
“Anti-perks”: what our startup doesn't want in our office - aseemk
https://blog.even.com/anti-perks-4e2e49e80983
======
stefco_
> But as we grow in size, we also plan to grow in the diversity of our
> perspectives and backgrounds — which is even more reason not to add a bunch
> of extraneous or overly specific perks. Especially as our team diversifies,
> we can’t (and shouldn’t) strive to have a one-size-fits-all office or
> benefits package.

This is a great point about bringing in diverse hires. If you optimize your
perks to appeal to you, then you're likely to bring in people with the same
interests as you, and there are often strong correlations between interests
and demographics. I would certainly rather work somewhere with neutral-seeming
perks than a place where everyone was bonding over a bunch of perks I couldn't
care less about.

One of my friends is in an office environment where they play Quake III for an
hour a day. This perk is actually a mandatory bonding session. I love Quake
III, but he doesn't, and he feels like it's both a waste of time and a
reinforcement of a specific type of company culture that he doesn't really
relate to. He doesn't really mind it, but he has specifically listed it as one
of the reasons he is considering finding another job.

Having a more typically "professional" office setting, combined with some more
flexible perks (like flex funds for wellness), strikes me as a good way to
avoid filtering people out and inadvertently selecting for an overly specific
company culture.

In particular, if you're worried that hackers who fall outside of the
white/male/straight/cis gendered hacker stereotype are not coming to your
company in sufficient numbers, you want to avoid sending implicit signals that
your company is only into things that seem to appeal to this stereotype. Perks
are one source of those implicit signals.

~~~
djhworld
> One of my friends is in an office environment where they play Quake III for
> an hour a day. This perk is actually a mandatory bonding session

I've been a gamer for most of my life, but this would horrify me as a perk as
it's completely exclusionary (which backs up your point)

Imagine being the employee that doesn't play games, it's like mandatory doing
office sports

~~~
greenyoda
_" Imagine being the employee that doesn't play games..."_

Even worse, imagine being the employee who is a veteran with PTSD, or the
employee who was a refugee from a war zone like Bosnia who associates the
sound of gunfire with their parents being killed.

------
whiddershins
The one "perk" I think is uncommon but should be standard is nap rooms.

There are just so many people who are happier, healthier, and do better work
with a brief nap during the day. Unless you are walking distance from work,
splitting your workday like that is infeasible without an office culture that
supports it.

And consequently unlike most perks, it can't be offset by a simple salary
increase.

~~~
Avshalom
Offices (and at least one person with a hammock in their office) would negate
that as a perk.

Offices also diminish the impact of bringing a dog/cat/chinchilla to work and
the need for TV rooms (if you don't have everyone looking over your shoulder,
watching netflix on during break from your computer isn't an issue)

Though offices also run contrary to "Start up" being some hyper growth focused
company, if you plan on doubling the head count every year offices are
completely unfeasible.

~~~
hackbinary
Don't want dogs or cats in the office. Especially cats with all this stuff
coming out about toxoplasmosis.

~~~
Pica_soO
Toxoplasmosis has been linked to anger Issues with humans- so to keep Sales
aggressive- release the tiger.

~~~
watwut
When they say aggresize sales, last thing they mean is angry dude smashing
phone in the middle of discussion with potential client.

Just saying, aggressivity is not same as aggressively.

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kylec
Thank you for not allowing pets. I both dislike and am allergic to dogs, and
it annoys me when people think it's no big deal to bring their dog into the
office. This is not your home, this is a professional workspace that we all
share.

~~~
balls187
Tangentially unrelated, with all the kids with strong peanut alergies, what's
going to happen in 10 years--will offices ban peanuts and peanut based foods?

We informally had a dog policy at our old office, which was an offshoot
location. I'd bring my dogs in, until we hired a woman who had grown up in an
area of the world where wild dogs were a real problem, and was deathly afraid
of them. My co-workers loved having them in the office, but where you work
should provide an environment where everyone can do their best, and given dogs
weren't germaine to our business, it was best they were left at home from that
day forward.

~~~
edanm
I think that usually, peanut/other allergies are only dangerous if the person
is eating peanuts, which that person can avoid (or other food provided for
him/her if the office provides food).

If you're talking about a dog though, it is usually impossible for the person
to avoid the dog.

