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."

Comments

Article text.

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporate cuisine: a tour

By Nicole C. Wong
Mercury News

For many Silicon Valley employees, there's a pecking order to valley companies. And it has nothing to do with sales or size.

It's all about the food.

For years, Silicon Valley companies have invested in their cafeterias to cut the time workers spend foraging off-campus for food, boost camaraderie and keep the troops happy, or at least well-fueled. Now some cafes are such hot spots that discerning diners from other companies are clamoring to eat there.

``Apple's the best,'' said Joseph Ruff, a programmer at Mountain View start-up TellMe Networks. ``The egg burritos, they make them nice and spicy. Network Appliance -- that had a pretty good salad bar, but it was smaller than Apple's.''

Want navrattan korma with raita, chutney and naan? $5.29 at Cisco Systems. Need something to drink? Sun Microsystems stocks 20 flavors of Odwalla juices alone. Feeling guilty? Yahoo boasts sustainably harvested seafood and antibiotic-free chicken.

Marc Marelich, eBay's general manager of food services, often sees outsiders slipping in to eat at the new cafe. And no wonder -- they can get ahi tuna salad tossed on the spot, spicy Tunisian chili with lamb and beef, or Yucatan fish tacos with pico de gallo.

At San Jose semiconductor maker Atmel, which a few years ago decided not to construct its own cafe, employees have found a prized alternative to brown-bagging it. Sales reps, engineers and even the chief financial officer cross the street to eat at BEA Systems' Tuxedo Junction Cafe. One Atmel engineer dines there so often -- three or four times a week -- that a cashier mistakenly gives him the 10 percent discount for BEA employees.

John Lawn, editor in chief of Food Management magazine, said Silicon Valley's corporate cafe scene serves some of the best food in the country. ``You'll find a cafe that's as nice as any commercial restaurant in Chicago or San Francisco, maybe better,'' he said.

Of course, you'll also find some that are worse.

Amy Flores, spokeswoman for Agilent Technologies, offered this opinion of Agilent's cafe: ``All I know is it's sometimes good, and it's sometimes bad.''

And last year, Intel decided that too many employees were avoiding lunch at the company's dining hall, which facilities planning manager Mike Dowd described as ``battleship gray'' with menu offerings ``maybe a notch above hospital and school cafeterias.''

So the cafe splashed its ceiling with paint the color of nacho cheese and revamped the menu to include inari and ebi sushi. It also lowered prices.

Now, Dowd said, ``We have more employees who are willing to have their friends come over to our house to eat, rather than go to theirs.''

Google, by far, has become Silicon Valley's most sizzling lunch site -- as elusive as French Laundry, the Wine Country restaurant where would-be patrons must call two months in advance to get a seat. Ruff, the 39-year-old TellMe programmer, has been begging a college buddy who works at Google to bring him as a lunch guest for the past year.

Google employees must make online reservations 24 hours in advance to bring visitors to the cafe. And they are limited to two guests each month, since all the lunches and dinners are free.

Google's executive chef, Charlie Ayers, cooked for members of the Grateful Dead in the early '90s. He orchestrates a 100-plus staff and announces the day's eating options only an hour before lunch. ``That's how we keep them on campus -- have that element of surprise,'' he said.

It seems to work. On an average day, 85 percent of Googlers eat at the cafe, compared with 50 percent at other valley companies.

Eric Case, a 25-year-old blogger product specialist at Google, finds that all of a sudden, his friends want to dine with him. ``They'll e-mail, `Hey, do you want to have lunch sometime next week?' What that means is, `Can I eat at Google?' ''

Broadcom counts on a

Re:Article text.

[ForestGrump]

And where I used to work in the valley...

There was no cafetria, but Costco was accross the street. Hello samples!

Grump

Re:Article text.

[Teun]

But the key question is: Do they offer WiFi?

Re:Article text.

[Rodness]

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.

Re:Article text.

[PainBot]

Oh great, local news.
Yawn.

Re:Article text.

[drsquare]

That's still pretty expensive. Where I work, I pay like £1.50-£2.00. But then again it's just boiled vegetables and bland meat, and yesterday's-leftovers soup. I don't think I could justify spending up to $25 a week just for dinners. $10 might be closer the mark.

Maybe if you're a massive company you can afford to give people free food, but if you're annual profits are measured in hundreds of thousands, giving people free food could erase your profits entirely.

Personally I usually just bring sandwiches, especially as the canteen isn't open for afternoon or night shifts. I think it's a bit extravagent to eat out every lunchtime. No wonder everyone's so fat these days.

Re:Article text.

[peebeejay]

It's not surprising that valley companies are doing this. If it keeps their employees from realizing what a disfunctional environment they live in, they might be able to squeeze out a few more years labor from them. I have worked for several companies headquartered in the Bay Area, and, although I never lived there, I've spent a lot of time in San Jose, Palo Alto, and all the other places. No longer is the rush hour limited to the commute times, but there's a traffic backup during peak lunch hours. In fact, 101 is slow almost around the clock. The Valley is one of the most densely populated regions in the world where you cannot walk to anything. That quantity of people living so close together all relying on their cars to get to everything makes for a huge mess and a lot of depressing lives. These people budget an hour or more twice a day to sit in their cars, averaging about a fifth of the speed those cars were designed to operate at (how the auto industry continues to sell the illusion of "freedom" amazes me), so they can work their fairly high salary jobs - with plenty of uncompensated overtime, mind you - that just barely pay for the inflated mortgages on their sterile styrofoam cookie-cutter houses. They don't see their children, most households are forced to have both spouses work just to pay for everything, and very often find that once they've got just a little bit ahead in their careers, the threat of having to compete with some snot-nosed college grad who's willing to work for a third of the pay for another opening keeps them with the same company long after the magic is gone. I myself have been offered work in the Silicon Valley, but opted for less pay in a smaller city with plenty of real urban housing and good public transport. So, yes, I can see why some Valley companies might offer a few reasonably affordable perks to their serfs. Do they want a freaking medal?

Re:Article text.

[4of12]

with menu offerings ``maybe a notch above hospital and school cafeterias.''

Yep, I'm so right there.

Please stop torturing me.

bugmenot:

[the_unknown_soldier]

kokroaches@mailinator.com
kokkr0

Username and password so you odn't have to give over your DNA

Re:bugmenot:

[cagliost]

If you're using Firefox, get the Bugmenot plugin. http://roachfiend.com/archives/category/extensions /

Re:bugmenot:

[BrowserCapsGuy]

That's because you forgot to register first.

Reg Required

[victor_the_cleaner]

I think whoever submits a story that requires registration to read, should also provide their username and password so we all can read the story.

Re:Reg Required

[Quixote]

Or /. should make it a point not to accept stories where the main link has registration required (yes, I know about BugMeNot). It is not like these stories are earth-shattering expose's ; this is just a cute little piece meant for easy reading. SJMN should be glad for all the traffic they get from the /. hordes. Someone will surely post the text of the article, and then people won't go to their site, thereby cutting down on the page views. On the other hand, if this story had been free, people would have read it on their site (i.e. more hits).

Re:Reg Required

[kokoko1]

oh sorry mate you already registered your complain before I did :), actually when I was posting there was no comments at all.

Re:Reg Required

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a job for Microsoft Passport.NET.

Re:Reg Required

[kryptkpr]

Are you aware that Bugmenot has a firefox plugin?

I just right click in the login field, choose BugMeNot, wait 3 seconds for a login to be retreived from their servers, proceed to read story..

Re:Reg Required

[Professor_UNIX]

Are you aware that Bugmenot has a firefox plugin?

Are you aware it's the principle of the matter that people are arguing about? They get no useful statistics from requiring you to login with a "free" soul-sucking registration because, like you said, everyone can just use Bugmenot or put in fake info. So what purpose does it serve other than to annoy readers? If every site on the Internet started requiring registrations before you could read their content it'd become a pain in the ass just to surf the web.

Re:Reg Required

[Smurf]

Safari users:

To get a BugMeNot entry for the current page, you can add any bookmark to the Bookmarks Bar, and change its "Address" field to:

javascript:void(window.open('http://bugmenot.com /v iew.php?mode=bookmarklet&url='+escape(location),'B ugMeNot','location=no,status=yes,menubar=no,scroll bars=yes,resizable=yes,width=385,height=450'))

Make sure you remove all the spaces and returns introduced by Slashdot.
(Tip originally from MacOSXHints.)

login details from bugmenot

[mallumax]

me1@privacy.net
password1
Thank you bugmenot

Re:login details from bugmenot

[kokoko1]

thanks mate for the passwd

Cafeterias not the best value...

