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Google Perks Are Great, But They All Mean Business
megazoid81 writes "While there have been complaints of late, Google was recently named the best place to work according to the widely read annual Forbes survey, in its first appearance on the list. The plethora of perks at Google does make you wonder though what kind of hours the company expects its employees to keep. In the context of Google's perks, a Knowledge@Wharton article explains that there are two kinds of workers: segmentors and integrators. Segmentors want to maintain a strict separation between work and home while integrators don't mind mixing the two. The piece posits that segmentors might actually mind too many perks at their workplace and find their commitment eroding. Does Google have a disproportionate number of integrators in its workforce? What kind of worker are you — segmentor or integrator?"
Can you integrate sleep and work? Or sleep and pleasure? Not very well. Same with work and pleasure. You need down time to throw everything away and see to your higher-order needs, or they will come up wanted (read: affect your work).
Clock out time, that's it. Turn the machine off, leave the building, and forget about it until 9am. If your business can't handle that, they obviously need more staff.
If I am doing the same work at the office that I could at home, I would like to do it at home. If the environment is nicer at my office with a more social atmosphere, then I would go to the office.
I don't see why us peons would care at any rate. Managers have already made up their minds on this issue beforehand.
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The division is easy, but too simplistic. I'm both: I do like to separate my work and my free time pretty cleanly. Because of that I actually appreciate my hour-long train commute as it creates a natural barrier and an external imposition to go to and from work at specified, reasonable hours.
At the same time I really, _really_ like my work, so I tend to mull things over on my off time, and idly reading up on background stuff I find interesting (and that incidentally is really helpful for work).
There is a real difference between wanting to be at work for long hours, and idly reflecting on interesting problems even when off duty.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
The only integration I'll ever do was in calculus class.
I am a segmentor all the way. My job is just a means to an end, and if I forget that then I will never achieve that end.
...En að Besta Sem Guð Hefur Skapað Er Nýr Dagur
There are two kinds of people: those who divide people into two groups, and those who don't.
This is the thing about programming in particular or creative engineering design in general. If you enjoy, or are into the work, it is very difficult to become a segmentor. Design and coding are very cerebral processes, and as it happens to me that I design and improve in my head whenever my brain finds a few free cycles. If I hit upon a good idea, I like to implement/try it immediately. Most of the better programmers/designers that I have seen do work in this mode. Hence having perks of this kind does help.
Most of the segmentors that I have seen end up in marketing or man-management at the end, even if they might have started in core engineering because of a simple reason they do not enjoy the process.
This of course is my opinion and there are exceptions, but exceptions are rare.
That's actually kinda funny, where I presently work, there's one guy in the office who's a total "segmentor." He gets the job done (as far as I know), he's a nice guy, causes no trouble, but socially he's totally aloof, doesn't even eat lunch with the rest of us.
Yeah, that's not the same at all. Segmenting your life so you don't take your work home with you, and don't drag your personal problems to the office is a very different thing from being aloof and disinterested in your co-workers (or maybe just socially awkward).
I work out of a home office and until a life-threatening medical problem last December, I was definitely an 'integrator', never really being off line. BTW, my problem (DVT followed by two large pulmonary embolisms) was almost certainly caused or made worse by a few month work spree - too much time at my desk. I have since set strict boundaries: I set a "get up and walk around" timer on my laptop, place limits on "billable time" each day and even some limits on time for learning new technologies (although my 2/3 time for paid work and about 1/3 time learning ne things ration has stayed about the same).
Anyway, transitioning from an 'integrator' to a 'separator' has been a good thing for me. People do need down time.
At the end of the day, I believe that productivity is about quality work time, not quantity.
I've gotta say, each there is a story about working at Google, everyone seems to talk about how horrible the number of perks are because it must mean they expect you to work crazy hours, and I wonder how jaded we've become?
How about this as an idea, maybe the perks aren't meant to make people work crazy hours but instead just make good business sense?
And on top of all of this, it makes their employees really happy, and gets them really good press!
I, for one, would be more than happy to talk to a recruiter at Google
At my last job I was the textbook integrator. I kept on top of email from home, preformed server admin stuff at all hours via VPN, and would even come in after hours when a got a server alert that needed attention. One day, I decided to add up all these extra hours. I was a salary employee, so it's not like I was getting paid extra to work overtime. I was shocked with the totals.
