
What fun and low-cost fringe benefits/perks would you offer to employees? - ochekurishvili
http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/1498/what-fun-and-low-cost-fringe-benefits-perks-would-you-offer-to-employees
======
rdouble
Proscribed fun is hard. I can think of about 20 great engineers who would be
turned off by a scotch library and free trips to the driving range (is it
software for country clubs?) Substitute any of foosball, ping-pong, beer kegs,
red-bull, razor scooters and whatnot. You're only going to please half the
people, half the time, and probably the wrong people, because who really ever
liked razor scooters and nerf guns, anyway?

Career and skill development is a perk that is really overlooked. It's a start
to offer unlimited Amazon books. However, companies could go much further and
offer seminars and full blown courses. It doesn't even have to be expensive
corporate training. You could pay a grad student to teach a full blown machine
learning course for less than half the cost of a weekend long training
seminar.

~~~
tptacek
We would generally be happy to consider sending people to a class. But I don't
think we're too different from a lot of companies with HN presences in that
we're staffed mostly with people who enjoy figuring things out for themselves.
It's hard for me to think of a class that's so clearly valuable to our team
that it would make sense sending people to.

One thing we try to do is to run internal classes. We had one on C programming
that I need to get back up and running; we have a long-running one with
cryptography.

Businesses routinely do the equivalent of paying a grad student to teach
machine learning; they just don't call it that. In the real world that's
called consulting.

------
bugsy
1\. Respect 2\. Autonomy 3\. Control

None of those cost money yet so few workplaces value them since disrespect,
micromanagement, and industrial era style division of labor are addictions of
the corporate management crowd. It's gospel to Ivy League educated and Old
Money.

As a separate issue, "As startups, we can't really offer top-dollar salaries
to our employees." is complete nonsense. First of all, "we don't pay top
dollar" is doublespeak for "We pay below market rate." Nothing says "We don't
respect you." as much as that does. If you can't at the absolute minimum pay
market rate for the level of talent you require you shouldn't be in business.
End of story.

~~~
tptacek
This is not a helpful comment. It only sounds like one. In fact: since nobody
on HN would sponsor a "respect-free" or "autonomy-free" or "control-free" work
environment, it actually doesn't say anything at all.

This is frustrating because there are probably a million things we could do
for (e.g.) Matasano team members without having to restructure the business,
and I'd love some more ideas.

~~~
DaniFong
We are exploring an alternate mode of vacation (one might say, the French
model, although not because it is not national) -- in which the company
essentially shuts down august till labor day, on top of a couple weeks of
ordinary flexible paid time off. We hope that this will enable people to take
_real_ vacations (without worries that something really important is happening
around the lab), and the lab isn't hamstrung when missing someone important.
Plus, a month of free time allows people to take a serious sabbatical and do
something really substantial outside of work.

Those we around a month of productivity, we think that people will end up
being more than 10% more productive/happy/creativity, and the people we can
attract may be 10% better suited to our work. We think it's a perk hardly any
other american company can match; great hackers value their time.

More than any of these, philosophically, we want to allow our colleagues to
experience the world. We want them to experience freedom.

~~~
yosh
Forced vacation isn't freedom. If August isn't a convenient time to take a
vacation, and the employee would rather work, let them work and take that
chunk of time off at some other point. If taking that time off another time
during the year is unacceptable, then your policy simply isn't fair to all
your employees.

Where I work even the national holidays are floating holidays, so if I want to
work on Christmas that isn't a day off for me, and I can trade that for a day
off for any other day of the year.

Especially for travel, it's way cheaper to do so for off-peak seasons, so
forcing August or the last week of December etc. when just makes for more
expensive vacations. This is one reason why I think the "French model" kind of
sucks.

~~~
tptacek
This works for some businesses and not for others. Most successful YC
companies, for instance, cannot simply shut down for the entire month of
August. In others, teams are so tightly coupled that the business wants
vacations as synchronized as possible. It all depends.

The important thing to remember is that there is _almost always_ some degree
of freedom withheld by vacation policies. It's not especially productive to
reason about vacations as if absolute freedom of scheduling is a sacred
principle. Some businesses can come closer to others in providing freedom, and
if that freedom is especially valuable to you, you should adjust your
compensation expectations accordingly.

But remember the iron law of supply and demand. If a company provides a
benefit (say, "months of paid vacation any time of the year on no notice"),
and the market values that benefit, candidates will factor that into their
compensation negotiation and the salary the company needs to pay for a given
level of quality will decrease. In other words: you're paying for the vacation
policy one way or the other.

(This is a subtext to the constant jealous comparisons between European and
American vacation policies that tends to bug me.)

~~~
DaniFong
__Most successful YC companies, for instance, cannot simply shut down for the
entire month of August. In others, teams are so tightly coupled that the
business wants vacations as synchronized as possible. It all depends. __

We're certainly in the latter category, so this is an important distinction. I
do think groups in product organizations have this freedom where operational
groups don't, though something similar may be possible there.