[Krankheit]

I need a big lunch, so I don't want to go into the cafeteria and order four lunches and four 20 ounce bottles of Mountain Dew. I prefer to go to my local Wal-Mart and pick up two of those two litre bottles of Mountain Dew, pick up some coffee at the BR Dunkin' Donuts inside Wal-Mart, and two dozen of jelly filled doughnuts. Then I get a bag of cocoa puffs, and head to Burger King to get my cheeseburger. Problem is by the time I get back to the cafeteria with all my food to sit down and eat with my laptop, lunch is usually over. :(

Re:Cafeterias not the best value...

[bwalling]

You could save yourself a lot of time by simply going to Hardee's and getting the Double Monster burger (1300 calories, 90 grams of fat). Eat two if you're feeling hungry. Of course, if you eat two, you might pass out. Don't forget fries and a drink.

Re:Cafeterias not the best value...

[mindaktiviti]

You forgot cheetos with your 4 litres of mountain dew. :P

Re:Cafeterias not the best value...

[The-Bus]

Ironic for someone who's username is "Sickness" in German. Maybe it's the diet? :)

Re:Cafeterias not the best value...

[Chuqmystr]

Jeeze. Perhaps you can get a desktop support job at an orphanage. Then you could just eat babies. Or you could work at a cattle ranch, where'd you could while away your lunch hours chasing steers with a fork and a loaf of bread.

Re:Cafeterias not the best value...

[duffbeer703]

Why don't you just kill yourself and avoid the future pain that the rest of your life will consist of?

You'll be a toothless diabetic by 35 at the rate that you're going.

Mirror at NetworkMirror.com

[moeffju]

Story: http://www.networkmirror.com/f48ThG_X4VrVJ79J/www. mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/11531501.htm

ebay cafe

[Anonymous Coward]

Do eBay employees have to place bids for their meals?

Re:ebay cafe

[victor_the_cleaner]

But $23,000 for a Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese is a bit steep.

Re:ebay cafe

[Cylix]

The problem with eBay cafeteria...

The lunch lady is using her alternate account to pump of the bid price.

Re:ebay cafe

[duffer_01]

Yes, but if you leave negative feedback you get a fly in your soup.

The Cafeterias...

[10101001011]

...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.

Re:The Cafeterias...

[dawnread]

I'm guessing either

a) Massage Parlor doesn't mean the same in American as it does in English

or

b) You worked for the greatest company on earth

"I'm just going to the massage parlour to work on this *problem* (nods downward)"

Re:The Cafeterias...

[10101001011]

Given your signature, I think it might just be you but...

A Massage Parlor is literally what it is: a place ot get massages. Shiatsu was the only one I knwo for certain they gave, but I only came in just as they were closing up shop.

However, the parlor you are thinking about probably exists at Google. Now you don't ever have to leave the office.

Re:The Cafeterias...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean your company doesn't offer complimentarly handjobs? Jeezus, dude, get a new job. A topflight Gentoo system admin like most slashdotters deserves better.

Re:The Cafeterias...

[10101001011]

Oh! So that's why the hotel staff looked shocked when I ask the female attendant where I could find a massage parlor!

Surely I jest.... Or do I?

Re:The Cafeterias...

[HMarieY]

Not sure why the above was marked Troll. I find what was said very insightful. In fact we saw the same thing happen at the company where my husband works, though it is still around having survived the dot.com bubble. I suspect that many /.ers have observed similar trends.

During the bubble, where my husband works, money was thrown around quite a bit and though they didn't have a cafeteria often the bosses would take the employees (there were two bosses and six employees) out to the most exclusive restaraunts in the area, more than once inviting employee families including about ten children. Other times they would order in take-out, also from high end places. As the dot.com bubble popped and the company stock dropped lunch became the secretary picking up a buy-your-own lunch at the local Burger King and my husband started brown bagging it.

If these companies have the money to spend on food and a fancy cafeteria then they probably are doing pretty well, though sometimes it is just a front and the spending is out of line.

Re:The Cafeterias...

[still cynical]

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.

When they came for the soda, I did nothing because I wasn't a soda. When they came for the coffee, I did nothing because I wasn't a coffee. When they came for the water cups, I did nothing because I wasn't a water cup. And when they came for me, there was no one to help me because they were all down at the local 7-11 getting something to drink.

Re:The Cafeterias...

[MKalus]

When I was working at RIM back in 2002 before they had their layoffs (purely cosmetic, they pretty much hired the same amount of people back 12 months later, but at that point in time it was "necessary") they also started with taking away the free drinks, the coffee etc.

Of course when that started happeneing we all knew what was coming, though quite a few were in denial until they got walked out of the door.

Re:The Cafeterias...

[drsquare]

When you're a Gentoo user, you have to give yourself handjobs.

Re:The Cafeterias...

[TechnoPops]

If you're geeky enough to use Gentoo, isn't it a given that you would already be doing that?

(Hey, it's a joke. Laugh.)

Re:The Cafeterias...

[MKalus]

Oh, haven't heard that one before.....

Re:The Cafeterias...

[fingerfucker]

I was working at RIM back in 2002 before they had their layoffs (purely cosmetic, they pretty much hired the same amount of people back 12 months later, but at that point in time it was "necessary")

"Purely cosmetic"? Don't kid yourself. Realize the fact that when things start shaking just a tiny bit, you were the one in the first wave of layoffs. Having your name spring to the mind of your boss as the first thing when layoffs are looming is a pretty pathetic thing to even admit to.

Re:The Cafeterias...

[MKalus]

Right, because they went through the list of who made the most money in each department. There were guys let go that had worked at the company since day 1.

Don't kidd yourself, layoffs are hardly "personal".

Silicon Valley

[Anonymous Coward]

Silicon Valley sucks for lunch. Seriously, it takes about 90 minutes to fight through noontime trafficjams and get to a deli for a sandwitch and then back to work. The glories of these cafaterias are just a testament to what a stinking suburban anal shithole the whole place is. Yaaah, you get a free/cheap lunch, but you also get the pleasure of staying in your cube for 9 hours straight. Say hey for wage slavery.

Re:Silicon Valley

[bat'ka makhno]

It sounds like you're being paid by the hour. More power to you.

For the majority of IT workers who aren't, the hourly wage effectively diminishes the longer they work. From that point of view, one might indeed wonder whether free meals at the cafeteria truly compensate for an extended workday.

As for the slavery comment, it might be a bit hyperbolic, but it does capture the essence of a worker's relationship to the company. Leaving isn't really an option when you have a family to support or when the local economy is tanking. It's not a particularly flexible situation, unless you were born rich or have exceptional life circumstances, such as being in your twenties.

Re:Silicon Valley

[maw]

Total agreement - that's one reason working in the suburbs sucks. Almost nothing good to eat, and what little there is is too far. Before my employer was bought by a behemouth, my biggest fear was that we'd be bought and moved to the suburbs.

(We were bought eventually, and moved from Boston to Kendall Square, which is as suburbian and sterile and boring as you can get while being in the city, but it could have been a lot worse.)

The other bad thing about working in the burbs is that you need a car.

Re:Silicon Valley

[zorander]

I'd take the workload of two (or more) for the pay of one if I ran the company. It would be nice to get rich, but that's hardly my goal. Your comment 'I remember when I had hopes and dreams.' is at least a little bit patronizing. I'm not sure anyone successfully started a business without hopes, dreams, and a little bit of self-delusion. You have to believe in your idea to the point where you're listening to the idea more than you're creating it. Just about everything I do, I do with the purpose of coming closer to that goal.

More importantly though--among peers who are IT people, almost no one is thinking the way I am. Many of them see getting a good job as an end. I look at a good job as a means to create my own job with.

Perhaps, like you, I will someday lose the drive I have now and become a cynic. Fortunately, I have youthful naivete to fall back on for at least a few more years.

Re:Silicon Valley

[Watts Martin]

From where I work at Cisco, I'm within five minutes' drive of two shopping centers with restaurants, one Asian mall, and a collection of restaurants in Milpitas. It's only another ten minutes to get to a good chunk of San Jose, Fremont or Santa Clara. Obviously every fast food and sandwich shop chain exists within that radius, but so does everything from taquerias to burger dives to good sushi to the occasional "five star" restaurant like Parcel 104. (And, yes, I do actually eat at Cisco's cafe, which is pretty good.)

I've also worked in south San Jose, and earlier on the outskirts of Menlo Park, where that ten-minute radius included Palo Alto, Woodside and Redwood City. The range of lunch choices there was phenomenal--noodle houses to classic diners and great rather than merely good sushi.