During one calender year, I had worked over 200 unpaid hours. And, since they would have all been considered overtime hours and worth 1.5 regular hours, it totaled 300 hours' worth of lost wages. That's nearly two months worth of time!
So I quit that job after 10 years (I'm kinda a slow learner), and found a company that insists I work no more than 40 hours a week. If I am called on work more, I get to make it up later. So now I am a segmentor. Work is work, home is home, and never the twain shall meet.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
I'm an integrator of the highest order. I integrate so much freetime into my work that even I wonder how I get anything done.
Oh, do think Google wants me to integrate work into my off time?
...which is why I need to work for myself. And I've been working in that direction for... forever now. But anyway, at least if you're working for yourself you can choose when to work and what to work on. I can't help thinking about work when I'm gone, it just happens.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I am an ideal integrator. I would love to work at a place that is completely integrated. I could work for google, have a google wife, 2.5 google kids, live in a google house, drive to google in my google car, drop of my laundry of google brand clothes at the google dry cleaners, eat at the googleteria, taking a break at 5 to go to the google bar to share a few drinks with my google friends, pick the kids up from google school, and head out for a night at the google opera with my google wife. That would be perfect. All of my needs would be met entirely.
However, anything short of that requires me to segment my personal life from work. I need to fulfill the needs that work doesn't provide, requiring necessary non work related period. Perks would be nice, but not if they distract me for fulfilling the other needs. As the article says, they'd get in the way of my real life. At least thats what happened when I tried living a truly integrated workplace, very far from google. I went a whole month without leaving the compound's gates. Needless to say, I was not attending any operas with my wife. Which is why I had to leave. It was like 75% perfect, but anything short of perfection sucks.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Just to summarize, there are only two possible reasons for his behavoir:
1) He is a a serial killer
2) You are dicks
No other possible explanations that I can think of....
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
I dunno, I have a pretty easy time integrating sleep and pleasure, in fact if you work all day and somehow bring your work home, sleep may be the only true pleasurable/relaxing time of your day!
stuff |
Oh, please, "segmentors"? "Integrators"? What's next? "Dronators"? "Dilbertors"?
Seriously, this is just one aspect of the US work culture: the company you work for simply assumes that you are going to put in long hours and work until late at night or early in the morning. This, in my opinion, is simply wrong: the longer you work, the less productive you are and he more exhausted you are as well.
Not to mention that putting in long hours takes a very heavy toll on your family life, if you are married and have children. So Google perks are great, but they simply (a) represent something wrong in U.S. culture and (b) reflect the fact that a lot of people at Google may be young and single adults, who can afford to spend a lot of time at the office.
Personally, instead of free massage and thirteen different restaurant in-house, I'd rather be able to have flexible hours to take care of my kids, telecommute for a couple of hours a day -- I am sure I would be a lot more productive working from my home from 11:00pm until 1:00am, or even have more paid vacation days. I don't really care about in-house restaurants or nerf tournaments. But I guess that's just me.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
While currently, I am a segmentor, I would rather be an integrator. If I could enjoy my job enough to include it as part of my "life" then I would be all about it. Till that time comes, I will continue to enjoy my clean break from work when I leave my office.
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Let me pull this up because there are so many," he says. When his computer produces a list a moment later, Kallayil makes his way down the screen and continues: "The free gourmet food, because that's a daily necessity. Breakfast, lunch and dinner I eat at Google. The next one is the fitness center, the 24-hour gym with weights. And there are yoga classes."
There is a pause before he adds that he also enjoys the speaker series, the in-house doctor, the nutritionist, the dry cleaners and the massage service. He has not used the personal trainer, the swimming pool and the spa -- at least not yet, anyway. Nor has he commuted to and from the office on the high-tech, wi-fi equipped, bio-diesel shuttle bus that Google provides for employees, but that is only because he lives nearby and can drive without worrying about a long commute.
I'd be worried about the fact that Google has the spending habits and business plan of a late 90s dot-com. Isn't advertising something like 95% of their revenue?
Never mix work and home, EVER. This is something I learned hard, because when you let co-workers find out what you do for fun, when they know what friends and acquaintances you hang out with, what music you listen to, then that is ammo that your peers and your office politics rivals will use to get you fired should some bad thing happen, and they have a chance at it.
