place.