I'm sorry your experiences have made you such a bitter, bitter guy, but if you're taking 45 minutes one way to get to a deli sandwich, either you don't work anywhere near Silicon Valley or you're refusing to eat anywhere but the One True Deli, in which case: you're a really fucking picky eater for a wage slave, aren't you?

Re:Silicon Valley

[fupeg]

Right on. I'm in Sunnyvale, and there are tons of great places in Sunnyvale and Santa Clara within ten minutes of my office. I often have lunch with my wife and we're always able to go somewhere nice, eat a relaxing lunch, and be back in a reasonable amount of time. Of course it also helps that I, like many people in Silicon Valley, can take their lunch whenever they want and don't have a set time for it...

Re:Silicon Valley

[drsquare]

Er, make your own damn sandwich? What sort of lazy fucker sits in traffic for 90 minutes to save 2 minutes at home putting some stuff between some bread? I mean, Jesus. Imagine what'd happen if there was a nuclear holocaust, how would these fuckers survive in the post-apocalyptic world?

"Hey Jim, have you seen a Subway anywhere?"
"Yeah, just over there, but it razed to the ground during the apocalyptic war."
"Damnit, looks like I'm going to starve."
"But there's like fruit growing everywhere, and animals to eat."
"Yeah, like I'm going to eat fruit like some fucking commie. Damnit Jim this is America, I demand the right to never have to prepare my own food and be a big lazy fat bastard."

Re:Silicon Valley

[Walt Dismal]

None of this touches much on evening meals or breakfast.

Many of the places I've contracted at here serve a free evening meal. Some use Waiter.com, others have a dedicated caterer. Many Asian-dominated places like Marvell Semi had catered meals heavy on Chinese foods (they had excellent duck, but what the hell kind of vegetable is purple and looks and tastes like a lily stalk?). ESS's cafeteria offered a subsidized low-cost lunch consisting mainly by weight of rice, intended for their low-waged assembly-test worker serfs. Ghaaaah.

Places with big Indian staffs often have brought-in vegetarian/Indian food, and it's usually decent. Startups often had decent catered-in evening meals, while all the old-line companies had cafeterias but they close by the end of the day. Spotlights the difference between startups and 9-5 companies.

The worst and cheapest place I worked at recently was owned by a French company, and their strategy was to offer muffins in the morning. Since 7/8 of the staff was Indian, that went over like cheeseburgers in a sacred temple. Occasionally we got the left-overs from sandwich party trays when they had visiting dignitaries. The sandwich scraps vanished as soon as the low-paid Indian coders discovered their presence.

Re:Silicon Valley

[mwigmani]

Ugh, I used to work in North Station and now I work in fucking Needham... good times.

Yahooo! Company Perks!

[PocketPick]

Who cares if their working me 14 hours a day without overtime and I haven't seen my family in 3 months. With perks like a nice cafeteria, it's all worth it.

Sad thing is that most people probably have to use that cafeteria for breakfast, lunch and dinner since may comapnies that provide such things also mandate a 50 hr work week minimum. Don't know about anybody else, but I'd trade those benefits anyday for good pay and a chance to be out after 7 1/2 to 8 hrs.

Re:Yahooo! Company Perks!

[Tibe]

"...comapnies that provide such things also mandate a 50 hr work week minimum."

Could you provide evidence of this? I don't really doubt it, but you didn't quote anything.

Re:Yahooo! Company Perks!

[PocketPick]

Sure. I should of given one earlier.

Here is a small reference to the 50 hour work week. From my experience however, I've come to know that companies set that as the minimum, with patches where you may work much longer hours (usually around the tail-end of a release of a product or software application). At that time (which can last for as long as two months), you may easily clock in 12 hrs a day for 5 days a week. Given that these are usually salaried positions, overtime is almost never offered.

Re:Yahooo! Company Perks!

[bleckywelcky]

I worked at a place in the south bay area ... "battleship gray" and "maybe a notch above hospital and school cafeterias" pretty much describes it (except that should be a notch __below__). I once asked for a meatball sandwich, and the guy took some round balls he found lying on top of the fridge from a couple days ago, plunked them in the deep fryer, and slapped on a piece of provolone. I was terrified to eat that thing, but also starving. After I almost broke a tooth for the second or third time, I threw the last half of it in the garbage.

One of my coworkers said that Yahoo is around there somewhere though, and he visited it once before. Apparently they had excellent food, but it was subsidized by Yahoo. I wouldn't have minded paying full price just to have been sure that I wouldn't get sick from my lunch.

Not to mention that our cafeteria started closing down by 12:45 pm. So you better get your lunch early if you want anything at all.

I ended up packing my lunch in as often as possible.

I guess that's a tradeoff; we have some of the best benefits in our industry at least.

Re:Yahooo! Company Perks!

[beforewisdom]

All good points. It seems like an interesting job, with fair pay, fair hours, and stability seems to the holy grail of the programming job market. However, I am sure there are people who want to point out that you have work. Others will also want to say there are those outside of the Silicon Valley elite who often have days eating 3 meals at the office, but instead of the fancy cafeteria it is a choice of the 4 food groups: - chinese takeout - pizza - the candy machine - soda

What they forget to mention....

[mikael]

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.

Re:What they forget to mention....

[igb]

As an intermittent visitor to University Avenue, I
notice that you can get a table now rather more
easily than you could in 1998. And driving from
the hotel by Palo Alto Caltrain Station to Sun up
by the water takes about 20 minutes, as against
nigh-on an hour in the nineties. Gosh, I wonder
why that is? A few weeks ago I just turned up at
the sushi place opposite Palo Alto Cycles and got a
spot at the bar for two, just like that: it used to
be queues out of the door. The economy really
has tanked, I guess.

The great University Avenue shame is that you
can't get breakfast at The Good Earth anymore.

What I can't figure out the economic significance
of is that the Fresh Choice in the Stanford Shopping Centre
has closed down. I had to nip down to Mountain
View, opposite Tower Records, to get my unlimited
salad and bready-things fix.

ian

Re:Wow, slow news day.

[CrackedButter]

Tell me about it, I have a thought provoking story still pending from last friday. What annoys me most is there is no way of contacting the higher powers in order to find out what is going on. All the links posted go anywhere but their email address.

Why the hell was that flagged "Troll?"

[C10H14N2]

Sounds like some people are a little too bitter about losing those perqs that the mere mention of them or the reasons for their existence and subsequent removal sends them into a flagging tizzy.

Sheesh... Get a grip, people.

Saltpeter

[Senor_Programmer]

keeps those nerds from gettin restless come spring time.

Anyone know what that stuff is that's floating in the curry?

Re:Saltpeter

[willCode4Beer.com]

Its also a good way to keep them working instead of looking at pr0n all day.

They pay?

[mindaktiviti]

"Want navrattan korma with raita, chutney and naan? $5.29 at Cisco Systems."

Wouldn't you supply your employees with free food? My cousin works for a Vancouver game company and they can just request whatever they want to be stocked in the fridge for free (on their company intranet forum). Also he works quite the number of hours (then again, doesn't any video game employee?) and I see the free food, huge tvs & couches, X-Boxes, pool tables etc as really a necessity because the employees stay there for so long.

So do you want to work at a company because it has a fantastic cafe? Well I'm sure you do but it also says something about the number of hours you'll be spending at that work. I guess I shouldn't be bashing this because it is great but I also wouldn't want to be making $10 / hour if you calculated how much I *really* worked at my company.

"``There are people here all hours of the night,'' said Tom Porter, senior director of corporate services. ``This gives them a chance to see their kids before they go to bed.''"

Funny, I read this is "This gives them a chance to see their kids before they go to bed [so that they can get back to their slave labour for their 2nd shift of the their 7 day / 120 hour week.]

Re:They pay?

[Momoru]

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.

Re:They pay?

[fm6]

Wouldn't you supply your employees with free food?

Depends on the employees. If you mostly employee geeks who work on salary and whose lives begin and end with technology, then yeah, you can certainly squeeze some extra work out of them by keeping them onsite with free meals and other such services. But I have to wonder how healthy this work-is-life philosophy is in the long run.

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.

Re:They pay?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

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.

Well duh - you just chopped out a major benefit. At $500k/mo if you are serving 2500 employees, then that works out to $200/head. How much are they making? If it's anywhere near $100k (Sill Vally and all), then that's chickenshit compared their salaries and the cost of increased turnover that losing it will cost.

Free cafeterias may look like a waste of time, but it's worth it if you get top talent with it.

Re:They pay?

[plopez]

IIRC, it would be a benefit and then the IRS would demand payroll taxes. Easier on the accounting if the employees pay.

Re:They pay?