For example, I've seen a co-worker (who was EXTREMELY talented) fired at a previous job I was at because he listened to heavy metal/goth, and during a major emergency on a Saturday night when servers melted (UPS failure), he ran into work in full club gear in order to get servers back up and running. Even though he got the servers up in an hour, he got fired a week later, not because of performance, but because his boss was a country music type of guy and didn't like anyone who didn't drive a pickup truck and attend rodeos in the first place, and him finding an underling who listened to something totally different caused him to dig up anything to fire the guy by. At the time, it wasn't a big deal, the guy just hopped to a different place and made more money, but these days with jobs being outsourced or handed to I-9 thralls, it may end up causing someone to have their next home for their family be a homeless shelter or park bench.
It seems easy to mix the two, but don't. You don't want co-workers who are potential enemies when it comes raise/promotion time to have knowledge on how to sabotage you.
Personally, I leave work and home totally separate. Even, my work car (a bland, boring vehicle that stays clean and personal-item free) is different from the car I use in other things. If asked about family or whatnot, I give a bland reply back. It sounds bad, but come raise/promotion time, issues that people can bring against me are only work-related... they can't dig up skeletons out of the rest of my daily existence to use.
I'm an Integrater from about 10am to about 4pm on work days, and a Segmentor the rest of the time.
I bring virtually none of my personal life to work, save for the occasional call I take from my mother, and even then it's on a personal cell and kept to a minimum. No family member or friend has my desk or cell number (and the desk number is printed incorrectly in the directory, something I've not corrected in three years, so they wouldn't be able to call and discover it), nor my e-mail address. A couple of them have seen the physical location where I work because I've pointed it out driving by, but I doubt they remember where it is. At work, only HR and my direct manager have my home numbers. I have no photos or personal documents at work aside from certification information on the wall (the latter only because it quiets a few particular people), nor do I keep personal files on any system. If I were to walk in and find out that I no longer had a job, I would be able to put down my work cell and my badge, pick up my keys and personal cell, take down the certs and put them under my arm, and walk out the door holding everything that is mine.
On top of all of that, personal time is mine. When I walk out the door, I'm on my time. At lunch, I do what I please -- which is usually eating a small lunch and taking a 15-minute nap in the car. I answer e-mails only if a response is urgently needed, and the general culture is to never call someone once they've left the building unless it's critical, and there's an unspoken agreement that if someone is in the break room or a particular area outside, they don't get bothered unless it's critical, so I have few concerns about that.
I am not antisocial, and get along well with everyone at work, having lunch with one or more of them once or twice a week. Some people bring in all manner of decorations for their cubicles, with photos and even the odd painting. I wallpaper mine with functional security posters and TCP/IP diagrams. It's simply a choice of where to draw the line, and how heavily it is drawn.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
At lunch, I do what I please -- which is usually eating a small lunch and taking a 15-minute nap in the car.
Sir, you are a genius.
Stupid Americans with your self-inflicted workaholicism. Don't blame google when its all in your own mind.
People should feel they can legitimately enjoy the perks then go home after doing an 8 hour day.
Whatever Google's real motivation is for offering free meals and transport, its pretty stupid to feel obliged to put in more hours because of them, especially if no-one has explicitly stated that they are provided in order to commit you to work more hours.
And if they ever do say that, then drive yourself and take sandwiches in.
Apart from anything else, the transport has wi-fi and if you're not driving yourself you can work on the bus. this is all extra time for Google worth more than the cost of the transport anyway. The value of the free food only amounts to maybe 15 minutes of pay at most, but you save more than that time by not going out to get food. So why should people still feel obliged to work extra time measured in hours?
My guess is Google's real motivation for offering those things is becase it differentiates the comapny and attracts hard-to-find developers to apply to work there in the first place. It has nothing to do with hours/week.
As a manager, if members of my team work continually work more than 40 hours/week when its not necessary for their workload, it gives me an indication that they're either not able to keep up or they're brown-nosers, either of which gives me reason and inclination to fire them.
Yes, there are two kinds of people! Those who must classify /. articles and those who don't.
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The issue with silicon valley isn't that they can no longer afford the perks (and no longer give them), but that employees are considered more expendable. They make less of an effort to prevent burning out employees and accept higher turnover.
