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High-End Tech Company Perks
Doug Muth writes "There's an
article in Wired News about some of the perks that companies in Silicon Valley offer their employees.
Maybe I should start working at Adaptec so I can get tickets for Episode 2 when it comes out... " Charging bays for electric
cars, massages, lactation rooms. Its just a bit scary.
I like the fact that so many companies have on site florists, makes it easier to send a bouquet to your significant other when you haven't seen him/her in a week because you're chained to your desk debugging code.
The Silicon Valley Company I work for has provided
the following little perks in the 4 years I've
been here:
Weekend Ski-trip to Lake Tahoe
White Water Rafting Trip
Boat Cruise on San Francisco Bay
...this in addition to pretty much all those
other standard perks, it certainly helps to
numb the pain of writting the monthly rent check.
Heh. I suppose so, except my SO *is* a massage therapist, so she enjoys getting in the practice. That's *my* at-home benefit :-).
...and I don't have to live in California, which would be hell on earth as far as I'm concerned.
I get OK bennies at my work-work, too... long lunches (usually on the boss), paid overtime (I like getting $$$ for every hour I work, it's the only thing that could possibly motivate me to work when I could be doing something better), profit-sharing, retirement plan, a lounge all of four steps away from my desk where I can blow off steam whenever needed, six packs of beer at my desk (we're somewhat lenient on this ).
All in all, it's works fine for me.
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
Here's how I figure the costs.
I live and work 150 miles from Silicon Valley. I've worked in the valley and near it, and won't go back.
I make $78K outside, nice little town, not an office park, a real town, and not a city. 40 or 50 hours max per week.
I have been told by friends who want me to work in the valley that I could be making $150K there. That's $72K more. Figure half gone for taxes (state 10%, fed 30+, unemployment, SS, sales tax, etc), that's $36K, or $3000 a month. The cost of housing increase would eat $1500 a month. I'd have to drive a lot more; I bike to work now. Higher cost of living in general, and I expect my take home increase would be $1000 a month.
So for $1000 a month extra spending money, I get silly perks at work, 20-30 more hours work per week, smog, traffic, and no place I want to go. Rivers and parks are hours away, not minutes. Crowds, did I mention traffic and smog?, noise, etc.
I am quite happy not in the valley. A head hunter wanted to know how much it would take to get me down there, I told her a million/year for sure, maybe 500K, but nothing less.
Sure, I'm willing to debate that. Is it your position that lactation rooms would be a sexist accomodation?
I'm guessing that any company with a culture that allows that web-cam wouldn't need a lactation room...
as a graduate student at a highly respected research institution i am entitled to my very own pastic desk set comple with two (yes, two!) permanently locked shelving units (no key), a roller-chair with one wheel slightly damaged, my very own copy-code number (restricted to regular business hours after which the office is locked), a 1/5 ownership of the only slightly stinky brown couch, and enough room in the fridge for my two mountain dews every day.
and you thought you had it nice!
--
-- First post (by a female living in a state that begins with M and does not end in a vowel with a birthday that falls
That's actually not too bad compared to everything else I've read about life in Silicon Valley. Almost sounds palatable. Unfortunately, housing costs are supposed to be the pits around there. I knew some people who took jobs there years ago (mid-to-late '80s) and it wasn't unusual for 3-4 guys with Masters degrees (and the salaries to go with them) having to share an apartment because of the disgustingly high rents. I can't imagine the housing situation's gotten any better. Any info on that? I knew of people who were living in some place like Fremont and commuting to Mountain View because that's the only place that they could afford.
Same here. I often skip lunch (I'm usually on a roll and don't want to stop) so a lot of good a catered lunch'd do me.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Don't forget your health insurance. Don't trade your health for a few tokens. What's the deal, rather than working 12 hours per day, you're supposed to work 14 if they handle your dry cleaning? Make sure it's all not smoke and mirrors to hide the lack of *real* benefits.