[shufler]

But I have to wonder how healthy this work-is-life philosophy is in the long run.

If you own your own business, chances are work is your life, and better still -- you're working in a field you enjoy. There's no reason not to love working if the work you do is something you actually enjoy doing.

I think free meals (and quality, proper nutritious meals at that) are a very excellent idea. I work from home, so I can prepare good meals any hour of the day I want. When I worked for other people, this was out of the question, not to mention logistically difficult to do (ever tried cooking a steak in a microwave?).

Another benefit of having a cafeteria with good food -- you don't spend as long driving around at lunch looking for somewhere to eat. You can take a shorter lunch, and then leave earlier (provided your bosses allow this).

People have pointed out that when the time comes, things like free food would be the first item to be cut from the budget, but that's stupid. Remember, food is what fuels us. Without food, we die. With poor nutrition, we don't perform to the best of our abilities. It's in a company's best interest to make sure their employees have good health. Obviously management isn't the employee's mother -- they can't force someone to eat what they say, but it seems very reasonable for them to provide the potential for their employees to be fed good food.

Re:They pay?

[Alpha_Traveller]

Dude. "Want navrattan korma with raita, chutney and naan? $5.29 at Cisco Systems."????

What are you whining about free food for?

In Northern Virginia's "Silicon Valley East" This same food costs at minimum $10, and average, $14. For LUNCH.

They clearly subsidize the food there, so don't be all complaining about it not being for free, that's a deal any which way you cut it as is.

Ummm.. No...

[Stone316]

I worked at Nortel for 4 years just before the big crash. While the cafeterias were subsidised (so I hear) the food wasn't free... It was still cheaper to bag your own lunch or bring in a frozen dinner.

Saying that, there was free food at Nortel. Every second friday they had a TGIF which was all you can eat finger foods (wings, etc), beer, drinks, cookies, ice cream.... Man, I used to love those. We also had alot of working lunches or kick off parties with food.

Maybe you were in another country but up in Ottawa, Canada I worked in 5 different buildings in 4 years and visited quite a few of the others.

Re:Ummm.. No...

[eric76]

In the early 70s, one software company in Pennsylvania (they sold an accounting systems for PDP-11s running RSTS/E) had a weekly Friday afternoon keg party paid for by the company.

If you called them on Friday afternoon, someone would answer, but you could never get the person you wanted.

Re:erm..

[hitmark]

even nerds have to eat, and many nerds in the IT world dreams about working in silicon valley. therefor its nice to know where to apply for work and get the kind of food you like ;)

The Executive Lunch room

[goneutt]

Where they dine on the souls of that they've sucked out of the employees, feast on the marrow of the bones that they've been worked down to, and maybe a baby or two that's wondered out of the daycare center.

GET IN MAH BELLY

Re:1300 calories?

[che.kai-jei]

conventionally in everyday speech a 'calorie' actually refers to a kilocalaorie.
i odnt think this guy wporks for hardee's but is making light of the guys dietary habits and the sheer unhelathyness of that burger.

hence "or two but you might pass out"

Re:1300 calories?

[agraupe]

I think this is a discrepancy between metric and imperial, where the Calorie is a different unit of measurement. I'm not sure on this though, so don't hold me to it.

Google's Strategy

[nxtr]

Apparently, you need invites to go their cafeteria.

Re:Google's Strategy

[operagost]

And your first two billion bites are free.

Re:Google's Strategy

[MuMart]

I've heard it's not the only thing in that cafeteria that's viral...

Re:Google's Strategy

[natrius]

Also, their cafeteria is still in beta.

Re:Google's Strategy

[EvilStein]

You do, actually. 2 guests per month. I was reading the article about it in the newspaper this morning. :)

Re:Google's Strategy

[x-caiver]

Yea, the integration of their head chef with their dining facility is still in Beta - they want to keep traffic low while they continue testing. If you check on eBay you could probably find someone selling one of their spare invites, and after you've eaten there a few times you could make your money back selling yours!

Bagging it yourself?

[Gleepy]

And whatever happened to the good ol' days of bringing in your own lunch? I do that at the small place I'm at, and my time and money spent is minimal.

Re:Bagging it yourself?

[mikael]

Well, you can, but then the cafe loses the incentive to provide tables for everyone.

It's much better for team morale for everyone to be able to meet together for lunch each day. But only if there is one table large enough for the whole team (circular tables are best), otherwise all sorts of unpleasant "them and us" seniority mentalities start to creep in if employees have to choose which table to sit at.

Re:Bagging it yourself?

[drsquare]

Well, you can, but then the cafe loses the incentive to provide tables for everyone.

Er, how about for giving people somewhere to actually eat their dinner? I can't imagine having to eat my dinner on the filthy shop floor, although on occasion I have had to do that when the takeaway's arrived when I'm not on a break. It's pretty annoying to try to do constant manual labour whilst simultaneously eating a sloppy donner kebab.

Re:Bagging it yourself?

[rsadelle]

I do that too, and I find that I get the extra bonus of my coworkers (a) admiring my space age plastic containers and (b) commenting on how healthy I eat.

Re:1300 calories?

[deadsquid]

Nah, the AC is just being a prick, but they are correct. The correct unit of measurement used when talking about nutrition is kilocalories, but it's become commonplace to drop the "kilo". Wikipedia explains it nicely.

Re:1300 calories?

[Daengbo]

When dropping the "kilo," it is correct to capitalize "Calorie." This is accepted and correct. a "Calorie" is a measurement for food and a "calorie" is for science. Now, food science...?

Re:erm..

[TedCheshireAcad]

But the food is still in beta, and has been for some time. Would you trust it?

Google sez..

[Froe]

the largest coffee market in the united states: research perspectives

Google Talk id 159

Google Menu

[bdude]

Here you can find a sample of the google menu: http://googlemenus.blogspot.com/

lunch in the financial district

[maaw]

My friends that work in the financial district in san francisco have a pretty nice perk at their office. It is a huge hassle to go out for lunch there, so everyday around 10:30 someone goes around and takes orders for lunch, comes back around noonish with everyones food, the company pays for it and there are no real restrictions on whats ordered. They do a different restraunt/take out place everyday so it doesnt get boring. My buddy went from eating rice with mini hotdogs to seared ahi salads.

What???

[advocate_one]

your lunchbreaks are long enough for you to actually leave your desks???

cafeteria prices

[rtphokie]

What is interesting about cafeterias is how much they vary from site to site. The selection is much better in the bay area than the same company's cafeterias in other techie locations (e.g. RTP, Richardson, Boston, DC, Ottawa, etc).
Prices are generally better in the Bay Area locations too.

Anyone who has spent much time in and around San Jose understands why so much attention is paid to the cafeterias, there just aren't that many places to go out, those places are generally mobbed at lunch and getting there and back in a reasonable amount of time is tough. Either companies invest in cafeterias or they risk loosing a sizeable portion of their workforce for a couple hours a day.

For example, the Cisco campus stretches for miles down Tasman Drive yet only a couple of very small places and a lone Carls Jr. can be found there. There is a concentration of quick casual and fast food restaurants at McCarthy Ranch but they are filled. The InNOut Burger's drive through often snakes through the parking lot.

Re:cafeteria prices

[Pollardito]

you'd think that some of the fastfood chains would pick up on this. there's almost as many fastfood joints as there are people in most cities, and they've got to be forcefeeding people to make any profit, but this sounds like a lot of dollars going unserviced.

Re:cafeteria prices

[uncqual]

In this area maybe the market doesn't support very many fast food places due to what's likely to be poor traffic in the evening, weekends, and even mornings. I.e., being very busy from 11:30 to 13:30 every weekday (10 hours a week) and having little business the rest of the time may not be very attractive.

Re:cafeteria prices

[Triones]

Actually, cisco has the best location in bay area (in terms of restaurants)!!!
For god's sake, it's next to the milpitas square!

Re:cafeteria prices

[heck]

> The InNOut Burger's drive through often snakes through the parking lot

Please let the rest of us know where there are InNOuts where the drive thru does not snake through the parking lot at lunch time. We want directions, latitude, longitude, whatever. Pictures would be nice, too - 'cause I don't believe one exists.

Re:cafeteria prices

[rtphokie]

Really hard to turn a profit when real estate prices are so high too. With the average customer spending somewhere around $5, you've got to push a lot of people through in a day to break even.

Re:Wow, they have lunch in California?

[__aaclcg7560]

The chili is good. Just watch out if someone gives you the finger instead.

