IT Workers To Get Fewer Perks, No Free Coffee

dasButcher writes "While the economy is showing signs of recovery and tech stocks posted double- and triple-digit gains in 2009, IT workers are facing a less hospitable workplace in the coming year. Many employers say they're going to continue trimming budgets, particularly in human resources. Rather than giving up head count, they're planning to trim 401k contributions, eliminate bonuses, curtail travel and, dare we say, shut off the free coffee (it wasn't that good anyway)."

Comments

Paging Mr. Vader - something slipping through

[Gothmolly]

The more you screw your employees, the more they will find ways to screw you. Turn off Gmail and Slashdot? Fine, I'll take a once-an-hour smoke break. Hack my 401k? I'll sit and stare at the ceiling. Bust by balls about travel costs? See if I don't have a "family thing" next time and can't go. People will take what they feel (rightly or wrongly) is their due, whether you give it to them or not.

Re:Paging Mr. Vader - something slipping through

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It seems particularly counterproductive to do so on the really cheap; but warm and fuzzy, nonmonetary perks. In even modest quantities, the unit cost of a cup of mediocre coffee isn't quite zero, but it sure isn't high. Certainly lower than the per-unit cost(either for you or for your employees) of having them nipping out to Starbucks for 15 minutes, rather than the kitchen for 5).

Re:Paging Mr. Vader - something slipping through

[Gothmolly]

I bet you also think that your employer "pays half" of your Social Security tax. All those things I mentioned, which you classify as perks, are part of the whole package - your salary, your benefits, your coffee, it all equals X dollars per year. If they remove one or more of those, its a pay cut, pure and simple.

I earn my job, which is why I have one. Do you ?

Re:Paging Mr. Vader - something slipping through

[nine-times]

You have this awful sense of entitlement. Free coffee? Have to justify travel expenses? C'mon the company does not exist to serve you, you exist to work for them and provide value at a minimum of expense.

No, we really don't exist to work for companies and provide them with maximum value at minimum expense. Thinking we do... now that's an awful sense of entitlement.

Re:Paging Mr. Vader - something slipping through

[Another, completely]

The travel expenses thing has gotten crazy for me. It's like the accountants think the company is doing me a favour letting me go to an exciting foreign hotel, experience the interior of exotic taxis, and meet the charming foreign customs officers. I do not consider it a perk, and being treated as guilty until proven innocent in claiming back the expensive "approved" hotel (instead of a more affordable and convenient one that's not on the list) is just enough to let me accept the less productive option of constant telephone meetings with people whose faces I have never seen.

That is, I suppose, their goal. Reduced overhead looks good, while lost business and reduced productivity just looks like market forces that are being proactively addressed by more careful attention to reducing expenses. The accountants are taking important action to tighten belts and address the failing ability of the business divisions to deliver top-line growth. The damage they do to the company actually looks like a responsible way to address the business situation. I think they have cause and effect backwards, but it's their decision to make, not mine.

Re:Paging Mr. Vader - something slipping through

[Afty0r]

It seems particularly counterproductive to do so on the really cheap; but warm and fuzzy, nonmonetary perks.

Every good manager knows that it is far more effective (from an employee motivation POV) to spend a reasonable amount of money providing small and helpful perks like this, than it would be to take the same amount of money and distribute it among the employees as part of their next raise.

Re:Paging Mr. Vader - something slipping through

[aes123]

Hate to break it to you, but employees are one of the stakeholders at a company. Contrary to popular belief, a company's sole responsibility is NOT to its shareholders; a company needs to properly balance its responsibilities to it shareholders, employees, and customers. Employees are not ONLY an expense; very often, they are also the reason that a company has a profit to worry about in the first place. If a company spends .1% of its revenue on employee perks like coffee and it earns them 1% in productivity, that sounds like a fantastic return. Focusing on expenses only is back ass-wards, shortsighted, and often counterproductive.

