
Getting rid of free office snacks doesn't come cheap - surement
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-09/why-getting-rid-of-free-office-snacks-doesn-t-come-cheap
======
drblast
One of the best comments I've ever read on Hacker News was about this topic. I
wish I'd saved the link.

The point was that this engineer took the removal of any perk as a sign to
leave, and soda/snacks was a huge one.

Why? During the early stages of the company, the "free" soda and food was
something everyone chipped in for to save money. And why shouldn't they all
save money by buying things like this in bulk? The "free" things were more
valuable to each employee than the total bulk cost of those things.

The "taking away" of this "perk" represented a shift from a company that one
was a valued member of to one that had a management vs. employees mentality.
The idea became that the free soda/snacks was something that management gifted
to employees to keep them happy.

And that shift in culture was the signal to leave.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Yup. The relationship between employee and employer is a 2 way street, and it
may not seem like it some times but both of them have tremendous power. When
the employer starts doing dumb shit and increasingly makes it obvious they
don't truly value the employee they pick up on that. And then they start
leaving. Who leaves first? Oh, just the people who are the most intrinsically
motivated, who care about the work the most, who have the most
talent/experience and can easily find a job elsewhere (and know it). And when
those people start to leave it starts a cascade. Because when the best, most
talented, most experienced people leave it makes the working environment
worse. A big aspect of job satisfaction for devs is working around other
talented and capable folks, when that diminishes it creates a bigger incentive
to leave. So more and more people leave, generally the people who have the
easiest time finding jobs.

So talent and experience just start evaporating out of the company. And before
you know it there's an enormous brain drain happening.

The thing is, this isn't obvious to people higher up until much, much later.
And then it tends to manifest itself as a reduced capability to execute on
projects, especially difficult ones. But almost always there's a zillion other
things that one can readily blame for such things because no project is the
same from cycle to cycle. And, of course, management is generally resistant to
the notion that they fucked up and screwed the company over with short-sighted
policies. Who would imagine that something as simple as getting rid of free
soda could translate into not being able to ship on time years later? That's
preposterous? But these are just the rocks in the river that the currents and
eddies swirl around, they're the visible aspects of sentiment and changes that
run deep and are invisible unless you're in the trenches and paying close
attention.

Devs aren't a "cost center", they're the value that the entire company is
built around. Treat them well and you'll be able to keep the best ones around
for a long time, which is an enormous competitive advantage.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
I've often heard this "the best ones leave first because they're in demand"
meme presented as fact. It sounds logical enough, but is there any evidence
that this is really what happens?

Sometimes, the best and brightest are also the most invested into the
organization's success, hence the least likely to leave. They may be earning a
top salary, they may have the ear of the CEO, or they may just love their job
too much to pack up and leave on a whim.

It's been my experience that the biggest complainers when it comes to belt
tightening policies are in fact the lesser contributors. The little dog yaps
the loudest. I don't know exactly why, but it often seems this way.

~~~
jcadam
I work at a small satellite office for a large company. I have no issues with
the local management, but the general sentiment is our cost-cutting obsessed
overlords up at corporate HQ just don't care about morale/retention.

Senior people don't care as much about free soda as the young folks do.
However, we do tend to have families and kids, so when you constantly erode
our medical (higher premiums and deductibles starting next year, but at least
they didn't nearly _double_ our share of the premium like they did last year),
dental, and vacation benefits, we lose motivation.

...and then we end up reading hacker news when we should be working.

------
tbrake
I've always liked the explanation given by __--__ [0] in a HN thread long ago
on a Steve Blank post "The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas Are No Longer
Free"[1] about the same subject :

> "I'm not management, but I've had it described to me like this: cutting
> soda, while it may be insignificant and certainly isn't going to change a
> damned thing money-wise for the company, makes the management feel better
> about the situation. It makes them feel like they're doing something and
> something is better than nothing. It's also a CYA tactic. If the CEO wants
> to hold somebody personally accountable, the CFO can say "look, we did
> everything, we even cut back the soda!"

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5757467](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5757467)

[1] [http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-
eart...](http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-
earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/)

~~~
crimsoneer
I mean...they're saving $600,000. That's not nothing.

~~~
lifeformed
Out of $2.5B? That's $0.0006B. I mean, it basically is nothing...

For 36,000 employees, that's less than $17 per person. Meanwhile, the CEO gets
paid $21,800,000 per year.

