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.

Comments

Funny

[voncheesebiscuit]

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.

Do the math... Perk's are cheap

[pkj]

You know, it is just amazing how gullible people are these days. A lot of people see these perks as a big deal, but in companies where the *average* salary is about $60k, this works out to cost the company about $50/hr when all is said and done -- office space, health, fica, bonuses, training time, and not least that 25% of salary that goes to the headhunter after six months, adds up really quick.

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.

You get what you pay for

[Salamander]

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.

Re:Top X Business Perks I'd Like To Have

[RimRod]

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.

Re:Perks!

[mvw]

I would be happy if I got a workstation right next to my PC.. :)

Lactation Rooms

[DonkPunch]

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.)

Re:Not limited to big name corporations

[thogard]

Same with dry cleaning as that implies a scary dress code which is a sure way not to get good people in the first place.

At about $.15 a cup why don't more places do the free coke/pepsi fountain drinks? That's a great perk and it does work.

For those looking for real perks, someone is building a new "hi tech centre" in Melbourne Oz that just happens to be in an area that is full of legal brothels.