
The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas Are No Longer Free (2009) - ohjeez
http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/
======
smacktoward
Back in the original dot-com bubble, I worked at a place that had the most
amazing coffee machine I've ever seen. It was the size of a Coke machine and
made ten thousand varieties of boutique coffee, most of which I'd never even
heard of, all made to your specifications. It was incredible.

Then one day a guy came in with a hand cart, loaded the coffee machine on it,
and rolled it away. A week later the layoffs started.

The lesson here isn't that there's something intangible or magic about free
sodas or coffee. It's that when you _used to_ give out free sodas and coffee,
and then you _stop_ , you're telling everyone in the company that business
isn't as good as it used to be. Beverages are an easy thing for the bean-
counters to get approval to cut, so when times get tough, they get cut first.
But they're also a small line item, so while they're the first thing to get
cut, they're usually not the last.

In other words, the free sodas are the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
When they die, it's time to get out if you don't want to die with them.

This is why, when I visit clients these days, I make a point of going with
them to their break room to get some coffee before our meeting starts. If
their beverage situation has been upgraded since my last visit, they're doing
well. If it's been downgraded, I know to be on guard for bean-counters coming
after my relationship with them.

~~~
t2d2
I started putting my resume out when the free soda ended too. funny thing was
my old boss got angry when I mentioned that as one of the reasons I wasn't
happy any longer. He said they didn't take it away they just stop providing
it. for the life of me I cannot tell what the difference is.

~~~
genwin
The boss didn't take away your wage, she just stopped providing it. Problem?

~~~
ak39
Classic! LOL.

This is worth a Dilbert strip!

------
jmduke
This reminds me of a great blog post, _Goodbye Microsoft, Hello Facebook_ by
Philip Su ([http://worldofsu.com/philipsu/goodbye-microsoft-hello-
facebo...](http://worldofsu.com/philipsu/goodbye-microsoft-hello-facebook/)):

 _We used to get Dove Bars and beers all the time. It felt like free food was
on offer at least once a week, usually with a pretense of some small milestone
to celebrate. Why did we cut stuff like this? (I know the boring fiscal
reasons why. I’m asking the deeper why, as in, “Was it worth the savings? Is
Microsoft better now that we’ve cut these costs?”)

One day, a sign appeared on a soda fridge in RedWest saying something to the
effect of, “Did you know that drinks cost Microsoft [ed: millions of dollars]
a year? Sodas are your perk at work. Don’t bring them home.” This depressed me
on too many levels to enumerate, but I’ll toss out a few:

\- Someone had enough time to get these signs professionally printed and
affixed to our fridges.

\- It was someone’s salaried, 40-hour-a-week job to do things like this.

\- Someone thought soda smuggling was a big enough “problem” at Microsoft to
draw attention to it._

~~~
ajross
Hm... more like: someone was smuggling sodas out of the building that were
offered in good faith as an office perk. Frankly that would affect my morale
more than even the removal would. What does it say about an office culture
where that kind of petty thievery is tolerated? Honestly my feeling (and to be
clear: like this whole subject this is subjective) would be that this response
is not enough: better to name and shame the offenders.

~~~
jemfinch
Smuggling? Really? Why does Microsoft _care_ where I drink my soda? My brain
doesn't turn off at 5pm: last night I was up until 3am, at home, figuring out
some bug my change introduced. Yes, I drank an employer-provided Diet Mountain
Dew that I brought home. No, my employer doesn't care. Perks are for _people_
, not _locations_ : as long as _I'm_ drinking the soda, Google doesn't care
where I drink it.

~~~
rdtsc
What if you sold it?

That would be ridiculous right you could be thinking, programming and
improving the product to get a better bonus in the end rather than sell soda
off of craigslist or ebay.

But you see that is how they think about it. You are stealing it and could be
doing <insert the worst possible thing>. That is what management might come to
conclusion about.

