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A Look at Silicon Valley Cafeterias
boycottthecaf writes "The San Jose Mercury News has a story on the cafeterias of Silicon Valley companies, and how they are used to keep workers on site during lunch. Google, of course, has the cafeteria everyone envies."
...are an excellent indicator, in my experience, of the success of a company. For instance, I used to work at Nortel (Nortel.ca), one of Canada's premier hihg-tech companies during the bubble.
During the bubble, the cafeteria was practically giving away food. Actually, they were doing precisely that -- many days during the week your lunch would be paid for. One could also go down at any time and pick up soda fountain drinks for free. This, like so many things (like the free massage parlor) were not to last...
As Nortel's profits declined, so did the number of different food stalls in the cafeteria. Similarly, I couldn't even go down to pick up a glass of soda water -- the company stopped giving it away. In fact, the ice water cooler was likewise turned off. The breakrooms were stripped of their free coffee and tea (and hot chocolate, *sigh*). And their water coolers were removed. And then the styrofoam cups (and their subsequent paper brethern faced a similar fate). Then they got rid of the plates and plastic forks and spoons. Finally, when the free sugar sachets left, so did I.
I guess I can finally say I am what I ate -- unemployed.
Many of these companies have more than 20+ building distributed across the Bay Area. It's only the main campus which has the large cafeteria and maybe other luxuries like a fitness centre (SGI's main building was across the road from the cinema multiplex).
If you're not working at the main building, then you end up with at least a 20 minute freeway drive to the nearest restaurant. For anywhere upmarket, you need to book at least a day in advance, as there are usually queues outside by lunchtime (Palo Alto). If you're lucky there might be a Mexican restaurant with outside tables, or a Chinese takeaway, but all the tables are quickly taken. And the specials would be snapped up within quarter of an hour of cooking.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Of course since your government servants are underpaid, the cafeteria get financial support, your tax dollars in action!
Sure it's easy to say something like that when your Google fresh off an IPO and loaded with more cash then you know what to do with, but say your Sun Microsystems or even Yahoo, you've been offering free lunch to your employees to have productivity gains and now your quarterly profits have fallen....management and investors look at the $500,000 a month you spend on your cafeteria, so its either axe that benefit or lay some people off. Either way, now as an employee I feel ripped off that I can no longer get free lunch. So morale and productivity plummet to rediculously low levels. It's also been disputed whether these offer real productivity gains. I think read that Mark Jen (the google blogger who was fired) or someone else said that most people at google just stay for the free lunch and dinner and head home.
When I used to work at Sun Microsystems (about 5 years ago when the Santa Clara campus was very new) the food was excellent and there were routinely about 2 dozen different options for lunch each day. The cost was also so low I paid less than $5, even on an indulgent day.
Personally I found it nice to not have to leave work for a good lunch, and the time that we didn't spend driving around in that traffic meant that I could leave earlier in the day.
Despite what slave labor critics may claim, I never found it to be anything but a major perk of working there.
I don't know about anyone else but I'm so damaged from the bust if I ever bite into a free bagel I think "How much did this bagel cost? Shouldn't we be lean and mean? Why are they spending money on this crap?" It's like a bad flashback would happen and I would remember at my former company the CEO standing in front of us saying all of these positive things about profitability and being numero uno while we ate our free food. We had free free sodas as well. There were even free tampons in the ladies bathroom. When it all started to end all of a sudden there was no more free lunch day, no more free sodas, or feminine products. It's laughable, but I think any company that spends such an amount on a perk seems foolish and this again is my damaged self feeling this after so long you would think I could once again bite a free bagel and not feel the pinch of foreboding. But I do.
Lane Myer: I have great fear of tools. I once made a birdhouse in woodshop and the fair housing committee condemned it.
Incidentally, one way Google keeps its people onsite is by providing a free laundramat. I find the idea of my co-workers (not to mention the occasional visiting celebrity) seeing my literal dirty laundry deeply disturbing.