State of PA Government food

[astrojetsonjr]

You don't need to go to the left coast to eat, you can just VisitPA (tm) in Harrisburg and eat in their cafeterias. Breakfast is the best with almost any dish you can think of. But the government is no slouch when it comes to lunch. Pork chops, pasta lots of different ways, giant salad bars.

Of course since your government servants are underpaid, the cafeteria get financial support, your tax dollars in action!

Re:State of PA Government food

[astrojetsonjr]

Sure is, how else do you want to induce that afternoon food coma?

Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparantly, the article didn't show the Microsoft meals because they had too many bugs.

Google

[Anne_Nonymous]

> Google: "hamburger+cheese+bacon+ketchup-mayo" fries "large orange drink"

> Did you mean: "tofu+veggies" "mineral water"

Re:1300 calories?

[coats]

Adult male consumes about 2000 kilocalories a day.

WAY low: maybe 2500 for 5'8" "sedentary" (depends a lot on body size; lots more for 6'5" than 5'5" -- law of cubes), more for "active", and a lot more for very active.

When I was in graduate school, and an active fencing competitor, summers were "endurance training" time. I'd eat 6000+ calories a day, and wind up the summer 15 pounds lighter in September than I was in May (some of that loss will have been leg-muscle bulk, however).

Another company...

[USCG]

nVidia (at least the QA folk) also has very long work schedules...at least with the QA department anyway, so I won't make assumptions on non-QA positions there. An employee I know describes it to me as "crazy hours."

No thanks, I'll keep my medium pay scale job (about $54K) with 8 hour work days over high pay (she makes just over $67K there) with 12+ hour work days with in-house company perks anytime....

Re:Another company...

[eXzite]

$67K? At NVIDIA? I always heard they had really high salaries (like 80K+)? Of course I also hear that they demand your soul. It seems like you could make $67K at a significantly less soul-demanding company in Silicon Valley.

Re:The alternative

[PocketPick]

You've misinterpreted my post. I'm not complaining about 50 hours a week. I'm complaining about 50 hours a week minimum, and the phases a company will put your through where you'll work upwards of 80 hours. I happpen to have a software development position where I am only required to work 40 hours a week, and I never take it granted, given that I know others who break thier backs for thier employers.

In all honesty, if a guy in India wants that job badly, then let him have it. The only true karma would be him falling over dead from work exhaustion because of the hours he put in for a promised extra day of vacation.

Apple

[Qwerpafw]

Apple's cafeteria is, in fact, really really nice.

They have sushi, pizza, delicious salads, and lots of other incredibly yummy stuff. Ive and a bunch of other apple brass eat there all the time.

Re:Apple

[i_c_andrade]

Agreed, the few times I was able to eat at the mothership the cafeteria there was amazing. So many options to choose from and great quality of food.

Re:Apple

[wintermute1000]

Definitely. A family friend gave me a tour of Apple when I was younger and I was sold on the place from lunch onward. Very, very impressive cafeteria. I was one of those kids who wasn't sure I wanted to go into CS, but was sure I wanted to go into an industry where I could work someplace with a better cafeteria than my middle school.

But Apple ignored my internship applications for this summer, whereas Google offered me a position. So, I guess I'll be basking in the glory of the top rated caf in the region.

Out For Lunch == More Productive Employee

[$criptah]

The office that my company rents is located in a nice building with a nice cafeteria that aims to please everybody from earth loving hippies to guys that eat meatballs for dessert. However, whenever I have a chance I either bring my own lunch and eat it at my desk OR go somewhere far away from the office.

I have one hour for lunch. My office is the LAST fucking place on earth where I would want to spend it. Okay, I can think of worse places, but you get the point. I work with a number of certain people every day. I meet the same faces and talk about the same old things. Why not get out? I tend to overpay for my lunch because I like a nice Japanese restaurant two blocks away from my office. So what? I get to relax and forget about the job. Hell, I'd argue that having lunch away from the office makes me more productive because I come back with a fresh state of mind.

Re:Out For Lunch == More Productive Employee

[bleckywelcky]

Well, on one hand you have the 1 hour lunch where you can split up your day, so that the morning feels separate from the afternoon. And you are refreshed when you come back.

But on the other hand, you have the lunch at your desk, so that you can continue working and leave 1 hour earlier every day. That means missing the rush hour, getting home earlier than normal, enjoying a longer evening. Or that means you don't leave earlier, but rack up 4 extra hours M/T/W/Th so that you can leave 4 hours early on Friday.

I guess this is all flex time though, if you are required to be there from 8 till 5 and your lunch break is mandatory, then yes, I agree with you, get the hell away from it all when you can.

free lunch guilt

[denidoom]

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.

Re:free lunch guilt

[chialea]

> There were even free tampons in the ladies bathroom.

I read a book (can't remember which one, sorry), in which it was claimed that some female exec used this as a way to decide which companies to buy from -- if they didn't have sanitary supplies, they were probably going to go down the tubes fast and leave her company in the lurch.

I can see her point on this one. Having, at least, emergency supplies of sanitary suppies isn't that expensive (especially as techie companies lean heavily towards men, and most women will prefer to use their own brand). If there isn't an emergency supply, every once in a while you will lose someone for at least half a day, as she'll have to go home and change. It seems a bad tradeoff, something that would be made by a desperate company.

Lea

Re:free lunch guilt

[bleckywelcky]

But how much does it really cost? If you are buying soda on a bulk basis for your employees, you can get it pretty cheap. Let's say you have 1000 employees, and you have enough for everyone to get 3 sodas a day (you really shouldn't drink that much anyhow). That's 3000 sodas a day, at probably $0.20 per soda (or less) in bulk (I'm thinking a 12 ounce can). That's $600 per day, $3000 per week, $150 000 per year. Might seem like a lot right now, but considering that the company spends at least $100k per year on each employee, probably more ($60k average salary, another $40k on infrastructure and benefits) ... it's not that much. That's $100 000 000 spent on employees. The $150k is only 0.15% of their total employee expenses.

And I am sure you could cut the soda costs to 1/10th of that by dropping the individual serving cans in favor of bulk syrup, gas, and a dispensing machine.

In the end, it's just managers looking to cut whatever they possibly can. They don't look at the significance of the cuts. Instead of spending 2 weeks deciding to cut the soda, and formulating a plan for cutting the soda, only to save the company 0.15%, why not spend those two weeks on improving company/department efficiency or cutting out redundant design steps, etc.

Re:free lunch guilt

[tuxette]

I read a book (can't remember which one, sorry), in which it was claimed that some female exec used this as a way to decide which companies to buy from -- if they didn't have sanitary supplies, they were probably going to go down the tubes fast and leave her company in the lurch.

It was in a Dilbert book but I don't remember which one. The Dilbert Principle I think, but I'm not sure...

Re:free lunch guilt

[Fulcrum of Evil]

We had free free sodas as well. There were even free tampons in the ladies bathroom.

I remember the free sodas. Hell, I still have the 15 lbs I got from them. Thankfully, there's a gym down the street where I can work on getting rid of the weight, but it, alas, is not free. I've also cut back my soda intake, so it's no longer really a perk.

Re:free lunch guilt

[drsquare]

Don't look at it in terms on total expense, look at it in terms of profit. Say for instance your margins are pretty thin, and your annual profits are $300,000. That $150,000 a year is 50% of your profits. Also I'm sure that average wages are not 60k, probably more like 20k. Also that's just the soda. Include the food, say 250 meals a year per employee, or 250,000 meals a year. If each meal costs you $5, that's $1.25 MILLION a year. Cutting out the meals gives you over a million dollars in raw profit.

If I became CEO of a corporation which gave free meals which cost a lot, the first thing I'd do is cut the meals, that's instant profit right there, what a way to start your job! If employees aren't expecting free meals, they won't complain if they don't get them.

They don't look at the significance of the cuts.

Significance? It's fucking fizzy drinks. At my workplace there's a fizzy drinks machine that's 45p a tin, I don't think it would provide much benefit to give tins away for free, people would probably just abuse it and drink until their teeth had rotten and they'd put on 20lbs of weight.

Instead of spending 2 weeks deciding to cut the soda, and formulating a plan for cutting the soda, only to save the company 0.15%, why not spend those two weeks on improving company/department efficiency or cutting out redundant design steps, etc.

Why not improve the efficiency, cut out redundant design steps, AND cut the soda? It doesn't take 2 weeks of solid work to say 'right no more free soda', it's take a single fucking memo.

Re:free lunch guilt

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Man, I'm in that boat now. Being told to hold off on server purchases while execs are going to Pebble Beach to play golf. What's the point of installin OpenOffice to save Microsoft Office installs when my execs are wasting money like this?