Another perspective + a story. (Warning: getting a bit prejudiced here). I
have heard of foreign H-1B workers (won't name a country will stop at a vague
level of prejudice) stuff their backpacks with soda. Stay late, look around,
see if anyone is looking start shoving soda cans to fill the backpack up as
much as they can carry.

It wasn't that management was upset, you see, it was other co-workers that
were disturbed by that. Why? Because they realize they are working with "that"
person. That would be disturbing to me. Is the company not paying them enough.
Are they a kleptomaniac. Did they grow up poor and learned to steal food. What
else are they stealing? Are they sabotaging our product? Do I want them
around? Questions like that.

They complain. How does management react. Well they could lay off so and so.
But heck he is chugging along programming and we got him on H-1B sponsorship.
Laying him off because of a soda issue is worse than just making everyone pay
for soda and, in return we get to save couple of thousand dollars a year.

That is how I heard about* (from another party, so this might have been made
up, I don't know, take it for what it is worth).

~~~
curiousDog
God damn that was depressing to read. I've seen various levels of cheapness
but this takes the cake. Stuff like this makes me ashamed of being an Indian,
really. Oh well..

And I don't think what you said was prejudiced either.

~~~
meepmorp
> I've seen various levels of cheapness but this takes the cake. Stuff like
> this makes me ashamed of being an Indian, really.

Don't feel ashamed, this level of cheapness has nothing to do with your
nationality.

My dad was a physician, born and raised in the US. He earned a good living,
worked very hard (he never had fewer than 2 jobs the whole 3 decades I knew
him), and saved money religiously. And he was very frugal as well: he never
went into debt for anything, drove cars till well after they fell apart, had
clothing that I know was older than I which he wore till the day he died.

One of his great loves, though, was to steal things from the hospitals he
worked at. Anything that wasn't bolted down - office supplies, filing
cabinets, tables, chairs, desk lamps. At one point, he was bringing home hard
boiled eggs that he pocketed in the staff room, because obviously we couldn't
afford food. Several times when we were doing remodeling at home, I got to
keep a lookout for security while we snuck bags of construction waste into the
dumpsters at work.

Now, you didn't know the guy so it might not be obvious, but this was all
about not spending a cent more than he had to. So, don't feel ashamed because
some of your fellow country men are taking soda from work.

------
hkarthik
I've seen such things happen, and I almost universally blame the founders and
top level leadership when this kind of thing happens.

Dedicated CFOs and accounting types are simply doing their job. Their singular
focus is often the bottom line and the company's financial health. It's not
their job to maintain, foster, or enhance company culture. That is the job of
the CEO.

In situations like this, it's the CEO's responsibility to make statements like
"there are intangible benefits to free snacks and sodas. Small things like
that help people that make money for the company stay focused longer and help
them get through their day."

Help the accountants understand where the cost cutting boundaries are early,
so you don't have to micromanage every decision they make later on. Over time
they'll start to "get it" with your culture and they'll focus their attention
on real problems like getting financing, making sure invoices are paid,
setting up M&A deals, etc that they were hired to do.

~~~
ignostic
I'd _strongly_ disagree that it's not the CFO's job to foster and enhance
company culture. If your CFO is a cost-cutting machine, I hope he's not highly
compensated. Any qualified first-year accountant can do that job.

It's a good CFO's job to make sure that resources are invested strategically.
Indeed, it's every executive's job to work together towards a shared vision
and goal. If someone is working towards a different goal, you're inviting
unnecessary conflict. No one should need to be micromanaged - _at any point_
\- if they share the goal and the culture along with the rest of the
employees.

~~~
hkarthik
When you bring in an outside CFO, chances are that you're getting a highly
paid individual whose main incentive is to increase the valuation of your
company to make it look good for an acquisition, increasing revenues
substantially, or going public.

Cost cutting is just one tool in their toolbelt to work towards it. But it's
the sharpest and most easily understood tool they have so that's why they will
reach for it so often.