~~~
noonespecial
The real question is that if the CEO somehow knew for certain that cutting the
soda would allow him to earn that 21,800,000 but keeping the soda would boost
productivity earning him 22,500,000 instead, would he cut it anyway because
that's just the way things should be done?

~~~
lifeformed
I bet the soda cut was more about keeping up the appearance of doing
something. His compensation is probably more directly affected by his
perceived effectiveness than from the subtle productivity benefits more soda
would bring.

~~~
tbrake
Right! It's low impact, high visibility. And the last line of the old post -
"we _even cut out_ the sodas" \- is a great soundbite.

To borrow from the common criticism of the TSA - it's cost cutting theatre.

------
austenallred
It's funny: For a lot of the employees we've hired offering to buy a $500
monitor or a $600 chair moved the needle on how excited they were more than a
$5,000 or $10,000 change in salary would.

I think there are a few things that play into that: If you made an extra
$10,000 you'd want to do something responsible with it, but you wouldn't
really notice an instantaneous change in your day-to-day life.

But I think more importantly than that it signals that you're supposed to have
a good experience and be taken care of. Saying, "Look, if you want/need a
monitor or computer to work consider it done" says something about the
company. Your success means something to them.

What can office snacks possibly cost a company? Say it's a 10-person company,
snacks would cost _maybe_ $1,000/month on the high end? And at that point
you're probably burning >$120,000/month in salaries. It's barely even a drop
in the bucket, assuming we're not talking about infinite catered meals.

~~~
tetraodonpuffer
that is a huge pet peeve of mine, the whole nickel and diming and paying
developers $xxx,xxx a year and expecting them to make do with a single $200
1080p crappy monitor and the cheapest possible pc one can get.

This seems to happen sometimes because of budgeting issues and silos and so
on, but it is still penny wise and pound foolish to expect "passionate" folks
and not give them the tools to excel, and creates ongoing friction which will
definitely not help with attrition/retention.

If I owned my company I would honestly nowadays give every developer an 8-core
128gig workstation or two with 2-3 21:9 35" 1440p screens and 1TB+ of nvme ssd
and a $1k+ allowance to get whatever best-of-the-best chair they want to get
(say, a steelcase leap or similar)

Even if you spent $10k on each engineer for this (and the above would be less
than that) it would be worth it just from the perspective of you want your
employees' workspace to get out of the way as much as possible to enable them
to be productive and write good quality code.

The output and code quality gains from having a top-of-the-line
machine/monitor pay for themselves in spades, but for some reason this never
seems to be noticed in any company I have worked for, it can go from "we are a
startup, we have no money to waste" all the way to "we are a large company and
beholden to our shareholders, we have no money to waste" but the end result is
the same, the people who could do with better tools don't get them and gripe
(justifiably) about it.

~~~
beagle3
On the other hand, getting your team spoiled like that can easily make a
product that only works for people who have top-of-the-line conditions.

e.g: (2nd hand info - might be wrong) There's a recent Batman game that fails
to work properly, and in fact, was essentially pulled from the market and re-
released almost unchanged once common-enough gamer machines (still not "very
common") caught up with the specs needed for the game.

another e.g: Facebook now does 2G Tuesdays[0] in which network speed is
(optionally) purposely degraded to 2G speeds, to make sure that the
technologically spoiled Facebook engineers and designers get an idea of the
service their lesser-equipped users get.

[0] [http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-2g-tuesdays-to-
slow-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-2g-tuesdays-to-slow-
employee-internet-speeds-down-2015-10)

~~~
icebraining
That shows a need for proper test equipment (and guidelines/practices that
require those tests), not for an handicapping of the primary tools.

Requiring PC game developers to write a game on a old PC makes no more sense
than requiring PSP game developers to write the game on a PSP.

~~~
beagle3
Possibly, but that's a different discussion, and one that -- unlike the
"primary tools" discussion, cannot be solved by throwing more money at it.

In my opinion and experience, unless you already have proper testing
practices, for PC development it is better to make sure your developers have
test rigs on their table that are comparable to end user equipment -- and, in
most cases, it's better if it is their development machine.