My old company used to give us free coke. I liked it until one day I heard the plant manager say, "they're working faster now, too bad they've all gained 20 pounds." After that, I felt like a hamster on a wheel. Give me more caffeine and I'll run faster.
My current company offered to pay evening and Saturday daycare for my kids. Does that mean I'm required to work from 7 AM until 9 PM six days per week now?
The word is "perquisite", so it should be abbreviated "perq". And improperly abbreviating a word is a grammar issue, not spelling (although I'll give you the spelling issue, because he's abbreviating a misspelled word :).
In my original post, i mentioned that this company is located in the mid-west, housing costs are actually quite low here!
Gee, I work at a boarding school and get all those same perks. They give me an apartment (with 37 teenagers attached) 3 meals a day (no food fights please) Everything that article mentions and more! And I work 18-20 hour days to prove it!
My wife decided she wanted to breastfeed our daugher and still return to work 30+ hours a week. Rather than bring Allison to work, she would use an electric breast pump twice a day, and store the milk for use at the daycare the next day.
When my wife went back to work at her doctor's office, they didn't have a lactation room, so she had to lock herself in an examination room, or a bathroom. Not a great solution, plus she got a lot of grief for taking 15 minutes a time, twice a day to get food for our baby.
Pretty ignorant for doctors, and she's no longer working there.
George
What's the big deal here? Women are constantly trying to negotiate more relaxed policies about onsite breastfeeding. Nursing facilities for nursing mothers is about as much of a "perk" as are parking lots, elevators or water fountains -- you just plain need them in order to work at all.
Onsite oil changes, floral service and photo development are extravagant. Lactation facilities are not. Maybe the boys down at Wired just don't see many tits.
I wouldn't mind a haircut while hacking...
The perk that I'd really like would be free brouadband internet in my bedroom. Oh, and plenty of Dr.Pepper.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
hi
In Sweden have 5 week payed holiday.:-))
All doctors are payed for use.
What you are token about is Nothing:-)
I'd rather have a wet nurse than a "lactation room", on the account that one would be more useful than the other (i.e. I don't have mammaries).
Maybe for management, but I like my t-shirts laundered normally, thanks. You want to give a geek a perk, allow us to use whatever computer/OS we can best use to get our job done. I don't care if the IS department can only "profit" from installing NT everywhere; I've got work to do that is best done with a more useful OS (Mac OS X Server, in my particular case).
I noticed all those places listed dry cleaning. How about regular laundry so I can get my jeans and t-shirts washed? I'm not sure I own anything that has a Dry Clean Only tag.
Even if the company spends $25/day for each employee on perks, that buys a *lot* of time from minimum-wage contractual help -- in the most simplistic model, this would be akin to giving every employee a personal man-servent for three hours every day. In order for the company to break even on these perks, the employee has onto to be productive for an extra 1/2 hour! When you start to figure in the fact that many of these perks are actually "business expenses" you begin to realize that the company can actually "buy" them at a 50% discount (welcome to the wonderful world of corporate taxation!)
A number of people have already mentioned the self-employment option, but you have only begun to scratch the surface of what that really means. When you charge $80-$120/hr and you could easily work 80 hours/week, you begin to rationalize things like, "Gee, I could spend an hour cooking dinner or I could work an extra hour and then take my girlfriend out and drop $80 on sushi and come home and get nookie afterwards." But I digress...
In any case, these perks have been so common these days that not having them is just not an option. The only way to get competatn employees these days (or *any* employees, it sometimes seems) to ply them in this way. Of course, I do wonder why otherwise intelligent people are wooed by such silly things, but then again, I wonder about a lot of things. It has taken me a long time to keep from losing sleep over it.
Have you ever contributed an educated, informed, or insightful opinion to a discussion?
The large majority of your posts are "top x" posts. Those in doubt hit the User Info link and see for yourselves.
It seems that the only types of posts you are capable of producing are rather sad attempts at being humorous.