In an ideal world, you'll get a CFO that totally jives with you culturally,
accepts a lower salary (or limited equity stake), and just handles all the
paperwork. But such people will rarely carry the title of CFO.

~~~
ignostic
> _"In an ideal world, you'll get a CFO that totally jives with you
> culturally, accepts a lower salary (or limited equity stake), and just
> handles all the paperwork."_

Again, I have to disagree. Ideally you get a proactive CFO who understands the
value of the company culture, and works to encourage it. Yes, even if that
costs more money. A paper pusher who stays out of your way does not approach
the value of a good CFO who gets what the company is about and what they're
trying to do.

Anyone who hires a paper-pushing-bean-counting CFO should not be surprised
when that CFO tries to sacrifice long-term success for short-term balance
sheet exhibition.

~~~
ansgri
> Anyone who hires a paper-pushing-bean-counting CFO should not be surprised
> when that CFO tries to sacrifice long-term success for short-term balance
> sheet exhibition.

This is the point. You are not to be surprised, but as CEO be ready that your
CFO will require guidance while doing otherwise useful things.

~~~
hkarthik
Exactly my point.

Should a CFO be singularly focused on bean counting to the detriment of
company culture? No.

Is that often the reality when you bring in an outsider as CFO well after your
company culture is established? Yes.

CEOs just need to be aware of this fact and work closely with any outsider who
gets hired into a CFO position in their first 6 months on the job to make sure
that all interests are aligned. It would be great to find someone up front
that totally gets it and is willing to be a dedicated CFO, but I think such
individuals are extremely hard to find.

The sad fact is, many CEOs only bring in a CFO when they're trying to find a
way to cash out. Company culture usually takes a back seat at that point.

------
lotharbot
My wife was a software engineer at a very big company (Fortune 50 / Dow Jones
Industrial). At one point they decided to take the water coolers out of
several buildings -- a move estimated to save half a million dollars a year.
But one top-notch software engineer adds a lot more than that to the company's
bottom line, so the move can very quickly become value-subtracting if it
pushes someone over the edge to "I'm going to go to [competitor]" or "I'm
going to go become a contractor".

Even if they don't leave, there's a morale penalty applied every day when
someone walks past where there used to be refreshments, and has to keep
walking another 30 feet to the water fountain or vending machine.

If there's one thing every company should understand about software, it's that
top-notch people operating at high levels of morale are great for your bottom
line. Being cheap about things like refreshments and office equipment ("you
have to buy your own second monitor") is a morale killer.

~~~
pjungwir
It occurs to me that it's not just about morale and retention. Refreshment
sites are also where people communicate. So I wonder how many dollars someone
in the company was paying management consultants to foster better internal
communication when someone else pulled out the water coolers!

~~~
kabdib
The place I work understands this. We have a company-wide lunch every week
(not every day), and the intention is to get people together who wouldn't
ordinarily be talking.

It seems to work. I try to sit with new people then, rather than with my
immediate cow-orkers, and I usually learn interesting things.

------
archon
The company I'm with now recently started implementing "cost cutting
measures." Coffee is no longer free (.50 cents per cup). Annoying, but not
really a huge deal. You can pay once a month and get it out of the way instead
of having to keep quarters on hand.

The bigger issue, to me, is that management decided to stop using a cleaning
service. The 30-employee workforce is now part of a cleaning rotation. So,
once a week, we are all expected to stop what we're doing and spend 30 minutes
to 2 hours cleaning something, depending on our assigned area.

How can that possibly be cost efficient? You derail the thought processes of
all 30 of your employees for at least a half hour every week. 15+ man hours
that your highly skilled employees could be using elsewhere. In the case of
the half-dozen programmers here, it's even less efficient. It takes a lot of
concentration for me to get into a mental state conducive to good programming.
30+ minutes of cleaning is enough to get me out of that programming "mode",
and it is very difficult to regain that state of mind once lost.

I think that's at least part of the reason why these progammers were so up in
arms about the soda machine: Because now they have to think about it. The
company has introduced an annoyance and distraction (I'll admit, a trivial
one) into their work day, for very little apparent effect on the company's
bottom line.