 __But remember the iron law of supply and demand. If a company provides a
benefit (say, "months of paid vacation any time of the year on no notice"),
and the market values that benefit, candidates will factor that into their
compensation negotiation and the salary the company needs to pay for a given
level of quality will decrease. In other words: you're paying for the vacation
policy one way or the other. __

I don't really think that talent is best thought of as an efficient market.
People are empirically quite limited in their ability to perceive ahead of
time the situations in which they will be the happiest or most productive, and
salaries seem to be primarily determined by societal norms.

For us, the decision mostly hinges upon whether or not our employees will
actually be happier, more creative, and ultimately more productive under the
new model. The policy might sway a few candidates that would otherwise look
elsewhere, and it might retain several candidates confronted with lucrative
alternative offers, but ultimately it's how it will effect the team's spirit
that really matters.

~~~
tptacek
I'm not sure it takes an efficient market for candidates to be able to do a
simple math problem. The company that offers 4 weeks vacation a year pays a
$90k salaried employee the equivalent of $51.10/hr; the company that offers 6
weeks vacation pays $53.50/hr, or 5% more.

Comp clearly isn't the only reason people pick jobs, but it's a big reason.

There's a "quality of vacation" point you're making, but generally I think the
real issue there is that employees are pushovers, and ask permission to use
all their vacation time all at once, instead of just informing their employer
that they're going to take July off.

~~~
bugsy
Myself I pretty much don't do jack shit in any given hour of the year, so I
guess companies that would hire me at those rates are getting ripped off since
they aren't getting anything for their money.

On the other hand, over the period of a year, I am amazingly productive and
product thousands of times more value than the typical engineer.

Interestingly, the less down time during that year, the fewer incredibly
valuable things I make.

~~~
bugsy
It's a bit frustrating to see very insightful contributions like my comment
here downvoted. Downvotes isn't meant to be for good points. Let me make it
more explicit though for people who have difficulty understanding things.

ENGINEERS THAT CREATE THE THINGS YOU SELL DO NOT CONTRIBUTE BY THE HOUR. THEY
CONTRIBUTE BY THE QUARTER, THE YEAR AND THE DECADE. HOURLY WAGE CALCULATIONS
ARE THE WRONG WAY TO CALCULATE HOW MUCH THEY ARE PAID BECAUSE THEIR
FUNDAMENTAL UNIT OF TIME ISN'T THE HOUR. WERNER VON BRAUN DIDN'T DO ANYTHING
NOTICEABLE IN ANY GIVEN HOUR OF DESIGN WORK.

What does this mean in practice to the MBA set? It means that measuring
engineering work as cost per hour means there is something seriously wrong
with your company because you don't understand the fundamental nature of the
work.

------
tptacek
The scotch library is pretty silly.

1/2 day on Halloween is a great idea.

I am not a fan of company-sponsored lunch; it sends a message that you're
expected to be working constantly. Many of the big finance companies do it,
and the employees are clear about why.

Books are so cheap relative to FTE cost, I don't know why you'd even come up
with a "training policy" for them. We just give everyone an Amazon account and
say "go to town". You buy a book, it's yours; the only rule is, don't buy
books for your friends on our dime. :)

~~~
jeffool
I think you raise a good point about company lunches. It depends on if it's
"grab some food on us and go eat at your desk," or "put out tables and sit
beside people you don't know" kind of lunch.

------
patio11
My company had an official holiday -- Company Founding Day -- adjacent to a
national holiday every year, turning a 3 day weekend into a 4 day weekend, and
required anyone wanting to work on Company Founding Day to get signed
permission from the CEO. (Of a 1,000+ employee megacorp.) When
customers/vendors complained about a particular employee's inavailability for
their needs, everyone could just say "Sir, I'm sorry, there is nothing I can
do. It is Company Founding Day."

That costs rounding error next to an employee. Fog Creek-style catered lunches
are rather substantially more expensive, but having done them, I think the
social benefits to them are pretty awesome. (Company-sponsored dinner, on the
other hand, would scare the heck out of me.)

~~~
tptacek
We did a "company offsite" instead of an extra holiday; we spent the morning
building Arduino robots†, and the afternoon at Three Floyds. I'm sure there's
someone here ready to say "that's not a benefit! just give me the freedom to
choose what i do that day myslef"[sic]. Oh well. I'm guessing I'm not too
unhappy about missing the opportunity to work with the kind of people who
would complain about stuff like that.

† _More accurately, the rest of the team made robots while I went and rented a
huge van._

------
jeffool
Depending on your business and your employees? Equipment.

I recently worked at a TV station and regularly asked my boss if I could do
things like borrow a camera on a weekend, or installed a single game for some
of us to play after hours when no one was working.

The answer was always "no". That was unfortunate. The camera I kinda get; it
could break. But using my computer at work, when no one else is? Seemed
relatively harmless.