> Requiring PC game developers to write a game on a old PC makes no more sense
> than requiring PSP game developers to write the game on a PSP.

"Old" is a spectrum. Most people on this thread say a (e.g. channeling
Spolsky) your developer should have the best machine money can buy - with
128GB of ram, 8 cores, 1TB SSD. That's not on the "old" / "new" gamer machine
spectrum at all. It's on a completely different scale, given that most gamer
machines these days (AFAIK) have 16GB of ram quad cores with 256GB, and casual
gamers have 8GB with 128GB SSD or even an HDD

I would require PSP developers to test and debug on a real PSP rather than an
emulator - but since PC is both the dev and the target environment, it is
reasonable _in most cases_ to require the dev PC to be comparable to the
deployment PC, and that would essentially guarantee proper function (at some
dev cost, compared to the "best machine money can buy", but with significantly
reduced "you need to fix this" testing feedback cost, with a likely overall
positive effect -- at least from my experience).

~~~
icebraining
Frankly, I think setting up a standard testing VM with limited resources (2-4
cores, 8GB of RAM, small disk) makes much more sense than purposefully
reducing programmer productivity.

------
patmcc
Cutting snacks is a great signal to employees that they aren't worth the
$2/day of Dr. Pepper they consume.

Instead of cutting snacks just cut the job of whoever proposes that as a cost
cutting measure. Probably save more money and nip a lot of other problems in
the bud.

~~~
rgbrenner
Sprint saved less than $0.05/day per employee by cutting snacks.

~~~
Johnny555
I think you're counting all sprint employees, even field workers and store
employees, but the free snacks were only available in the corporate office.
Also, I think you're assume 365 days/year, but the snacks were likely only
available for ~ 253 workdays/year.

According to Wikipedia, the corporate office has around 7,000 full time
employees (not including 4,000 contract workers), so the company could have
saved as much as much as 35 cents per employee per day.

~~~
fleitz
35 whole cents? Stop the presses! Assuming you pay minimum wage that's like
getting everyone to spend an extra 2 minutes a day

~~~
scholia
As someone who has spent 15 years working in Microsoft Office all day, I'd
rather they saved 35c on snacks than 45c on Office. I know which one would hit
my productivity hardest ;-)

~~~
fleitz
Yes, that too, it's unbelievable how cheap Office is compared to hourly
salary. Great tools are essential to doing a great job.

------
swang
>
> [http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/technology/article11...](http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/technology/article1123165.html)

Marcelo Claure, current CEO was paid $1 million, with a $500k signing bonus,
on top of $24 million in stock

Previous CEO Dan Hesse was paid $1.2 million as part of $49 million worth of
compensation.

> Axing the free food will shave $600,000 from the budget

... Let them eat cake! (okay obviously not that extreme, but you know: bread
is to office snacks as cake is to... millions in bonuses).

~~~
moron4hire
I'll run your company into the ground for you for _half_ what the other guy is
charging. Hiring me as CEO will save you just as much as cutting the food
budget. You can't afford to _not_ hire me.

~~~
Evgeny
Hire him, username checks out. :)

------
mynegation
OK, I'll play the devil's advocate here. I am against free snacks in the
office. First of all, it tends to be utter garbage: muffins, chips, cheese
sticks, soda, sugary drinks, cookies etc. Has anyone tried to calculate lost
productivity from health issues arising from eating that highly processed junk
full of salt, sugar, and trans fats?

Second, snacks in the office might make more sense in the suburban offices in
the places with extreme climate swings (think Schaumburg or Kanata) where
getting out of office for a snack is an ordeal. In large downtown cores like
Toronto or New York I would say a stroll for a snack is more refreshing for
productivity than mindlessly eating chips in front of the computer after a
short run to the cafeteria.

Third, there is this "useless perk" consideration. I'd rather get the share of
money spent on the junk food and do whatever I want with them.

~~~
bpodgursky
> I'd rather get the share of money spent on the junk food and do whatever I
> want with them.

That would be true if not for taxes. A meal at the office is effectively
40-50% cheaper than the corresponding paycheck increase.