~~~
geon
> .50 cents per cup

Is that how it's supposed to be written, or did you just tell me you get
coffee for half a cent?

(Serious question. English isn't my first language.)

~~~
sib
No, it should be written $0.50 per cup or 50 cents per cup :)

Verizon Wireless had an issue with charging for wireless data like this a few
years ago that made for a funny story.

------
Ensorceled
I once worked at a startup where the company gave an "across the board" 10%
raise to the engineering team in a way that caused 3 key people to leave.

Essentially in a company meeting that reviews were being delayed for 3 months
because of how crazy things were but there was an across the board raise of
10% to make us competitive. The catch, the raises took effect immediately but
would not be paid until reviews were done, then everybody would get a lump sum
catch up payment along with any increases from the raise.

The meeting dissolved into a huge mess where engineers kept asking "Why not
give us the 10% raise now" and the VP Engineering got increasingly irate at
the ingratitude without ever adequately explaining the delay.

I went after the meeting and asked the CFO what the hell was going on.
Basically, changing all of payroll was a pain in the ass, had a fee of $25 per
headcount, and it was going to take a week for our overworked accounting
department to accomplish. So they didn't want to take the hit in accounting
twice in such a short period of time. I went back and explained it to my team
and things were all better.

Reasonable, and if the VP had just said that, all the engineers would have
nodded and said "Good thinking!" but the damage had been done. 2 key
developers resigned that same day and one two days later.

There are people in this industry who can send emails to their network and get
a new, good job in the space of an afternoon. Don't do stupid crap to them.

------
ryguytilidie
Its really weird. I feel like the business school experience for most people
was like "look at a balance sheet, find costs to cut". The program I did, at a
not very prestigious school (my employer paid) the focus was much more on the
long term impact and trade offs of the decisions you make. So you think "Ok,
we will save 10k, but what will we lose?" When the answer is "we will lose the
happiness of our team" this becomes an obvious bad idea. As an employer this
is such an easy way to make your employees happy and reward them for working
super hard for you. Once you lose sight of that and look at it as a cost to
cut you might as well just not run a business because you're missing the
bigger picture.

~~~
roc
Trick is, much of the business world is measured by (and thus optimized for)
quantifiable short-term impact.

The short term positive impact of cutting out snacks is immediate and obvious.
The costs are less obvious and longer term. Do enough long-term planning in a
place like that and people start getting tired of long-term answers to short-
term numbers not moving.

Further complicating this stuff: say a 'good' CFO saw the value in a snack
budget and implemented one where it didn't exist before. How do you even
measure the impact of the improved work that goes along with improved morale?
How do you credit a manager for nixing a 'cut the snack budget' suggestion?
How do you measure the negatives that were never incurred?

It's very easy to see 'cut snacks, saved 10k; 3 engineers got the wake-up
call, grumbled about 'stuff like this' and left, 4 projects now behind".

It's pretty tricky to _ever_ say "this project is now on track because we
added a food budget and put in a foosball table". [1]

[1] Which is why those items tend to be focused on as recruitment expenses.
It's simply easier to measure/justify in that context.

Which is also why they tend to go away when the company reaches that size
where further staffing is composed primarily of employees coming from jobs
that _also_ do not have snacks and games, so their necessity for recruitment
is basically gone.

~~~
marshray
Agree. Unless you're the only tech shop in town, I think the complimentary
sodas in the kitchen going away is primarily a sign of a decision to not be
competitive in the recruitment process.

------
Choronzon
Benefits should be added slowly and if they must be taken away it should not
be piecemeal. Few things offend people as a continuous loss of status.

Machevelli,the Prince (From obtaining a state by Wickedness!).. Hence it is to
be remarked that, in seizing a state, the usurper ought to examine closely
into all those injuries which it is necessary for him to inflict, and to do
them all at one stroke so as not to have to repeat them daily; and thus by not
unsettling men he will be able to reassure them, and win them to himself by
benefits. He who does otherwise, either from timidity or evil advice, is
always compelled to keep the knife in his hand; neither can he rely on his
subjects, nor can they attach themselves to him, owing to their continued and
repeated wrongs. For injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being
tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so
that the flavour of them may last longer.