Re:free lunch guilt

[bleckywelcky]

Obviously you don't know what you're talking about, because you never look at expenses in terms of razor-thin profits. When you do that, you get ridiculous numbers like the 50% you quoted. What does it matter if a company that brings in $100.3 million a year on $100.15 million in expenses spends $0.15 million on soda? What people are going to look at is their profit margin in terms of their revenue and expenses. Only some bullshit PR kid would say "look, we increased our profits by 100% this year". Yeh, he looks like a hero at first, but then he looks like a fucking dumbass when some guy in the back of the room points out that he only did it by reducing expenses by 0.15% and keeping revenues the same.

And of course you can't provide free meals to your employees if your business is on the verge of net losses. I wasn't advocating that. If your business is extremely successful and you want to add that as a perk to make your employees happier, fine by me. However, that's not an excuse to have a horribly run cafeteria. The company doesn't normally sponsor the cafeteria anyway. They typically just provide the space in one of their buildings, and some other company comes in and takes on all of the expenses to prepare the food. As a result, they take all the profits too. Companies just need to give the contracts to better food services.

Significance?

My point wasn't that every work place should have free soda, it was that you don't keep a business afloat by cutting insignificant expenses. You keep a business afloat by gaining new customers, developing new ideas, and streamlining your processes.

Why not improve the efficiency, cut out redundant design steps, AND cut the soda? It doesn't take 2 weeks of solid work to say 'right no more free soda', it's take a single fucking memo.

You obviously haven't been around corporate culture long enough.

Re:free lunch guilt

[drsquare]

Only some bullshit PR kid would say "look, we increased our profits by 100% this year". Yeh, he looks like a hero at first, but then he looks like a fucking dumbass when some guy in the back of the room points out that he only did it by reducing expenses by 0.15% and keeping revenues the same.

Er, no, doubling profits is double profits. If your caterings eats up half of your profits, then offering free catering is a stupid fucking idea, and the bullshit PR kid is correct in saying that they doubled the profits. Cutting expenses is exactly the same as increasing revenue when it comes to profits. At the end of the day, the profit = gross revenue - costs, and you can cut either to increase the profits.

What does it matter if a company that brings in $100.3 million a year on $100.15 million in expenses spends $0.15 million on soda?

How many companies make that much money? Like 0.0001%? Most people work for very small companies which are struggling for survival, or making a steady, small profit. Free food would be a massive expense for them. I know this is slashdot, but in the real world, most companies are not like Google/ebay etc. with massive profits compared to low numbers of employees, meaning they can spend a lot of money per employee. Most companies don't know whether they'll exist in a few years. Most companies don't like a damn about their employees (like mine).

They typically just provide the space in one of their buildings, and some other company comes in and takes on all of the expenses to prepare the food.

That's what it was like at my company, but then they assimilated the catering so the dinnerladies became employees of the company. Nothing changes, prices and food were the same, but the bottles of milk are dirty and often leak. That's what happens when you get your milk from small local places rather than megacorporations: they're poor and small so the quality is lower.

My point wasn't that every work place should have free soda, it was that you don't keep a business afloat by cutting insignificant expenses.

Cutting costs goes a long way to keeping a business afloat, especially when your margins are small, as they are at many companies. No doubt you work for some mega-rich company so your perspective is skewed.

You obviously haven't been around corporate culture long enough.

I've been around it enough to know that management are pretty stubborn and once they decide something they wouldn't discuss it for 2 weeks they'd just do it, whether anyone liked it or not.

Note: I apologise in advance for the poor spelling, I'm rather drunk typing this.

Re:free lunch guilt

[identity0]

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.

Don't worry, it's not wasteful until you find free tampons in the *guys* bathroom...

Re:free lunch guilt

[bleckywelcky]

Ok, look, maybe you're a janitor at this company you speak of or something, because you have no fucking clue what you're talking about.

Er, no, doubling profits is double profits.

No, you are wrong. Doubling profits is not doubling profits. I'm sorry if you can't grasp what I was talking about, but I'm not going to explain it again.

How many companies make that much money?

It doesn't matter because the expenses scale with the size of the company. Don't like the numbers? Use 10 employees instead, all the factors will stay the same and the numbers will scale down. 3 sodas per day, 30 sodas. $0.20 per soda, $6 per day, $30 per week, $1500 per year. 10 * $80k per employee (less for a smaller company) = $800k per year, that's 0.19% of expenses.

And, actually, LOTS of companies make that much money. The smallest fortune 500 company makes over $3000 Million dollars a year. The smallest employing at least 50 000 employees. That's a minimum of 25 million employees among just those fortune 500 companies alone, probably closer to 75 or 100 million.

A company that makes $100 million a year is considered small to medium sized. There are 1000s of them all over the place.

How many companies make that much money?

Ok, for the third freaking time: cutting insignificant costs will only prolong your company's death. Capisca?

I'm not even looking at companies like Google. Google is a fluke in the system. But the same rules that govern these large companies work for smaller companies too.

And I forgot to reply to this from your past comment:

Also I'm sure that average wages are not 60k, probably more like 20k.

Maybe for Molly Maid, the house cleaning service company. We're talking professional companies here though. A 60k average salary is low when you're talking about seasoned engineers, designers, lawyers, mfgr labor, etc. Even with the low-dollar mail room people they hire, but even then, THEY still make 20k a year, so no way in hell the average would be 20k. It's quite obvious from this statement that you have no fucking clue what you are talking about.

And finally,

Cutting costs goes a long way to keeping a business afloat, especially when your margins are small, as they are at many companies. No doubt you work for some mega-rich company so your perspective is skewed.

I've worked on either end of the spectrum, both for a company that had less than $150k per year in revenues (basically me and another guy working together), and a company in the top 50 of the fortune 500, making over $30 Billion a year. The rules apply in both cases.

Re:free lunch guilt

[drsquare]

Doubling profits is not doubling profits.

So what is it then, trebling profits? Quadrupling them? Are you using some system of maths which I'm not aware of?

The smallest fortune 500 company makes over $3000 Million dollars a year.

And the fortune 500 represents the average business?

Ok, for the third freaking time: cutting insignificant costs will only prolong your company's death.

Either that, or allow it to survive past a point where it would otherwise have collapsed, allowing it to be successful later.

Maybe for Molly Maid, the house cleaning service company. We're talking professional companies here though.

We're talking AVERAGE companies here. Most people don't make 60k.

A 60k average salary is low when you're talking about seasoned engineers, designers, lawyers, mfgr labor, etc.

This isn't the dot-com bubble anymore, get used to a lower salary. Also a company has lots of smaller-wage workers, who do all the menial shit. You might not have noticed them from your ivory tower.

Even with the low-dollar mail room people they hire, but even then, THEY still make 20k a year, so no way in hell the average would be 20k.

It can be when you take into account all the lower-earning people on say 10k. It only takes 4 people on 10k for every elitist fuck on 60k to make an average of 20k.

Re:free lunch guilt

[bleckywelcky]

Ok, last response because I'm done wasting time talking to a brick wall...

And the fortune 500 represents the average business?

You were indicating in a previous response that there were hardly any companies making $100 million a year. I was showing that if there are at least 500 companies making over $3000 million a year, that there are 1000s of companies making over $100 million a year (which you seemed to indicate there were not). In fact, take a look at the fortune 1000 list - more proof that at least 1000 companies make at least $1000 million a year. I'm sorry if you are in denial, but there are 1000s upon 1000s of companies that make $100s of millions a year, all of which employ 100s of millions of people.

Either that, or allow it to survive past a point where it would otherwise have collapsed, allowing it to be successful later.

If you seriously think that cutting expenses by 0.15% will extend the life of the company enough to come up with a new business plan that will keep it afloat ... then all I can say is ... I'm thankful you don't manage the company I work for.

We're talking AVERAGE companies here. Most people don't make 60k.

Again, I showed you that there are 1000s of companies that employ 100s of millions of people that quite often deal in professional services or deal with specialized labors. And our original argument pertained to the professional workers/specialized laborers and their perks in the office environment. If you've got some monkey stocking shelves at the local Safeway, we don't care. Even then, the minimum wage is usually $10/hour ... that's $20k per year, the number you cited before. So if the lowest worker is making $20k per year, exactly how would that result in an average of $20k per year?

It can be when you take into account all the lower-earning people on say 10k. It only takes 4 people on 10k for every elitist fuck on 60k to make an average of 20k.

Yeh maybe for one or two cases like Walmart. But what about everyone else? You think Pfizer has 4 grunts for every 1 professional? You think Citibank has 4 grunts for every 1 professional? Pull your head out of your ass, sheesh. You may only ever see the grunts in your daily life, but behind the scenes are millions of professionals making the company run.

