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

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.

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.)