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cwyers
I'm not sure I've ever had whiplash as extreme as the point of this article
where I thought to myself, "Well finally, someone pushing back against the
excesses of VC-funded culture" and the line "we will compensate our employees
for a dog-sitter (via a flexible health and wellness stipend)."

~~~
ChuckMcM
Actually, it could address an interesting issue depending on how it is
implemented. If you gave team members a 'perks' stipend you could tax it
appropriately, and you could have your employee spend it on the things that
were important to them. Then create a way to scan your badge to access a perk
and voila, custom perks.

No, I don't actually think it is workable, the two arguments that will pop up
immediately are :

1) Just give me more money.

2) I don't want you to know which perks I use

~~~
civilian
The nice thing about perks is that they come out as company expenses--- so
they don't get hit by payroll taxes or personal income taxes. Which
potentially means that you get to double money spent on perks.

You're right that it would be cool if we could customize it. Give people
"perks cards", which come out of company expenses (takes advantage of the
above avoiding-income-tax multiplier) and let them spend it on whatever.

~~~
ChuckMcM
There is history here that you may not be aware of, it is a constant battle
between the IRS and companies. The IRS insists that companies 'break out' any
such company provided services on a per employee basis and include the value
of those services in the employee's W2 taxable income field.

Once a company reaches a size where the amount of tax revenue crosses some
threshold, the IRS starts bugging you. Apple, Google, SGI, Sun, IBM, and
Microsoft are all companies that I know of that have negotiated settlements of
one form or another.

~~~
civilian
Oh huh, I wasn't actually aware of that, but it makes sense! So I guess the
loopholes aren't really there to begin with...

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itamarst
Unfortunately, sounds like they fail at the minimum criteria for a sane
workweek. In particular: "our team tends to work long days".

Who cares about anti-perks or perks if you're expected to work crazy hours?

~~~
bassman9000
Sadly, there's no way around this for a new company. It's how the market works
today, and competition is fierce.

I think the idea is to add another opportunity to stretch, go out, socialize,
and talk about something other than work, which is probably beneficial when
working hard problems.

~~~
andrei_says_
No way around lost productivity, the possibly catastrophic cost of increased
bad decisions and mistakes resulting from fatigue and sleep deprivation, and
loss of key employees due to burnout?

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calcsam
Most in-office catered lunches are a lot more healthy than a burger or pizza.

~~~
excalibur
I think the point was that just getting up and going somewhere is healthier
than sitting in one place all day, regardless of what type of food you're
eating.

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romanovcode
> Our team tends to work long days, and if we don’t walk to lunch, we’ll
> likely be sitting in a chair for a minimum of eight hours a day.

Nice perk of working 8h+ per day! Love perks like these!

------
edanm
I like a lot of these. I especially connected with "going out for lunch" vs.
"catered lunches". I totally get why companies prefer catered lunches, and am
surprised more companies don't realize the benefits, but I really enjoy
leaving the office for a bit and getting some sun.

That said, one thing I have an issue with is this: "“Mandatory fun” office
events".

If we're talking a once-a-week thing, then yes, that's way over the top.

But if we're talking a company day out or something similar every half year or
so, I think it's incredibly important. I think the bonding effect is good, but
more importantly, if it's not coordinated, then there are people who will miss
it. For one thing, for people married with children, going to a random "people
in the office decided to go out today" is usually much harder than going to a
"scheduled 2 months in advance mandatory event". For another thing, it is easy
for this to devolve into some people bonding and everyone else not being part
of it. So I think it is beneficial to have a once-in-a-few-months bonding
experience.

(I also think lighter forms of this, like an in-office "happy hour" once a
week, is a pretty good idea too).

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hacking_again
I'm assuming blackout curtains are also an anti-perk? My eyes hurt from
looking at the picture, I could never work there.

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supercanuck
Aren't perks that are offered to everyone tax deductible and perks for
individuals not tax deductible?

and isn't it cheaper for us to provide dog walking services/chef services/kegs
etc to everyone, than each person access to their own individual dog walker,
paid lunch and paid for bar tab?

------
MarkCole
Something that stuck out for me:

> "Don’t get me wrong — Even has plenty of perks. Our team is offered paid
> vacation time (with a _minimum_ number of days off)"

Is paid vacation time really a perk? Is vacation time usually unpaid in the US
or something? Or maybe the perk is the minimum number of days off?

~~~
Endy
It's a major perk in the US. Vacation time is basically reserved for
management or C-Suite folks, especially if it's paid.

~~~
romanovcode
Wow unbelievable, I never knew that. For someone who works in EU this sounds
ridiculous.