This may have been funny the fist few times, but it really is getting tiresome.
This problem is made worse by those moderators who consistently increase the score of such comments. Those with moderator access should have better ways to spend their scarce points; these type of posts are simply not worth it.
The fact that a post of this quality is moderated to such a high score shows that the moderation system still needs to be adjusted a bit. I suggest making comments rated as "funny" have a maximum score of 2.
Nix absolutably seriousness.
What's the deal with car detailing, anyway? Why do ALL these high-tech companies offer car detailing to their employees? Very strange.
:)
Seriously, though, I think the best perk would be an on-site (or very near-site) auto repair shop. It doesn't have to be free, or even discounted. It just needs to be convenient, so I can drop my car off in the morning, go to work, and pick it up in the evening. Routine maintenance (be it oil changes, A/C repair, brake service, etc.) would be much, MUCH simpler.
Or just give us company cars which won't break down. That would work too.
Ryan
A few years ago I interviewed at {name deleted to protect the guilty}, and the people interviewing me made a big deal of having restaurant-quality food brought in for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I immediately knew that meant they expected people to be there for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so I jokingly asked if they had cots and showers. They denied that it was like that, but of course they were lying.
The long and the short of it is that companies don't offer these perks because they're nice guys. The point about a $50/hour masseuse being a lot cheaper than even a 1% raise for your engineers hit it right on the button.
There's actually an aspect of the whole thing that's just a little discriminatory. It doesn't take a genius to notice that not everyone can take equal advantage of many of these perks...and I'm not even talking about something as obvious as a lactation room here. Seems to me that the people who are don't want perks should be eligible to receive those perks' cash value instead to make things fair.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
(sorry for the CWO thing.. ;)
Seriously, though. Can anyone else see where we'll be in another 10 or 15 years? We'll end up with corporate "bases" like the military's got. Onsite housing, medical, security, the PX...restricted airspace, armed guards at the gate...
and Ludvig Van playing 24 hrs a dayly day me brothers!!!
Blech. Signatures.
It's spelled "perqs", not "perks".
Sorry... Normally I let this stuff go, but it's been getting really bad lately.
The fact that my posts *are* moderated upwards effectively voids your entire argument.
Humor is a matter of opinion. You are more than free to moderate my posts downwards, and others are free to moderate them upwards. You claim that my posts aren't funny--apparently others disagree with you.
If you take a look at the (admittedly scarce) posts that are not Top X lists, they usually are extremely serious posts that sometimes get moderated upwards as well. Perhaps you should have gone further than simply pressing the User Info link and actually read a couple of them.
How you choose to spend your moderation points is your own business. Trying to influence how others spend theirs is censorship.
And lighten up, will ya? Some of us actually need humor to get through the day.
-
My previous job had a 'health room' which
had a lock on the door, power outlet,
small table, chair and a cot. It was all
one needed to qualify as a lactation room
or a place to fend off a migraine. Not much
of a perk considering that breastfed babies
are less likely to be sick, thus moms are
less likely to be out due to a sick child
(so it is indeed a perk designed to keep
workers at work longer).
Yeah, but what's the tax rate in Sweden?
It's obvious that the math works in the favor of living somewhere like Broomfield as opposed to Palo Alto, if the work's there. But one thing you get being in the Valley, better than the perks, is the feeling that you're at the epicenter, the place "where it all happens." It sounds cheesy but it's true. It's a sexy feeling. You feel it walking around Palo Alto at night, when you go to Fry's, when you drive by the big corporate HQ's. And people are willing to pay through the nose for that.
I figure in a few years I'll be satisfied and be done with the meager living (I choose to rent a 5BR home with 3 other people, to not buy the BMW etc.) and move somewhere else with what I've earned. But for now I'm happy. Not to mention that there are options that need to vest...
I have a 9-5 work day. Overtime is occasionally needed, but only occasionally. And it's compensated.
How many other high-tech companies are willing to give you *that*?