~~~
jacques_chester
Machiavelli is underrated as a social psychologist. People just don't want to
believe it's true.

------
zeidrich
I think that a lot of times these sorts of things come down to peoples
inability to rationalize large numbers.

It reminds me of a story posted a while ago about the City of Boston moving
from Microsoft products to Google Cloud products. One of the prime motivators
of this move was claimed to be cost. Boston would save $280,000 in the move.
$280,000 seems like a lot of money, a quarter million dollars. However, the
story also quoted that there were 20,000 employees using the software. This
means that the city would actually be saving $14 per year per employee, or a
little more than a dollar per month.

If the employee spent more than a minute or two of paid time learning to use
the new system, a year's worth of savings would be eliminated. Now, it's
possible that the city would see efficiency improvements by using google apps,
but that wasn't the reason claimed for the move. The reason claimed was that
the switch would cost only $800,000 but save $280,000 per year. Within 3 years
they would recover those costs and realize some savings.

When a new CFO comes in and sees that your 100 employees consume $50,000 worth
of soda in a year, it looks like an easy place to recover a nice chunk of
change. However, in reality the difference is a couple of dollars a day per
employee. If those employees now end up going across the street to the coffee
shop instead of getting free soda in the office you've just wiped out any
gains.

The larger the organization gets, the bigger this feels. 1 employee spending
$500/year on soda is not worth considering. 10 employees spending $5,000 per
year on soda isn't really a big deal. 100 employees spending $50,000 on soda
raises some eyebrows. 2,000 employees spending $1,000,000 on soda means it's
going to get cut and someone's going to get a sweet bonus for cutting it.

~~~
Ensorceled
Every one of these Windows/Office -> Linux/Cloud/Google analysis I've looked
at included staff retraining and retrofitting costs. Not saying they aren't
rosy estimates, but CIO's tend not to be complete idiots.

~~~
zeidrich
The costs of retraining and retrofitting was mentioned and bundled in at
$800,000.

My point wasn't that they didn't do their calculations, nor do I mean to show
bias towards MS or Google. My point was that the amount of savings they would
realize ($280,000 per year) was so marginal when the number of affected
employees were taken into account.

If I came up to you and said "I can give you a piece of software that will
save you $1.17 per month, but I will have to sell it to you for $40", would
that be a good deal?

Why is it that when you multiply those numbers by 20,000 that it all of a
sudden becomes a good deal? Especially when you can't be 100% certain that
your cost projections are perfectly accurate, being a bit too optimistic can
wipe out any hope of any savings.

My point was just that because the numbers are big they look really important.
But when you look at them spread across the workforce it looks different.
Saving $280,000/year after 3 years is just fine. Saving $14/year after 3 years
is fine too. One looks far more important than the other.

If the news story said that it would save them $1.17 per user per month after
34 months, would it have the same impact?

If a company says they spend 2 million dollars a year on free soda for staff,
that sounds excessive. If they spend 2 million dollars per year on soda but
they say that they spend 45 cents per day on average on soda per employee,
does that have the same impact?

In the former, you don't have any point of reference 2 million dollars is a
lot of money. In the latter you immediately consider things like how much the
employee's wage is, how much electricity they use, how much water they use
washing their hands after using the toilet. If you have someone using a Xerox
copier that charges a few cents per copied page, now their copier usage is
majorly competing with the cost of soda.