Re:Paging Mr. Vader - something slipping through

[JaredOfEuropa]

That last paragraph sums up exactly what is wrong with a lot of companies these days, what happens when you let the MBAs and the bean counters run the place. Cutting corners like this, but also outsourcing or the practise of firing staff and hiring contractors, sure looks good on the balance sheet... often because the cost is the same or higher but it'll be OpEx instead of CapEx, or comes out of a different budget. The truth is that in many cases these things end up costing the company dearly.

Remember what they say about accountants: they know the cost of everything, but they don't have a clue about the value.

Hacking off your nose to spite your face

[Zey]

Anywhere that would cut out coffee from the budget is quite frankly insane. It's a minuscule expense compared to the HR budget and improves productivity dramatically when people would otherwise be flagging (early mornings for night owls, afternoons for early birds).

The ability to provide free, legal performance enhancing drugs is one of the few negligible-cost productivity boost techniques available. You'd have to be both petty and highly incompetent as a manager to do away with it.

Re:the school district model

[DJRumpy]

Yeah, we've gotta be more concerned about feeding that CEO machine...

It's An Employer's Market

[RobotRunAmok]

Twenty years ago, companies jumped-up IT guys and made them "Web Masters" -- coders, server maintainers, content creators and (in their own minds) designers -- giving them six figure salaries. Every company, no matter how small, felt it needed to have a "server room" and maintain their e-mail service locally. The Marketing secretary always needed help figuring out how to print her boss's agenda out of Lotus Organizer.

Times changed.

Now, companies buy website templates for sixty bucks non-exclusive (three grand exclusive) and they're sitting in a server room at a place called Dreamhost or Hostgator. The content is maintained via a CMS run by the Marketing secretary. Employers and employees are using Gmail and other cloud-based e-mail systems because the lines between personal and work IT space have become so blurred. Nobody needs help printing anymore, because an entire generation has been raised on the Internet and personal computer systems.

People will take what they feel (rightly or wrongly) is their due, whether you give it to them or not.
And employers will replace them with 20-something go-getters with better attitudes and more up-to-date skills, and at half the salary.

Re:the school district model

[SnapShot]

IMHO, getting rid of free coffee is a huge mistake. In the scheme of things it's a tiny expense and you're going to lose far more in terms of people bickering about the coffee fund, people running out "on break" to buy coffee, and the basic office environment.

Re:So?

[armanox]

Now they're just another cost center. .

No, we (IT) has been viewed as a cost center since the 90s. And sometimes as glorified janitors...

Re:the school district model

[farrellj]

Back in the olden days of Computers...like 10 years ago...I was one of the many who was against unionization of IT workers. Now, having been badly treated by both small companies, and one of the largest single-digit level manufacturers of computers, I see that I was wrong. Today's 'sweatshops' are in computer assembly factories, and in call centers. They both use Skinner like systems with seemingly random rewards and punishments to keep people in line.

These days, digging ditches is a more profitable and satisfying job...fully unionized, with guaranteed vacation and benefits, and a grievance system that actually works!

ttyl
          Farrell ...note, I don't dig ditches.

Re:the school district model

[MBGMorden]

My guess though is that if you're spending $80k per year on coffee, then it's for a hell of a lot of people, and that $80k expense (and a single job) IS tiny on that scale. If an $80k expenditure costs a job but improves morale of a few thousand employees enough to make up for it in productivity gains, then it's the right thing to do.

Re:No Coffee = No Code

[SharpFang]

A cow is a machine that converts grass to milk.
A programmer is a machine that converts coffee to code.

This post...

[sean.peters]

... is a mixture of pure unsupported assertations, and anecdotes pretending to be data. Any evidence to show that "strikes hurt employees more through lost wages than they gain in negotiations"? In fact, there's a lot of history that shows that unions did, in fact, make lives better for not only their own workers, but for everyone - and not only in the form of wages, but also in things like medical benefits and safe working conditions. For example: the five day work week - brought to you by the AFL-CIO.

Enough with the union bashing, already. Read a little history of the labor movement, and then see what you think.