~~~
kspaans
Aren't perks for employees a taxable benefit? (Maybe the employer pays the
taxes rather than the employee...)

~~~
spacecowboy_lon
I think the IRS for some reason hasn't clamped down on this benefit in kind.
HMRC wanted to charge the employees tax when one big UK employer wanted to
roll out free tea and coffee.

Apparently the CFO got pissed off over this found a loop hole and we all got
120 free shares that year as a way of going F You to HMRC

~~~
kspaans
Yeah for snacks and company-provided meals I can see it being grey enough to
be "meh". But I remember back when I worked at RIM in Waterloo, I heard that a
reason they couldn't sell parking passes to their underused parking lots near
the UW campus was that it would make the 'free' passes employees got a taxable
benefit (and all of the headaches that implied). I guess if the perks can be
taken from the office (phone bills paid?) that's an easy argument for
taxability.

------
makecheck
I worked as an engineer at a place that not only had free soda but one of the
multi-flavor fountains like you'd see in a fast food place. It was initially
quite cool; you could come in with your cup and just fill up whatever you
wanted.

Of course, soda syrup costs literally pennies. Food places pay more for cups
than soda, and since the engineering group wasn't buying that many cups
(people used their own) the cost was essentially wrapped up in the machine
itself.

Now comes the true stupidity. To "cut costs" they stopped refilling the soda
dispenser but _they kept the machine_ and _even left it plugged in_. It became
a glorified ice dispenser (when the break room _already had a different ice
dispenser_ ), consuming electricity. It had a bunch of now-useless fountain
dispensers on the front of it.

Think about that. The company decided not to pay the pennies it would have
cost to make employees happy, and elected to continue operating a machine that
didn't have any reason to exist without the soda. The beginning of the end was
signaled loud and clear to employees and I saw a marked drop in giving-a-crap-
about-things after that point. The company is not around anymore, long since
divided into pieces and sold to the lowest bidder.

~~~
vacri
Why wouldn't you sell the pieces to the highest bidder?

~~~
lucasnemeth
They were masochists.

------
happywolf
I had a really relevant experience in my ex-company. It was a small company
doing video analytics and monitoring. It did well in initial stage and the
pantry was stocked with real bean coffee maker, beers, sodas, and pastries.
Then its business went down hill, and the beer was removed (beers are
expensive in Singapore), then cheap beans were used, then no bean coffee but
3-in-1 instant coffees. Guess what was the ultimate items they scrimped on?
Toilet paper. You read it right and I am not kidding. They swapped 3-ply to
2-ply and that was when I called it quit. The company went bankrupt after 1.5
years.

The lesson here is not about how much 'gift' it was taken from employees, it
is more on the changing wind in the air that employees need to watch out for.
If a company is so desperate to cut snacks, usually it means it has much
bigger shit at the backyard that employees may or may not be aware of.

~~~
tbrownaw
* Guess what was the ultimate items they scrimped on? Toilet paper. You read it right and I am not kidding. They swapped 3-ply to 2-ply and that was when I called it quit.*

...I wasn't aware that 3-ply was even a thing. That said, my lack of attention
to brand names means I've discovered quite a range of quality in the local
2-ply offerings here.

~~~
happywolf
Actually I wasn't aware the difference either until the admin (she was my
friend as well) complained about there was nothing left to 'optimize'...

I must clarify i called it quit not because of the lack of 3-ply paper for my
backside, but I felt it was really an issue for a company trying to save on
such thing. My reasoning was right.

~~~
tajen
I had to supply my own soap in their toilets during the legal 3-month notice
period at Atos, France. I'm sorry, they deserve to be named.

------
imperialdrive
Every startup company I've visited has in-house snacks and drinks. Works
wonders for them keeping people in the office more hours of the day. Sprint is
a beast. I doubt many people work a single minute over their schedule.

Now, you don't see the higher-ups partake often, they know better. Much better
for the soul to walk around the block, get some sun and air, and grab a coffee
or snack. I get to know my neighbors as well. Builds community outside the
office...

------
thinkingkong
What a weird decision.

600,000 for sprint is such a drop in the bucket, but at scale these line items
like "snacks" look like big numbers.

As a side note: lots of people are commenting on the quality of snacks as
being the reason to not bother with them. Obviously if you're just supplying
people with Dr Pepper and Mars bars you won't get much of a benefit. The
snacks you bring into the office should satisfy a few things

1) You dont go hungry

2) You eat something healthy

3) You continue to harness the "serendipity of the office"

------
lordfoom
> "There's an old saying where they say the goal is to pluck the feathers from
> the bird with the least amount of squawking," said Chamberlain. The less
> visible the cuts, the better—even if it means taking money out of employee
> pockets. "Changes to contributions to employee retirement plans," he
> suggested as a less disruptive cut than emptying the snack larder. "These
> are highly obscure from a worker standpoint."

That's some cold shit right there.