I'm done, have a nice life.

Re:free lunch guilt

[denidoom]

I don't think I wuold reject working at a company due to lack of femenine products but you and she are right that if they couldn't afford that considering the minimal usage that doesn't say good things for them. I think the worst for me is to have something like that or other freebies and then have it taken away. Then the lack seems more acute.

Re:free lunch guilt

[denidoom]

well thankfully water is still free... or is it ; >

Re:free lunch guilt

[denidoom]

I've experienced that before. I convinced the lass corp that I worked for to try using an open source content management system. They agreed, but then the corporate "Voice of God" (who lives in NY) issued a memo dictating we would use the "corporate hosting service" just because they had a acquired one. Along with the rigid templates and managed CMS it came with :/ Meanwhile, the exects are shopping at town square and gone for hours on end and can't even use Office's most simple features. They just get paid to look good and talk on the phone I guess.

Re:free lunch guilt

[denidoom]

oh but levity in the corporate world is priceless :)

Re:erm..

[jxyama]

Grumpy, grumpy... It's Sunday. Loosen up.

As someone recently started working at an IT company (but not in the Valley), I found the article/discussions very interesting.

Re:1300 calories?

[MKalus]

Umm no.

It depends on the amount of muscle mass you have, your overall activity level (as this influences your resting metabolic rate) and your age.

2000kCal for the average couch dweller sounds about right, of course on top of that you have to add your physical activity, but if that involves getting out of your chair, walking to the car, driving home and sitting in front of the TV or Computer you can easily live with less than 3000kCal/day.

Anal

[drooling-dog]

anal shithole

-1, Redundant?

Re:1300 calories?

[iamacat]

Dude, starving yourself will just push your metabolism down and encourage you to continue being sedentary and overweight. I bet you have cold hands and feel dizzy for most of the day. Get an iPod with star trek audiobooks and walk or jog for half an hour in the morning fast enough to breeze rapidly but not so quickly to get wasted and discouraged. Now reward yourself by eating a nice breakfast with eggs and sausage. Exercise and energy boost will make you feel warm for the rest of the day, burning lots of thermal energy. On the other hand, you probably won't be very hungry for lunch, so you get eat something light and with lots of vitamins. Do they have a Fresh Choice in your area?

Stay away from fat-free foods. They have lots of sugar that your liver will quickly convert into cholesterol and you will feel hungry again. The best bet is eating some fish in a Japanese or Chinese restaurant - a) it has unsaturated fat which cleans your blood vessels, b) fish doesn't have fattening growth hormones like non-organic beef or chicken and c) you will not get hungry soon and eat unhealthy "fat-free" snacks.

Cooking dinner at home would really do wonders. Restaurants tend to use the cheapest components and cook food for best taste and fastest cooking speed, not the most healthy dish. But I guess your milage may vary and it's possible to find relatively healthy restaurants.

Stupid Karma Whore

[fm6]

I've never known the Mercury servers to be Slashdotted. This post isn't "informative" --it's just a pain.

Eat to live/Live to eat?

[klui]

I eat to live. In this day and age of corporate mongering by upper level execs (some exceptions noted: Xilinx among a few), I would voice agreement with Michael Rubin in the article: "I'd rather see the money in my paycheck."

Rather than registration...

[jpardey]

I know there are ways to bypass registration, or one could just register, but that is a lot more painful than this post. Grandparent deserves the karma.

Re:Rather than registration...

[fm6]

Silly me. I forgot that some people would rather sell their mothers to the slavers than register at a web site.

It only looks good in comparison

[2TecTom]

to how bad it is everywhere else. Indeed:

Most companies are despotic tyrannies.
Most companies cheat their employees.
Most companies use their employees.
Most companies are irresponsible employers.
Most companies act unethically.

IMHO, employment sucks, no shares means you're a serf.

I've seen it time and time again; companies put the interests of the few at the top, ahead of everyone else's. Please, don't say it's their right. No one has the right to be abusive, evil, irresponsible, greedy or stupid.

Oh, and yes they are all stupid. It's stupid to believe that the bottom line, i.e. personal financial gain is more important than ethical behavior. Furthermore, it's simply monetary fundamentalism to believe that more money necessarily equates to a better life. In fact, too much money is like too much sugar. Just try living off of candy cane for a while and you'll soon see that eating the pure condensed essence of sweetness is hardly the way to satisfy a good appetite. In truth, America is simply rotting away from the decay of excess.

I've asked this before and I'll ask it again; if democracy is so grand, why aren't more companies democratic?

Re:It only looks good in comparison

[korbin_dallas]

Holy Farking sh(t!

At least where you are they call you 'employees'.

Dang, here we are just 'resources'.

And people wonder WTF is wrong with America?

spoiled

[weavermatic]

I work at the Starbucks headquarters in Seattle, and I just bring a single sandwhich to work with me every day for lunch. Suits me just fine. I'm done eating quick enough I can spend my lunch hour on more productive things, like fuseball or taking a nap.

So True

[lullabud]

What you say is true. You also forgot to mention that parking the car after your lunch-time commute can be an incredibly aggrivating experience. Nothing like driving around a parking lot in circles after being stuck in an office all morning to drive you mad. It frustrates me so much that I usually just go into work late (nobody complains when you show up if you stay until midnight once in a while) and then take a late lunch, after everything has died down. The problem with that though is sometimes the food isn't as good. But hey, at 2pm traffic isn't bad and parking is easy!

Re:So True

[mikael]

That's true - while I didn't drive to work, we would have to zig-zag through the car-park trying to find a space. Oakland was reputed to be toughes t place to find a parking space as the city council had legislated that each office block should have 10% less parking spaces than there were employees. This was supposed to reduce congestion by forcing people to use public transit, but the effect was to encourage a parking space deathmatch as everyone tried to get in as early as possible.

There was one occasion our team were going out to celebrate someone's Birthday. Our mission was to get to a restaurant in Menlo Park.

Getting into downtown Menlo Park wasn't too bad, but trying to find a parking space was even harder. We would get to the front of the traffic lights, just as the lights turned red, and see an empty space open up. By the time the lights changed to green, the space was taken again. That happened several times. We went to another car park, and saw some empty spaces. Unfortunately, the entrance was blocked by some ditzy lady from LA who was looking at her map trying to find the way to SF airport. She eventually found her way out of the car park and we managed to find a space. When everyone else managed to arrive at the table, they all had their own stories to tell.
Parking at the office wasn't too bad, as we had been relocated to a smaller block away from the main campus, but following concerns from local residents a mile down the road, it was made illegal to make a right turn from our car park exit onto the local access road, even though the exit formed a T junction with the street.

Although the situation isn't much better in the UK. After working in the Bay Area, many of the British roads seem to be like a go-kart racing track, except that there is a speed restriction of 15 miles/hour.

Re:So True

[mikael]

What is this American obsession with eating out? Round here people usually just eat the canteen swill or bring sandwiches.


Because of the combination of several reasons:

(1) The majority of companies in the Bay Area don't have catering facilities. Property speculators built office blocks without any consideration for dining facilities. And the cost of high rent prohibits new restaurants from opening.

If you have a corporate campus with 3000 employees, you need a dining room of equivalent size.

After a few weeks, eating sandwiches (or even a fixed weekly menu) become tedious and monotonous. So employees are desperate for variety.

(2) Employees are often required to work long hours in office buildings where having a window is considered a luxury. Consequently, lunchtime is the only time during the day that they can go outside and see sunlight. Especially during Winter.

(3) There are very few if any public bars in the West coast, and the few that exist are mainly used by truckers or Mexican farm workers. And since everyone has to drive to get anywhere, drinking alcohol while driving or even at work is a strict no-no, particularly for government contractors.

(4) Because senior employees have families, they are unable to attend social events during the evenings.

The result of all these factors, is that eating out at a restaurant at lunchtime in Silicon Valley takes on a near religious significance.

Much the same as going out drinking at the local pub with your workmates on a Friday lunchtime or evening has in the UK or on the East coast.

Re:So True

[drsquare]

After a few weeks, eating sandwiches (or even a fixed weekly menu) become tedious and monotonous. So employees are desperate for variety.

Yet people at most workplaces don't have this problem, they eat sandwiches for years and years, it just becomes routine. Perhaps Americans are too focussed on food as a source of entertainment.

Employees are often required to work long hours in office buildings where having a window is considered a luxury. Consequently, lunchtime is the only time during the day that they can go outside and see sunlight

I dunno, I work in a factory with no daylight, and long night-shifts, but peopel don't go out to eat, they just eat in the canteen like they always do.