We moved to Silicon Valley (the self, the wife, a kid) from Florida in 1996, rented a four bedroom house, leased a minivan, and still had our monthly bills drop by almost $400 per month.
--
I just want a mini-bar. That's all. Just a mini-bar right next to my workstation...
A freind of mine works for a smallish software comapny here in the mid west that provides on site dry cleaning pick up, haircuts etc. free sodas & catered lunch every day, and a Concierge service for various errands. The competition for coders is so strong that it takes these kind of perks to attract and keep talented people (not to mention the bloated salaries ;-) Its not only that the employees end up being more productive but its also necessary to get and above all keep people.
Think of it. A company can bring in two million gross a week, have 15 employees and use a small fraction of it from employee benefits. Makes you think, "Why didn't I see it coming?" None of us have experienced or heard of it before, unless we go back to the roaring twenties...
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
I work for a large company that owns us, a smaller CAD company and some of the perks they give software developers, at least at our place, is a free pop machine, donuts on mon, rols on wed, and beer after 3:30pm friday. 100% medical and stock options. Those are the ones that come to mind.
-Z
I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going.
we had a massuse come in every wednesday...never took advantage of it tho...oh well...but the thing is companys offer these purks to keep their werker bees on site so as to get them to werk as often as possible
"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
Doesn't it cost an insane amount for housing there though? With cheaper housing, you can spend your own money on these perks, rather than having to leech off your employer.
What the heck.
I work for Sybase. Perks vary from location to location, I'm at the Emeryville, California headquarters. They bought us Episode I passes. We did an electric car pilot. There's a gym. Free garage. Free Internet access (at work, obviously, and at your home.) Standard benefits are good, too.
Oracle's restaurants are legendary in the valley, one per tower, each has its own theme. The food is pretty good in each one. They also have a post office onsite, as well as a couple of guys who wash your car while you work, or install a car phone or GPS unit.
Apple and Netscape have massages, a nice 20 minutes massage makes it easy to work until late.
I've worked at a place with a kitchen, showers, lockers, bedrolls, and a bar, so it was possible to work, live, sleep, and everything else (yes, that too, keep your feet up against the door so the cleaners don't surprise you and vicsa versa) and never leave the building. Great because I lived more than 2 hours drive away from the place, and I would stay 4 nights in the building, then go home for the weekend.
None of this is new, I think a journalist was having a slow day and hacked out this article.
So, fellow slashdotters, whats the best perk at your company? Mine is 13 weeks a year vacation (I work for myself)
the AC
We got tickets to Phantom Menace @ The Uptown in DC. I saw the first public showing there...
Lactation rooms for nursing mothers
Humm, anyone want to debate the corporation endosment of have an on-site midwife? Campus based prostate sergon?
I work for a big hospital, and we've got everythin g that they have and more (onsite Sex Therapy Clinic, Blockbuster Video, the Playboy office across the street...).
Ah, I love bennies... =)
It will become the recruiting slogan for some Silicon Valley company:
Got Milk? Come work for us!
(Sorry. Had to do it. I'll put the keyboard down and slowly step away now.)
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
I guess my company does a pretty good job with perks.
;)
1) Free lunch monday and thursday
2) Free beer after 4pm friday
3) Massages (not free) every other week
4) Free soda machines
5) Hair cuts (not free) once a month
6) Breakfast truck comes by every morning
7) Free tickets to big movies (X-Files and Episode 1). They shut down the office and all
8) Every party has free alcohol
9) Several parties a year (See #8)
10) Not in silicon valley
I guess life isn't so bad...Anyone want a job?
Lactation room? Is that like the room in the beginning of Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange"? Mmm... Milk... heheh
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
This is the standard deal, in Silicon Valley, Portland Oregon or elsewhere. What I'm paid today I would have considered obscene. My perks are movie tickets and such, buuuut... also work as much or little as I like. About 8 hours a day, five days a week. I could make even more but I like my free time. I don't get burnt out anymore. My only responsiblity is to get the job done. I can be replaced of course but it would be very expensive. Plus I actually get to develop on Linux.