~~~
jib
I'm ok with that. Perception matters. I dont think it is cold as much as
realistic. I would much rather have my contributions to the pension cut.

Someone decided that providing milk is too much of a pain in my office. We
used to have a guy who dumped off a dozen litres fresh milk a day in the break
areas. Now I buy my own. That annoys me. Buying milk takes up cognitive space
that I could use for other stuff.

No milk annoys me way more than if we were to cut pension contribution cap by
1%.

I save about 500 euro/month or so in the pension (I dont even know exactly how
much, I just went with the cap). Lowering the cap by a percent would probably
save about 50 euro / month per employee or so. There is no way I spend 50 euro
/ month on milk.

Cutting the pension contribution cap by 1% would have been a worse deal
financially for me, but the milk annoys me way more than a cap cut does.

------
justjico
Not long ago I was running a small office of 4-6 devs and at least once a
month I would make a trip to Costo or Sams and buy some good stock of soda's
and snacks for everyone. This was easy to do, and cost negligible. Then at
some point I hired an admin assistant and she correctly pointed out that, long
term, this was likely a very bad thing for everyone's health. Drinking 1 or 2
soda's a day is not healthy for anyone. I know we were all adults in the
office but at least I felt responsible for providing more healthy
alternatives. Easier said than done as I was never really able to figure a
good alternative at that scale. Most beverages in a can seemed as bad or worse
than soda. I wonder if the office density in cities like SF or big startup
hubs offer an alternative for this. I mean logistics of fresh fruit vs once a
month trip are very different.

~~~
ElijahLynn
Yeah, I fear that as someone who will likely run a tech company or manage etc.

I don't really want to buy shit food for people that I know they really want.
It just doesn't feel right. Buy a bunch of organic fruits and veggies and bean
dips or whatever and I feel like they would still want the crap food anyways.

Suck a pickle.

~~~
honestcoyote
It's not as bad a dilemma as you think. Buy the doritos and buy the fresh food
too. You show respect for your employees by respecting their wishes and you
show you care about them by offering healthier options.

------
ceratopisan
The same goes for better keyboards or chairs for employees. I'll have a
coworker say "this keyboard is uncomfortable" or "I'm squinting a lot at this
monitor", and when I offer to order something different, they reflexively say
"Oh, don't get anything too fancy!"

If the company's going to ask someone to work years of their life away, the
least a company can do is make sure the damage to vision, posture and wrists
is minimized. Note minimized - it gets a little more clear when you realize
that nobody really comes out of a career with _better_ health - even if it's
just age.

(someone will probably pop up and say "But I'm more healthy working now that
I've lost weight at 50 years of age than I was at 30!" Fine. But you'll never
get to be 30 again, fat or thin.)

~~~
mrbill
I showed up at my first day at the new gig with my own keyboard (tenkeyless
Cherry MX brown keyswitches) and mouse. Multiple people said "Hey, you don't
have to bring your own stuff, just tell us what you want and we'll order it."

Having spent a decade at a much larger company (Halliburton) I feel absolutely
_spoiled_ at this place. The system they gave me on Monday? Brand new 2015
Macbook Pro Retina 15" with 512G SSD and 16G RAM (and external USB3 hub and
USB3 SATA HD for Time Machine backups). Two 23" monitors were already on my
desk waiting with DVI-to-Mini-Displayport adapters.

Today I sent a request for a desk lamp, and someone walked in 30 minutes later
with two and asked which one I preferred. This afternoon I requested a license
key for VMWare Fusion 8, and had it in email about an hour later. This stuff
would have taken weeks, or never been approved, at my previous gig - where
half the stuff on my desk was brought in from home because purchase requests
would have been rejected with "You have a keyboard already, why do you need an
expensive one?"