I think Americans just like eating too much. They like eating large, hot greasy meals, so sandwiches/fruit doesn't cut it, they need to go to the local restaurant for a giant meal.

Re:So True

[lullabud]

I worked in a Fab for 12 hour shifts over night and when no restaurants were open I'd go sit in my car and read or listen to music while I ate my lunch simply so I didn't have to be inside the building. When it was summer I would go walk around the campus and neighborhoods, even though it was the middle of the night. Frankly, a lot of people don't like being at work, and lunchtime is when you have a chance to get away. Now I work days in an office and I still dont' like being around at lunch, and it's not just me. Most of the people I work with are Chinese or Taiwanese people who are here on work visa's and they're usually not around at lunch time either. Neither are the few European's that we have on staff.

"Café" is not an american word and neither is "bistro". Noodle houses are not an american invention. Saying that it's only americans is ridiculous.

Re:So True

[mikael]

I dunno, I work in a factory with no daylight, and long night-shifts, but peopel don't go out to eat, they just eat in the canteen like they always do.

You have a canteen - so you have somewhere to eat. The reason food is so important to Americans (or rather Silicon Valley) is very few companies have good (if any) on-site canteens.

Most of the office blocks were built on the assumption that everyone would take a 10 minute drive and eat elsewhere. Which was a good idea until the area developed economically, and the 10 minute drive became a 30 minute drive, so employees end up spending more time driving that eating.

As the original article described, the large companies with the best cafe's/eateries/canteens are the most popular to work for. Especially since there are so many nationalities (Mexican, Chinese, Indian, European) that have to be pleased.

I think Americans just like eating too much. They like eating large, hot greasy meals, so sandwiches/fruit doesn't cut it, they need to go to the local restaurant for a giant meal.

Actually, given the choice at a large canteen, staff would choose healthy meals (fruits, salads, wheat based pasta), but without that choice they would be forced to eat wherever was available, and this usually meant those places with the large, hot, greasy meals (which were usually the cheapest).

There's no incentive for a restaurant to improve the nutritional quality of their meals if they are always fully booked.

A feeding company wins big time

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Let's say the lunch is worth $10 to the employee, but is given to the employee free. Even then the company makes a wad of cash out of this:

1)First up, this perk is factored in during remuneration negotiations:"We might pay the same as Company xxx, but we give you a free lunch worth $10 x 200 = $2k tax free."

2) Next, theres the saved time. Instead of leaving for an hour to eat out, lunch only takes 15 minutes: 45 minutes of your time is probably worth more than $10.3) The time you do spend eating is probably spent brainstorming/discussing a business related problem anyway. Even if you're discussing personal stuff you'd probably have talked about this during working hours anyway.

Essentially you get a meal, the company gets 1 hour of your time + is seen as a "nice company" because they give a perk.

Re:erm..

[drsquare]

How about a new Slashdot mod: Mindless Google Fanboy. It could apply to articles as well, so us sensible people could cut the crap and improve the average intelligence of slashdot content by removing the worthless Google-fawning.

Tomorrow's Story: "Google installs infra-red auto-flushing system in toilets. Aren't they great? I want to work there!"

open ....

[KillShill]

i prefer open source cafeterias.

wth is wrong with muffins?

[IndependentVik]

. . . their strategy was to offer muffins in the morning. Since 7/8 of the staff was Indian, that went over like cheeseburgers in a sacred temple.

wtf? What does being Indian having to do w/ liking muffins or not? Unless we're talking about some new, wacky veal muffins I've never heard about.
(note: I'm of Indian descent--the "Vik" in my nick is short for "Vikram")

Re:wth is wrong with muffins?

[Walt Dismal]

Hey, I'm not a racist, it was a comment based on observation at that particular place. Now that we have that on the table, how about some nice veal donuts to make peace?

Insightful? WTF?

[EvilStein]

I work right over near the Santa Clara Convention Center and I have absolutely no problem driving to any one of many many different eating establishments and getting lunch. I don't run into 90 minutes of traffic, either.

Then again, San Francisco thinks that it's part of the "Silicon Valley" so who knows, maybe that's what you're referring to.

I find that the Silicon Valley has an amazing variety of cuisine, corporate cafeterias included. ;)

Screw the cafeterias. BBQ!

[EvilStein]

My old roommate works right down the street from me, so we meet up in the middle and BBQ during lunch time.

So what if it's just a dirt lot under a Hwy 237 overpass? It's a great way to kill the lunch hour (or hour and a half..) and we grill up steaks or burgers or chicken.

The trick

[Atario]

The trick is to get to know what's nearby, so you have a stable of half-a-dozen places you know you can go without issue. Take some time during a few lunches to drive around more or less at random, noting what eateries there are around.

Beyond that, get your workplace used to you taking long lunches from day one. (I like to relax a bit, besides just eating.)

Re:1300 calories?

[BrowserCapsGuy]

Fish may have unsaturated fats, but the FDA recommends you eliminate a lot of commercially available fish from from your diet entirely because of toxic levels of mercury. This includes some of the most popular fish like tuna, swordfish, and grouper. http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/admehg.html http://www.local10.com/health/4431814/detail.html

Lots of choices at most 5 minutes away

[billstewart]

Anywhere I've worked in Silicon Valley had lots of choices within 5 minutes drive if there wasn't something in walking distance, and many office complexes have some basic sandwich shop if you're not in an office big enough to have a cafeteria. (That doesn't mean that there isn't a 90 minute wait in line at the deli at noon, of course :-) There may be only one choice nearby, which is boring, but there *is* usually one choice.

My previous office was a block away from a group of half a dozen lunch-oriented restaurants; my current location has a Korean company's cafeteria (which is great, because they've usually got something Korean in addition to the sandwiches/salad/grill.) My location before that had a deli in the office park (good falafel, ok greasy Chinese.) Our downtown San Jose location is downtown, so lots of choices within three block walk. Our downtown San Francisco office has dozens of places within three blocks.

High school cafeterias...

[kagelump]

I don't know about the big companies but..
in the high school cafeterias in the Valley here
every single item tastes about the same
and the cheapest item are fries (large basket for 1 dollar), and about everything else cost more than 2 dollars, and would be questionable whether it would fill you up or not
even cup of noodles are more expensive than fries (the type you buy for 25 cents at safeway)
thankfully, theres a subway within 6 minute walk of our school

True in parts, but exaggerated

[Archimboldo]

Granted, America is too materialistic, but you destroy your point, ironically, by "excess" (evil despotic tyrranies, employment sucks, ... etc.) I would venture that everyone has some materiality, some more than others. The problem with over-zealous critics is that they can be just as capable of evils when they burst on the scene in inflated self-righteousness. I'm not necessarily placing you in that category, but beg a little insight into human frailty - your own included. My travel through other countries indeed revealed less materialistic values, but it seems there is a growing tendency to imitate (even if secretly) some of our ugly traits.

Re:True in parts, but exaggerated

[2TecTom]

I really not exaggerating, you're simply mitigating, IMHO. Look, I understand it seems harsh, but that's really how it looks to me, and I might add, many others.

However, you're right about this just not being an American thing. This is a human thing, and to some degree, it's a problem everywhere. Corruption is endemic and pervasive. As much as many Americans have succumbed to greed and selfishness, there are many who have not and, indeed struggle against evil and exploitation. Do not get me wrong, I deeply admire and respect our America. However, I also greatly fear for her.

It is my duty to speak out, I take no pleasure in it.

Not quite...

[jpardey]

...but I would be happy to make her do the registration for me.

Re:WARNING: ANAL DOUCHERY DETECTED

[x-caiver]

AC if you don't mind I'd appreciate it if you stopped 'stalking' mey/. posts.
No douchery to see here, move along.

Google's sounds nice...

[meme_police]

...but nothing beats Dreamworks, and in general the tech companies still don't beat the movie and TV studios.

Re:WARNING: ANAL DOUCHERY DETECTED

[x-caiver]

Heh, okay I'll take that to mean that you don't plan on leaving me alone any time soon.

Re:WARNING: ANAL DOUCHERY DETECTED

[x-caiver]

Wow dude, that's rather sick. You may want to try talking to a counselor about your odd desires.

Re:WARNING: ANAL DOUCHERY DETECTED

[x-caiver]

I find it interesting that you feel sodomy is more deviant than hanging body parts on your wall. Seeking medical attention is definitely something you should consider.

Re:WARNING: ANAL DOUCHERY DETECTED

[x-caiver]

Yep, you're right. I'm highly afraid of homosexuals. Whenever you go out in public you run the risk of being sneezed on by a homosexual and then your life would be thrown own end since it is so contagious. That's it, clearly.