Yeah, I guess I am kind of bragging but my point is technical people can write their check for where ever they want, for whatever amount, choice of working conditions included. If you're not doing that now, you're a fool.
Telecommuting. Still not real popular, but I think it's the best one. I live about 2000 miles away from where I work. I can live and/or travel anywhere I want, as long as I get my work done. Life is good.
God forbid there be a place in the world where an employer treats it's employees as if they were actually human.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
One thing to note is that many of these services listed are services that, in large cities, are provided by neighborhood businesses. The Valley is mostly consists of sprawling "office parks", which are usually near nothing but other office parks. Thus, these services are unavailable unless you drive somewhere, which certainly makes them less convenient and more distracting.
In areas of cities where there's lots of mixed-use zoning, dry-cleaners, gift shops, and many other things are already around (or are attracted to large clumps of companies), so companies don't need to build them; they're shared between numerous companies. Hence the popularity of putting businesses in city centers, where many such services are widely available, and have been for some time.
The South of Market (aka SoMa) part of San Francisco is also becoming wildly infested with tech companies, and the local business mix is adjusting accordingly. Far fewer clothing outlet stores and antique shops, more restaurants and dry cleaners.
mahlen
Our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
--Vladimir Nabokov
the thing that scared me the most was the perk for working at netscape: "onsite DENTAL care".
is there a chair, sink and x-ray machine in the lunchroom or what?
Many of these big Silly Valley companies offer the same perks to employees at locations in places where people actually enjoy living. Sun has all of the same bennies at the Broomfield, Colorado campus as they do in the valley, and the additional perk is that you don't have to live in the valley.
Ok lemme see now...
$1950 a month rent, but free drycleaning... or
$450 a month rent, and pay for drycleaning...
yup, staying right here in Sunny Florida.
Awesome!
The word is "perquisite." I've seen it abbreviated as both "perq" and "perk."
Perqs I'd like:
- A reasonably-sized desk with drawers
- A bookshelf (or two)
- A window
- A door
- Quiet
- A decent computer (large monitor, fast CPU, large memory, good network, good OS)
- A decent chair
I'll handle the rest--no need to add all that other stuff just to make me forget that my actual working environment is just a cushioned warehouse with garish fluorescent lights.How about this:
:-) (andy at pagan dot net)
Live in Boulder Colorado with alower cost of living, and STILL get the perks, good pay and stock options, grants and year end bonuses? Add to that having the Rocky Mountains in your back yard - Hike spring and fall, rock climbing or biking in the summer, ski in the winter - plus water skiing, golf, pro baseball (Rockies, one of the best ballparks in all baseball), a great hockey team (Avalanche), 2x champion NFL team (Broncos), top notch soccer team, etc. And if you just want to "get away" - drive 1 hour in any direction and you will be out of sight of the city.
p.s. if you want to come here to work, just look at the want ads - plenty IT open here. And if you want to work at level 3, let me know and we can split the $1000 hiring bonus
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
Actually, I've wanted to do this for along time, but everytime I talk to a recruiter, they tell me that it's a hopeless dream and that actually there is a low unemployment rate there right now.
I still study my kanji cards, but I guess I would have had a better chance via a college exchange program.
Given half a chance, I would jump at it.
You bastard! I actually had to take off work to wait in line to get tix at the Uptown.
God I love that theatre.
///Gonzo
So we've heard how horrible it is to try to find housing and how high the cost of living is in the valley... Now we hear about all the great stuff the the companies provide for their employees.
Do the perks outweigh the cost of living? Or would it be better to work elsewhere, save on the cost of living and get yourself those items. Of course, this doesn't count the on-the-job perks such as free car washes and laundry service... but on a dollar for dollar amount, which is better?
Personally I think I'd rather live somewhere with a lower cost of living and keep the extra $ in my pocket...