~~~
jagtesh
Do you mind telling us the name of your new workplace?

~~~
mrbill
cPanel in Houston. Awesome people and work environment, so far.

~~~
mrbill
Today the Das Keyboard 4C was waiting on my desk when I arrived (it was
requested two days ago) and the big and tall office chair I requested was
delivered (assembled) this afternoon. I feel so spoiled compared to places
I've worked at before.

~~~
mrbill
When I inquired about a better chair, I wrote "I'm a big dude and the chair I
have now won't last more than month or two with me on it. Do we have options
for better chairs? No rush, whenever you have time."

One of the facilities guys came by a couple hours later, said "We have two
options for big and tall chairs, want to follow me and you can try out the
ones that a couple other people have?" The first one I tried out in someone
else's office (they were gracious and said "sure, he can try mine") worked, I
said "This one will do". He rolled it in, assembled, into my office the very
next afternoon!

Sort of a funny contrast from my first day at my first "real" IT job at an ISP
in Oklahoma City in 1995 - "here's a screwdriver, you get to assemble your own
desk." That first day happened to also be April 19 - the day of the OKC
Bombing. What a first day.... We ended up winning awards for our duct-tape-
and-bailing-wire on-the-fly 'Net coverage of the event...

Everyone oohs and ahhs about the perks that Googlers and Facebookers have -
but I'm feeling pretty damned spoiled here in Houston.

------
J-dawg
If we're talking about corporate stinginess, look no further than IBM's London
office. They don't even provide a place to make your own tea or coffee, let
alone the actual tea or coffee. Bringing in your own kettle is banned. The
best you can do is buy a cup of hot water from the canteen for 23p and put
your own teabag in.

It's become a bit of a running joke among staff there, but nobody seems to
seriously complain about it. I guess they've just got used to it. I do think
it says something about IBM's current attitude to its employees.

------
joshstrange
Personally snacks aren't huge for me. They are normally junk food or something
"healthy" like baked chips which I also don't eat. Now fruit is something I
would be interested in but the short shelf life of things like that normally
makes it unattractive to businesses. Also drinks don't interest me much as I
drink water all day. All of that said I've worked at places that had snacks
and worked with coworkers who took advantage of those snacks all the time and
they seemed to really enjoy that perk. So I don't hate when a place has
snacks/drinks it's just not a value-add for me 99% of the time.

Now free lunch every once in awhile? That's a very attractive perk. I once
worked for a company that took all the employees (max of ~15) out to lunch
once a week which was a lot of fun. We rotated between everyone to choose
where to go so everyone got a choice and just about anywhere you would go
there would be at least something you liked. Now I get that snacks/drinks
probably cost way less but we wouldn't have had to go out to eat. I've got
friends at jobs that regularly cater in food which is pretty awesome as well.

Right now the company I work at has a cafeteria (with subsidised prices, lunch
is max of $5 more or less) so cost of food and need to leave campus really
isn't an issue and every once in awhile we have a free lunch event like for
Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Christmas, etc... This ticks so many more boxes
for me than free snacks/drinks ever would.

~~~
tracker1
Where I work now, I had requested fresh fruit be added to the snack bins...
unfortunately it goes so quickly that there's rarely any there when I get
around to a snack in the later afternoon...

------
mrbill
I just started (two days ago) at a company that not only provides free drinks
(soda, coffee, tea) and snacks ($10 credit per week for the vending machines),
but they cater lunch from a local restaurant every day. If you don't want what
is being served that day, you have a $10 daily credit that can be used at a
local deli sandwich shop (and have it delivered).

I accepted the job without hesitation even though it's a tiny pay cut over
what I was making previously. "little things" like this can make a huge
difference in employee morale.

------
imgabe
_Watch Next: Four Ways to Nap at Your Desk_

I found this a highly amusing follow up to this article.

------
btilly
A more humorous take on the same topic is
[http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/junk-food-
fi...](http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/junk-food-first-
published-in-2005.html).

------
rdl
Unless I'm at Google (or Facebook, or a few other places of that quality), I
seem to end up mainly bringing my own snacks. Companies usually provide crappy
shelf stable junk food.