~~~
m0nastic
One of the most awful forensic engagements (that didn't involve the threat of
bodily harm) I ever worked was for a company who called me in to image the
drives for an entire video production department.

Apparently, they discovered that one of their employees, in his spare time,
had used one of the editing stations to edit video for his church. When they
disciplined him about it, he stated that "everyone else was doing the same
thing", which made them panic and decide to treat the whole department as a
forensic incident.

I can't think of a more innocuous use of resources than "editing church video
in my spare time", but they were all freaked out about it. You'd be surprised
what companies worry about.

I had the envious task of imaging ~ 35 workstations (and 2 big-ass RAID
arrays) in the middle of the night before employees were supposed to be back
in the office the next morning.

~~~
jeffool
Ahah, you poor soul.

I guess the thrust of my argument is that... Employees are trusted with those
resources while under employer supervision. ("Supervision"; not that their
bosses are over their shoulders, or in some cases even know how to operate it
themselves.) But the second that the intent is not approved of, suddenly that
employee is suspected of having destroyed everything with an errant keystroke.
It's funny, is all.

~~~
m0nastic
I agree.

My boss at my previous employer somehow managed to convince the higher-ups
that we needed a lab full of about 20 ridiculously well-spec'd desktops with
high-end video cards (and this was well before you could argue for their use
in things like CUDA).

This was our Counterstrike lab.

------
kabdib
Quiet hours, especially in a cube farm.

Free soda, coffee, tea. (I'm a little negative on free snacks, but if that
works for you, okay).

Subsidize access to things like the ACM portal, or other subscription
journals. Buy technical books for people.

A shooting range in the basement. ("Let's go think about this problem over a
few rounds" has a different flavor). While zoning and other laws would make
this impractical, some of the groups I've been in have had "range days," and
they've all been a lot of fun, even -- or maybe _especially_ \-- for the
newbies.

------
rhizome
The best perk is to manage development in a way that doesn't require overtime
from the programmers.

------
SkyMarshal
Don't forget to review Dan Pink's talk on motivation:

<http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html>

Having said that my personal favorites are unlimited free books a la Matasano,
and flexible work environment (working from office or remotely are
interchangeable), and flexible vacation policy (several recent HN posts on
this).

Completely distributed teams like SpiderOak are pretty awesome, so set up your
company to work like that as the default, and have an office people can
work/meet in when they want or need, but connect to the servers the same way
whether in or out of the office (a universal API, so to speak).

Let me work when I'm most productive, be it 6am to 3 in the afternoon, or noon
to midnight, or whatever. Trust in my incentive to care about the company's
success (and by extension my own cashflow). I don't even mind a pager in
setups like that, as long as it's used for emergencies only and not abused.

------
scotto
Let people choose what tools they use to get the job done. It really sucks to
be forced to use inferior tools/software/hardware/etc at work than what you
have become accustomed to using in more progressive environments.

------
jontsai
I would have couches and sleep/napping areas--a lot of them.

I think the best and most essential things to quality of life are: air,
water/food/drink, exercise, sleep. I find that there is an unsurprising
correlation that when I am healthy and fit, I am also able to perform my best
at the computer.

------
wgx
Treats. Free donuts, coffee, pizza, beers, etc. That kind of thing is low-cost
and highly appreciated.

Plus there's the communal, social factor of all eating/drinking together as a
team.

~~~
pagekalisedown
Only if you throw some fruits in there.

As a health-conscious (non-preachy) vegan, I feel left-out otherwise.

------
rdl
Range time; tactical training. Also disaster prep for you and your dependents.
(ie come to the office after the bay area earthquake....)

------
mkramlich
1\. be neutral about where work gets done

2\. be neutral about when work gets done

3\. be neutral about how work gets done

~~~
acgourley
Recognizing everyone has their own patterns and giving them the autonomy to
maximize work given their own patterns is certainly important. Of course step
0 of this prescription is hiring someone who is trustworthy and self-aware.

~~~
argeron
I completely agree, and that is why we will have a completely web based system
so that I can hire contractors all over the U.S. and let my normally onsite
employees work from home a day or two a week. Instead of me saying, "Work at
home tomorrow", they will choose the day and I will OK it. Obtaining input
from employees makes them feel valued and important. Besides, I trust that
they will know when it's OK to work at home.

I also plan to ASK each person what a good reward would be (everybody is
different), and make sure to thank them. I understand that it's their job, but
it goes a long way to boosting everyone's morale and productivity by saying
you appreciate them.

A friend's boss wanted to buy her a small token of appreciation for
successfully completing a huge project, and my friend jokingly said she wanted
a Hummer. The boss bought her one - a diecast collectible H2, and 6 years
later my friend still says that was the best gift she's ever gotten :)

