
Office Perks Are Dumb - petethomas
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-21/office-perks-are-dumb
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dalke
> "The trend can be traced back to Google and Zappos"

Or Apple in the 1980s.
[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Make_a_Mess,_Clean_it_Up!.txt)
describes it as "In the center of Macintosh work area in Bandley 3 we had a
ping pong table, a nice stereo system, and a Defender video game machine. We
found that competitive play gave us a jolt of adrenaline, and a refreshed
mind-set when we resumed work. We also learned a lot about our coworkers and
how they excel during competition."

> "and defined their workplace cultures with the help of beanbag chairs"

Sorry, I meant PARC in the 1970s. Here's a picture of PARC's "famous" beanbag
chairs from 1971 - [https://hightechhistory.com/2011/06/02/a-brief-early-
history...](https://hightechhistory.com/2011/06/02/a-brief-early-history-of-
xerox-parc-and-the-development-of-the-personal-computer/) .

> "Perks have since proliferated at startups"

See, problem is, now that I've shown that these sorts of office perks have
been around for at least 45 years, it's hard to really agree with a timeline
which starts with Google and grows from there.

The references to millennials is gratuitous. It's not that they are
millennials but that they are young. Twenty-something Gen X'ers in the dot-com
era had their own set of perks, and turnover rate. Here's an InfoWorld article
from 2000
[https://books.google.com/books?id=QD0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA75&dq=si...](https://books.google.com/books?id=QD0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA75&dq=silicon+valley+perk&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false)
which talks about extended vacation time, laundry services, and on-site
doctors as perks.

Stick in 'Silicon Valley perk' into a Google Book search for books before 1990
and out pops, "The chip war: the battle for the world of tomorrow" (1989)
which says "Salaries, stock options, bonuses, and perks grew to astounding
proportions, leading demographers to dub Silicon Valley workers "gold collar"
workers." There's also "Book of perks" (1984) which talks about sabbatical
leaves for Silicon Valley engineers.

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dzaragozar
As the philosopher Barrett Strong said: Money (That's What I Want) -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5KU34DrrPI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5KU34DrrPI)