I noticed a bit of hype a few weeks back (I think courtesy of the NYT) about high-tech unions. Anyone actually join one of these? My instinct is that, since most coders actually *like* their work, and since they get paid so well, unions would basically be impossible...
Can your IM do this?
With all the high-tech gadgets at those companies, it is a wonder that they haven't sneaked a web-cam into the lactation rooms... Got Milk??
In recient cost cutting moves, my boss was told they no longer trust him to decide when to buy lunch. (though he said right off that he can be creative about the exceptions) And he was not excessive in buying us lunch either.
Three years ago we were promised a gym (we are at a brance several states from headquarters, they got one already) by upper managemtn. Unfortunatly the lower side of the upper managemtn has managed to kill this deal every time through their blundering.
If I could take the heat (its only 75 today, and I could barely do a 1/4 mile walk outside cause of the heat) I'd consider moving. I don't think I could live someplace as crowed as Calf. At least my rent is cheap, try beating living with the parents for cheap!
This Top X list marks the debut of the SUBLIST! OHHHHH YEAH, BABY!
1) 20 free hours on AOL!!!!!!!
2) 30 minutes alone in a soundproof room with
A) Bill Gates
B) Kenny G and Yanni
C) The leaders of the Christian Coalition
D) Richard Simmons
3) Backrubs from
A) Jennifer Love-Hewitt
B) BUFFY~!
C) Heather Graham (as Rollergirl, though)
4) The Ability To Understand Women (see: Myths)
5) My very own monogrammed Band-Aids.
6) Why have billions of dollars when you can have...millions?
7) A computer that says "Excellent command or file name!"
-
If you think things in Silicon Valley (except for gas and rent) are the same as the rest of the country, you haven't really lived anywhere else.
Indeed.
I venture, if Silicon Valley was the same as the rest of the country, it wouldn't be called Silicon Valley.
Insert mind here.
Agreed about massages but I can't get the 24/7 availability. Are you a polygamist or what? (With your "masseuses sleeping in shifts?) And, likewise, the music complaints aren't usually a problem when I'm working at home except late at night (tends to wake up the little ones). I'm lucky enough to have a wife that enjoys most of the music that I like (somewhat surprising given my lean toward stuff which has a decidedly low-commercial-potential/fringe aspect to it).
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Think about how it was mentioned in the context of an "onsite coke dealer" and you might get the hidden meaning...
Here, here! For those of us that are old farts (28) with a spouse and children, you gotta at least turn it down when the kid's sleeping, or at least wear earplugs. It's all about priorities.
No great perks here, but because of the time zone (GMT + 330) the first public showing anywhere was actually here in St. John's Newfoundland, at 12:01 AM May 19 NDT, or 10:31 PM May 18 EST. Of course, I was there...
Mozilla
Personally if I were to start working at home and inform my SO that their job was now to rub my back and otherwise service me whenever I wanted it, I would actually have a much stiffer back, from sleeping in the couch/car. I can't decide if the original poster is suffering from naivete or chauvinism.
I work for an ISP in downtown Atlanta, and while the perks don't make the list with Sun & Adaptec, we have a few of our own:
:)
Baseball & movie tickets.
25-cent Coke & Pepsi machines.
Killer keg parties on the parking deck.
Gift certificates to Music Blvd/CDNow.
We even got a discount on car detailing.
Plus all the normal stuff like stock options, secure parking, computer discounts, and lots of couches in the office
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
That's one hell of a commute. Where do you live?
You can get almost all of those perks by working at home, if you've got the right spouse (24/7 massage availiability) and make enogh money from there ;). Plus, there's noone to complain about the music and, most importantly, no boss :)
What the **** does this entail? Anybody?
Or do I just have a dirty mind?
Joking aside, it's wonderful to see that there's at least a little bit of corporate acceptance of breastfeeding. The savings in health care costs for ear infections alone probably offsets the cost of special accomodations for nursing moms!
Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...