In the grand scheme of things though, a couple of dollars per day per
employee, for professionals, can be pretty much ignored. But if you think of
it instead of $1,000,000 per year, it's harder to ignore, even though it's the
same thing.

~~~
Ensorceled
Ok, I don't understand you point.

The original article was about taking some thing away from employees and
saving a small amount of money and doing that having negative impacts morale
way beyond the savings.

In this case the city is GIVING the employees something and saving a small
amount of money.

Oates said: "This decision represents an important step forward for the City.
We want to equip all city employees with easy-to-use tools that allow them be
more productive and innovative in their jobs, as well as a system that can
scale to keep up with the city's demands."[1]

[1][http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2267773/city-of-boston-
dumps-...](http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2267773/city-of-boston-dumps-
microsoft-software-for-google-apps)

------
untog
There's an understated point in this article- that once they get beyond a
certain point, startups rely on the obliviousness of early employees to blind
them from negative changes that surround them.

I mean, sure, the sodas were the wake up call that made engineers realise they
wanted to leave. But the article seems to suggest that leaving the sodas free
would solve the problem. Surely the core problem is that the company has
changed, not that the engineers noticed it?

~~~
pjungwir
That struck me also. The mistake wasn't removing a perk per se, it was
signaling that things had changed. But surely the employees would have noticed
that sooner or later? So it seems there is a deeper problem, with no advice
about how to address it.

~~~
cinquemb
Might be a far out idea, but I wonder if around this stage, bringing in an
anthropologist to study the culture of the company and suggest ways how to
preserve some of the characteristics that originally attracted the first
engineers would help address this problem.

~~~
MartinCron
I worked for a company that brought in an organizational psychologist who
tried to get a handle on what ways the company worked well and didn't work
well. It seemed like an interesting exercise.

And then we were purchased by a company run by insecure petty tyrants who
alternated between neglect and micro-management, so none of it mattered. Sigh.

~~~
cinquemb
Did you get at least any of that sweet equity that people say is one of the
best points of tech sector to balance out your disappointment?

------
alexmchale
I promise I'm not trying to troll here.

When I hear "free soda" I hear "free diabetes and heart disease". Free soda is
the worst kind of encouragement to have your employees living a healthy
lifestyle. I'd love to hear about a company who seeks to provide fresh local
fruits and vegetables at its snack table.

I really don't mean to come off as a Debbie Downer, but soda is such a
terrible scourge on society as a whole.

~~~
conradfr
Yahoo! Ireland used to have free fruits, at least around 2006/2007.

I'm with you about the sodas. They are free at my work (with a loose rule of
one per employee per day) and I always say to my fellow colleagues that it's
terrible, sugar sugar sugar.

~~~
canvia
Not even sugar. High fructose GMO corn syrup that's subsidized by your tax
dollars. Much worse than cane sugar.

~~~
conradfr
Well not in my case I think as I'm in France.

------
ecspike
I noticed this at my first Silicon Valley job. When I joined, about a year
after its acquisition, the kitchen was fully stocked and they had to ask
people to take pizza home with them.

First the soda orders went from a variety to a few brands and the pantry which
was always open, started getting locked. Then it was cut to just cold cuts in
the fridge and you had to run once the pizza guy got there or you were hungry.

Attrition started soon after. It was apparent to all that our European parent
corporation didn't quite understand how Silicon Valley worked. After about a
year of everyone who could leaving (CEO, Dir of Eng, most of pre-acqu and
post-acqui employees who weren't H1-Bs), the office ceased to exist.

Like the OP, I saw the cutting sodas as a sign. If they are going to nickel
and dime on something that keeps people from having to take a 20 min break to
quench their thirst, where will they stop?

------
witek
One of the key reasons why I decided to join my first employer was because
they had amazing fruit baskets delivered every morning. It saved me from
thinking about breakfast.

Top banks and law firms have everything either free or heavily subsidised
under one roof, from multiple restaurants to gyms, so that you don't waste any
time looking for those things and carry on working like a dog (but feel
privileged doing so). Just don't calculate your hourly rate...