~~~
scarface74
It’s not true for white collar work. For the most part, salaried and even non
salaried full time workers get at least 20 days of paid time off a year.

~~~
objectivetruth
Nope, average is 10. And this is gross: "A remarkable 23 percent of Americans
have no paid vacations and no paid holidays."

[https://gusto.com/framework/health-benefits/paid-vacation-
ti...](https://gusto.com/framework/health-benefits/paid-vacation-time-how-do-
you-stack-up/)

------
justinzollars
I like the attitude on alcohol.

~~~
bpicolo
At least not during work hours, at a minimum.

------
samfriedman
I wonder if they allow employees to expense lunch on the town, as opposed to
paying for catering. I believe Snap Inc. works with local eateries to provide
free food for employees, e.g.

~~~
geofft
Why can't they just pay more? I feel like one of the primary things I want a
salary for is meals.

~~~
TylerE
Perks have the advantage of being pre-tax.

So if you get $10 worth of perk (assuming it's something you'd buy anyway), it
only actually costs you somewhere between $5-8 depending on your tax bracket.

~~~
geofft
Why? That is, is there some specific social good that the authors of the tax
code were intending to accomplish by allowing companies to pay for lunch for
their employees pre-tax, or is this an unintended consequence ("loophole") of
some other coherent goal?

It seems to me like there isn't any reason for a tax code to allow not paying
taxes if the company is calling a transfer of money to the employee for the
purpose of buying food as a "perk", and yet tax the same money if it's called
a "salary".

~~~
TylerE
Nothing that high minded. You are simply taxed on income. Money the company
spends isn't personal income.

~~~
geofft
But that interpretation has ridiculously easy loopholes - why not just reduce
my salary by $10K and give me a $10K company-managed Amazon budget for
personal expenses? Why not just let the company book my personal vacation
travel via payroll deduction? Why not have the company rent my apartment and
sublet it to me? etc.

I'm coming at this from the position that the law _must_ say, if you're giving
a person access to a cash spending account that lets them buy things for
themselves but not giving them the cash directly, that still counts as income.
Is that true? If it's not true, why isn't everyone taking advantage of the
loophole? If it is, why is lunch a special case?

~~~
kilotaras
Only some of the benefits are excluded from income, food and health insurance
being the most popular. The rest have their value added to income and taxed
accordingly.

~~~
geofft
So why doesn't every employer give me a food FSA or something? Pretty much
everyone spends some of their salary on food....

------
matt_wulfeck
Extremely surprised not to see "open-office" on the list. I guess they
consider it a perk!

~~~
hyperrail
They say that they have moved away from a pure open office plan (thank
goodness!):

> Based on learning that people needed room for more styles of work and levels
> of collaboration, we added private rooms, shared offices, and flex spaces to
> our existing open layout.

------
whipoodle
I think the pet thing is more balanced than a straight up anti-perk, because
in situations where everyone is happy with it, it can be very nice to have.
But it's certainly not for everyone, and you don't want to make someone feel
like they're the "spoiler" if everyone else is ok with it.

~~~
whiddershins
If I were runnning a similar company I would try to find out if a balance
could be struck with structured "pet days" and "no pet days" ... I wonder if
even that would be too uncomfortable though, for people who really
fear/despise pets.

~~~
geofft
It's not just "fear" or "despise" \- if you're _allergic_ to pets, you're
mandating that some of your employees work from home on those days.

If you're okay with that, might as well let the pet owners work from home, no?

~~~
TylerE
Just "those days" may well not be good enough. I have fairly bad cat
allergies. I can feel it after just a few minutes in a room where a cat _was_.

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cjensen
It's a good list with a lot of sense. My one minor nit is that they don't
stock soda because it's not healthy. Let people be themselves and make their
own decisions: you should provide something to drink and it should be what the
employees want, not necessarily what you want.

~~~
palimpsests
Given how unhealthy soda is for an average human being when consumed
regularly, stocking soda is similar to stocking cigarettes. Not stocking this
shows a greater level of awareness around wellness, and also doesn't exclude
employees who choose to not consume it.

I think it's a great policy to not provide free poison to your employees, let
them pay for that themselves.

------
derefr
I'm someone who has mostly worked for startups, but I just came off a stint
working for IBM (Canada), and the difference in the "office culture" at IBM
from the startups I had worked at kind of blew me away.

IBM's office culture was basically built around two ideas: 1. that everyone
working on a team would be spread around the globe (not necessarily at first,
but certainly as IBM had to send them around to do sales engineering.) And 2.
that workflows should be designed to accommodate people with disabilities.