When you get into your second or third month of 7 days a week 12+ hours a day with your boss asking you to see if you can 'stay late' to try to catch up on the project (wtf? later than 12 hours 7 days a week?). More employers are fine with this now than they were during the dotcom boom. Back then, they'd give you recreation time at the office. So what if you 'wasted' 2-3 hours a day if you were there >12 hours a day. You were happier, more productive and the work got done without the entire team quitting at the end of the project. When you were friends with all of your coworkers, you'd stay out of loyalty to them, not necessarily loyalty to the company. Either way, the company benefited.
Google is sucking up the high quality people who are tired of being treated as machinery. Productivity stays at a consistent level and you don't keep losing all of the high quality employees you hire.
For example, I've seen a co-worker (who was EXTREMELY talented) fired at a previous job I was at because he listened to heavy metal/goth, and during a major emergency on a Saturday night when servers melted (UPS failure), he ran into work in full club gear in order to get servers back up and running. Even though he got the servers up in an hour, he got fired a week later, not because of performance, but because his boss was a country music type of guy and didn't like anyone who didn't drive a pickup truck and attend rodeos in the first place, and him finding an underling who listened to something totally different caused him to dig up anything to fire the guy by.
That's not "don't mix work and home", that's "don't work for crazy people".
When you go from university to an IT career, the integrator role is not much of a shift. You are already used to the crazy hours, and crunch time to get a project done at the last moment. Your friends in school are your classmates in CS and you expect co-workers as friends. You are young, and a perk filled job even with being on job even when you are off seems like fun, after all you are doing what you dreamed of.
I wanted to be a programmer since I was 9 years old, and after I was done school and working full time, work was my life. I'd often work from 7 am until 11 pm, and I would hang out with co-workers off hours too. Although my co-workers and I had diverse conversations, the subject easily slid into work related matters, so it seemed I never really escaped the topic of tech very often. We didn't have Google level perks, but I was having a great time, making pre-dot-com-crash cash and had almost no time to spend it.
The crash happened. I was now 30, work was my life, and "real life" was slipping by me. I had grown apart from "non-work friends", relationship with my family, and my love life suffered too. I felt like I was one dimensional, because work had taken up almost every moment of my waking life, the other interests I once had, were sitting on the shelf. I hadn't seen a live band, gone to the theatre, spent the afternoon in an art gallery, instead I was working or talking about work. Being out of work for a year gave me time to think. I remembered how much I enjoyed so many things other than IT - and took up hobbies, contacted old friends, and found a new boyfriend and by the time I found a full time job again I knew I did not want to work for any company who was offering too many perks because I knew from experience that if they give you too many perks they expect too many hours back from you.
I now separate. I show up for work at 9am and leave at 5pm. My current job does not expect constant overtime (maybe once or twice a year) and in an emergency I will check my email or VPN in - but that too is rare. My co-workers are in their 30's and 40's so they have lives too. I see them during work hours only and although I like them and enjoy working with them, they are co-workers, not friends.
I see my real friends after work and on weekends, and instead of talking about technology, we talk about independent film, politics, art, music, theatre and just about everything but computers. I don't talk about work to my friends except when I have had a busy day, I let them know it was hectic and I'd love to go out for a beer to forget it.
Despite less money and no perks, I enjoy my job just as much as my pre-dot-com-crash job, and I have a very interesting life outside of work. Both sides are fulfilling, and I now prefer both sides separate.
I know some google engineers, and they are expected to work very long hours. There's nothing in writing that says you have to be there all day, but the pressure is there. Sure the rules say you only have to work eight hours and wear thirteen pieces of flair, but if you want to be a true Googlan you should voluntarily work until the last shuttle to Caltrain leaves, and voluntarily wear as many pieces of flair that will fit on your ultrawide suspenders.
Another "incentive" is even more subtle. You're told all day long by Slashdot and the tech media that you are a genius. You have to be a genius otherwise Google would never hire you. But you're not a genius, you're just the average software developer. So you have to prove to your boss that you're a genius. What you lack in the way of perceived intelligence you make up for through longer hours.
Because Google is concerned for your well being and health, you won't die of a heart attack by age thirty. But you will be single by age thirty (either divorced or never married).
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
If you're working on the weekend so that you can do other work tuesday, it is like you are competing in a pie eating contest where the prize is more pie.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?