I'd love an office which had great drinks even if it had no food.

~~~
spinlock
Right. I hate the snacks in our office because it's all chips and junk (no
free drinks here :( ) But, I bet Sprint could really cut down on snack costs
by providing celery sticks and water instead of chips and soda (no one would
eat anything).

~~~
rdl
My definition of "healthy" is different -- I'd want low-carb. But really, just
listening to employees and customizing from there.

~~~
TorKlingberg
I don't think there are a lot of carbs in celery and water.

------
misiogames
I worked for a big company that had this policy: "no free stuff, we just going
to pay you top dollar and you can buy whatever you want" good, nobody
complain. When they added free snacks I knew it was time to jump ship :P

------
jwcacces
Getting rid of snacks if the earliest and easiest to recognize sign of time
find a better job

------
mikekchar
What I am about to say will probably anger a lot of people, but I think it is
worth thinking about, so I'll just go ahead and say it.

I have to say that I don't think that snacks are really the issue. I've worked
in offices with snacks and offices without snacks and I don't think it makes
any difference at all. Snacks (and monitors and new computers and expensive
chairs and company purchased gadgets) are a proxy for appreciation. It is
quite easy to set up a delivery of drinks. Everyone can chip in, and as
programmers get paid multiples of the minimum wage everywhere in the world,
every programmer can afford it. However, when I have worked on teams that
attempted to do this, it has been shut down by those that feel that "We should
not have to do this. The company should provide for us!"

There is a rock star mentality amongst programmers. To be honest, I don't
think it's unique to programmers. Sales people and management traditionally
have their junkets that say to them, "You are special". Just like a
salesperson would ideally like an open bar, programmers would ideally like an
open budget for snacks/toys.

But _why_ do programmers and managers and salespeople value this extra (and
really inconsequential) thing? Shouldn't actual appreciation trump the
purchase of drinks, or gadgets or copious quantities of alcohol? In my
experience, it does _not_. We have all seen and heard horror stories of bad
management and we have all had the feeling of "Well, if I have to put up with
this crap, they are going to have to pay a lot of money." But I have also seen
good managers go to unreasonable extremes to help employees and to back them
through difficult times. Instead of thinking, "I have an amazing manager. I
don't care about soda." normally I see reactions that border on "What have you
done for me lately? This cheap crap is unacceptable."

I have never been in a traditional management role ("agile coach" is the
closest I've come and I always concentrated on improving the skills of
developers rather than working on business processes). What I find frustrating
about this situation is that smart managers realize that for an extra 10% of
their budget, they can provide a modicum of luxury for the programmers in lieu
of actual appreciation. Soda trumps helping a developer make it through a
rough patch in their life. A monitor with pixels too small to even see is more
important than being able to sit down and talk about how to make work
situations better. Programmers will burn down the building if they don't get
their name brand chair, but will tolerate never having discussions about how
to develop their career.

That sucks.

~~~
matwood
I see snacks and/or sodas as just a proxy. A company who thinks about their
employees enough to provider sodas and coffee is often the same company who
thinks about career development or helping an employee through a rough patch.
Remember, the free soda is not about the free soda as much as it is a signal
about how the company acts towards employees.

------
blt
Taking away snacks might cause grumbling... Take away coffee and you might as
well put the company up for sale.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
As Dave Barry would say: "I am not making this up!".

I once visited this company
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLSI_Technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLSI_Technology)
and they had a room with vending machines where you had to buy your own
coffee.

Not somewhere I'd ever consider working.

~~~
vonmoltke
> As Dave Barry would say: "I am not making this up!".

I have only had personal contact with one company outside of SV that offered
free coffee (my current company doesn't count, because the machine is provided
by the management company we rent our offices from). To me, free coffee is the
exception, not the rule.

------
welly
As a self confessed sugar addict, I wish my office _didn 't_ have free snacks.
Or that they'd change them to something healthy.

------
simonh
This subject came up at a previous employer and one of my colleagues argued
that she didn't drink soda or eat snacks and it was unfair to offer freebies
that she got no benefit from, and if you want snacks and drinks you should pay
for them yourself.

At first I thought that was being a bit mean, but when you scale up an
organisation you might go from having one or two people of that opinion to
having hundreds or thousands. Big organisations have to pay a lot more
attention to issues of fairness and discrimination, and being seen to
implicitly subsidize a lifestyle or habit clearly detrimental to health such
as snacks and soft drink consumption is actually a bit of a can of worms.
Subsidizing things like gym membership could be seen as discriminatory as well
I suppose, but at least it can be justified to shareholders on the basis that
it's a benefit to the company to have healthy employees.