This led to a number of "features" that I will miss in any future startup:

• The offices have some "open-office"-like areas... but also cubicles, and
individual closed offices, and meeting rooms. All of these—except for some of
the cubicles—are flex-allocated. You just sit down at an empty one, and clean
up after yourself when you go. IBM even has "work centres"—offices just for
people (and entire teams) travelling, with no permanent staff other than
ops+janitorial. This office design style resembles EC2 (far moreso than your
average co-working space): you can "allocate" part of a floor to be a team's
office on any given day, and that space will be some _other_ team's office on
some other day. This is just as much about the culture (you don't "stake your
claim" to the space, any more than you would a library desk) as it is about
the amenities.

• Everything is done online, mostly over text. (Yes, yes, Lotus Notes. But
also, increasingly, Slack.) You don't have to come to the office; you can work
at a coffee shop, or from home, or from any other IBM office/work centre. You
just need to sign into the IBM VPN and you're good. Even weekly meetings are
electronic (though often over voice- or video-conference rather than text.)
You know who this is great for? People in a wheelchair. People with a sprained
ankle. People with social anxiety. New parents, past their leave period, who
still want to spend most of their time with their kids. People who don't speak
English well but can type and read it just fine. A hundred more types of
people, who SV never bothers to hire.

• There's a no-pets policy. There's a no-perfume policy. There's a no-music
policy. There's probably a bunch more. The spirit of these isn't "no
silliness"; it's "make allowances for people with sensory processing
disorders, even if you aren't aware that anyone you know here has one, because
it's their right not to tell you."

• IBM offices don't offer amenities like food (other than some meh coffee),
and they usually aren't close to anything, rather being in an office park that
with low land-values. If you're going to the office, you eat breakfast before
you go, and you bring a lunch with you. You eat dinner after going home.
Which, of course, means that everyone wants to go home at a reasonable hour,
so that they'll still have _time_ —and energy—to make and eat dinner. Going to
the office is like taking a day-trip. You pack for it.

To sum up, IBM basically assumes that everyone working there is a responsible
adult with a private life that is _important_ to them, that is respected _as_
private by others; and that, while at work, they'd like to get some _freaking
work done_ so that they can be done with it and go home.

If anyone has heard of a start-up that follows this philosophy, I'd love to
work there. (Otherwise, I'm open to starting a chain of co-working spaces that
operate like IBM's work-centres, and give all their member-startups a VPN
Intranet and a PBX for voice-conferenced meetings.)

~~~
watwut
I like everything about it except no perfume policy. People during summer
smell.

~~~
lancewiggs
Then they should wash. Perfume + odour is even worse than one alone.

------
kafkaesq
_Pet-friendly offices: I’m sure having a pet visit the office once would be a
treat, but every day quickly can become a burden on the team._

Disagree, given the observation that pets (provided they're well-behaved, are
well-groomed etc) reduce stress and promote empathy. It's just a question of
measure - somewhere between "once" and "every day" there are these notions of
"once in a while" or "from time to time". Which I suspect would be optimal,
for this particular indulgence.

~~~
Daishiman
I have been in environments where dogs are not well-disciplined and will pee
on the floor and bark annoyingly while we're trying to focus. No thanks.

~~~
kafkaesq
Hence the "well-behaved, well-groomed" constraint.

If you're in an office where dogs are peeing and barking (and no one knows
what to do about it) - then clearly you have a _people_ problem, not a dog
problem.

------
Dowwie
"I’m sure having a pet visit the office once would be a treat, but every day
quickly can become a burden on the team."

Would people who are burdened by an office dog please share your experiences?

~~~
throwaway2016a
We have a dog friendly office and it drives me crazy sometimes. One dog is
fine but when you get them in pairs they like to play. And having a dog
wrestling 4 feet away from you is distracting.

I like dogs and I will make it a point to befriend the ones in the office but
at some point it becomes disruptive.

~~~
balls187
Yes, that's kind of the key. A single dog at the office is great.

A bunch of dogs turns the office into a dog park.

I love dogs, have two of em, wife is a key member of a dog rescue, and I loved
bringing my dogs in the office. But no way do I want a bunch of dogs at the
office.

------
drraid0
Are we supposed to know who Even is?

------
alexpetralia
I feel this list greatly depends on the culture and employee composition.

------
spamlord
this place sounds like a nightmare to work at. no drinking, anti dog policies,
no thanks.

~~~
vaishaksuresh
Imagine how normal work places feel like to people who don't drink, are
introverts and don't like to be greeted by dogs all the time.

~~~
Aloha
How do you mean normal? Outside of startup land, a pet policy and free booze
at work is kind of unusual.

~~~
vaishaksuresh
I mean normal as in normal silicon valley startup.