~~~
atom-morgan
I'm in the same situation as your colleague. But this would be like me asking
for extra vacation because I don't plan on having kids.

------
chrisbennet
Sometimes people do counterproductive things (to the company) because of poor
incentives.

If someone gets rewarded for cuttings costs, but not for increasing company
revenue, guess what they do?

If HR gets rewarded for hiring a low risk, average employee but doesn't get
any credit for hiring a brilliant college drop out, guess what they do?

------
skybrian
Cutting snacks altogether shows lack of creativity. A more subtle move is to
switch to healthier (and less popular) snacks.

------
analog31
I wonder if the snacks become a necessary medication for boredom, and taking
them away places the level of boredom in sharp relief.

------
oxplot
I can understand the convenience of having snacks a dozen steps away, but
where is the evidence that correlates the length of time present in the office
with productivity? I can certainly tell from my own experience that stepping
outside for even 5 minutes boosted my mental state after I returned.

------
mamon
In Poland no snack is really free: if company provides it then it's obliged to
count it as employee's taxable income. That's how ridiculous this country is
:)

EDIT: there's also one more ridiculous example of taxation in Poland: if
company throws a party for its employees (there are many such parties, usually
focused around "Employee of the month" awards, and other corporate bullshit)
then attending such party counts as "income" for the employee. But, according
to Tax Office, you have to pay tax even if you don't attend a party, because
the opportunity to attend is your income by itself :)

------
glenndebacker
Where I work we have a soda machine and a can of soda costs about 0,80 euro
cent, which isn't that really cheap knowing how much a soda can costs.The idea
is that we so fund tickets for a local PHP conference. Water and fruit is
free.

I don't have particular negative feelings about it (there are more important
things) but it is certainly one of the more remarkable differences if I
compare it will all the other places that I have worked. My previous employer
was even mad if you took soda's from home.

The most choice I ever had was working at Lernout and Hauspie. All the free
soda, coffee or even soup that you could possibly think of.

------
Shank
When I worked in an office position doing very demanding work on intelligence
software, the only thing that acted as a good reprieve from the day to day
grind was being able to get up, go to the break room, and get something to eat
and snack on to keep everything going. It was an excellent thing to have --
cutting it could easily kill off that kind of "brain refresh" that's needed in
highly technical jobs. Sprint certainly employs IT and development, and if
these cuts affect them, they're almost certainly signing a death warrant for
their company if their most skilled employees start leaving.

~~~
daemin
Having a common place with free snacks also allows people from different
groups to come together and mingle, exchanging ideas and knowledge through the
company.

At my first job the new good coffee machine was a place we'd all congregate at
twice a day for a coffee and a chat between teams and other random people in
the company.

------
a3n
If management feels they _need_ to cut snacks, sodas, whatever, then they've
lost confidence in the company's viability. Time to leave.

------
bluedino
What if your employees start abusing it and taking the snacks home?

[http://worldofsu.com/philipsu/goodbye-microsoft-hello-
facebo...](http://worldofsu.com/philipsu/goodbye-microsoft-hello-facebook/)

------
paganel
What's wrong with leaving the office in order to get one's "munchie fix"? How
else are we going to breath some fresh air during the day? Or to actually
walk, on our two legs, not barely moving from one chair to another?

------
prawn
A canary-in-the-coal-mine indicator of cultural change in a growing business.

------
lyschoening
> "They would never have given the snacks to begin with if they didn’t think
> it was helping boost productivity somehow."

The same logic explains why austerity on the national level does not work.

------
illumen
This is a classic way for management to get people to leave. Make the
conditions worse, and people leave. Then management don't need to pay them to
leave.

------
madengr
Hell, my employer of 2500 people doesn't even offer free rot-gut coffee.

------
bra-ket
actually snacks are very unhealthy