------
rayiner
People are totally irrational about free soda/snacks. If you gave them a
$50/month raise (to cover the cost of soda and snacks), they'd be offended. If
you put out soda and snacks, well you're just the most awesome employer ever!

~~~
jtbigwoo
If the snacks are provided by the company:

-I don't have to carry change/cash.

-I don't have to deal with a vending machine that will fail to give me what I want 2% of the time.

-If something that I want is not there, I can ask the boss to get it next time rather than hoping for a machine to be restocked (probably by a vendor that may or may not carry what I want).

-The price of soda/snacks never changes.

-If I ask my neighbor to grab a soda for me, there's no need for her or me to keep a mental account of gifts.

EDIT: Typing too fast; missed a word

~~~
namdnay
I've never worked somewhere with "free non-lunchtime calories" (i.e. not tea
and coffee). Wouldn't this encourage unhealthy consumption?

Rather like the "fixed monthly cost eat as much as you want 24/7" cafeterias
in many US universities. I know, it's your own responsibility etc etc, but
surely an abundance of free stuff will encourage over-consumption. Especially
if you factor the psychological "if I don't eat it I'm getting stiffed"
factor.

~~~
praptak
_"'We warn Nooglers, which are new employees, that they should expect to gain
weight during their first six months,' Welle said today during the inaugural
Wired.com Health Conference here."_

Yeah, Noogler weight gain is a known phenomenon:
[http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-10/17/google-
employ...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-10/17/google-employees-
eat-better)

~~~
jsolson
For what it's worth, this can go both ways.

Since starting at Google I've managed to lose a good amount of weight due to
increased availability of healthy(ish) snacks (free bananas and mandarins in
the MK!) and the buffet style lunches.

<rambling>

How do the buffet style lunches help? Glad you asked.

When I have a plate of food in front of me, I eat everything that's on the
plate. I may set out to do otherwise, and I'll even manage to avoid it in my
first pass, but in the ensuing conversation over lunch I'll gradually nibble
at the remains until everything is gone. However, if I simply take less food,
there's nothing to nibble.

Now, I was also making an active effort to lose weight before this, and it
requires a conscious choice to eat the healthier options made available to us
(as there are plenty of unhealthy options). Compared to my previous gig,
though, I've found it much easier to make good choices, diet wise, at Google.

</rambling>

------
rachelbythebay
Interesting that this was written in 2009. In 2009, that's when I snapped a
picture in Charlie's which said "Googlers: badging today will allocate funds
for your meal tomorrow": <http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/10/17/badging/> \-
they added ProxCard readers hooked to laptops in every cafe. "Badging in"
would make it play the PING! noise from Gattaca (or a vuvuzela, but that's
another story).

The food was still "free" [1] but things had definitely changed at high
levels. This was just a small part of it. It's taken some time for the change
to become evident on the outside world.

I wonder if this post is related to the things I was seeing at the time.

[1] As seen on HN: <http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/01/21/notfree/>

------
jaimebuelta
There is a classic quote by Machiavelli:

"People should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they
will get their revenge."

There is something in "small details" that make us just to feel humiliated.
The kind of thing that is not serious enough to understand is needed "well, I
get the company is in bad shape", but it feels like a personal offense "What??
I just got a word from my manager because I left yesterday 10 minutes earlier,
when we have 'flexible hours'? F*ck you!" When I think about the times I've
been most upset with my workplace, it's always for those stupid details. They
fell like personal humiliations. And personal problems are way worse than
profesional ones...

------
Jabbles
Why didn't he say anything? Why sit on a board if you're not going to offer
advice?

~~~
mratzloff
Ha, I had the same thought.

------
will_brown
Very bizarre to read these kinds of business stories. I was a business major
and recall all the case studies regarding the unmeasurable, but vast, benefits
to the company of providing ancillary benefits such as free gym membership,
free child care and free drinks/snacks. Sure these things are measurable
monetarily, but the increase in employee moral, employee retention,
productivity and general PR over company culture are immeasurable. (Admittedly
they are measurable to a degree, but so many variables can allow business
people to end up with numbers that support their decisions)

I guess that is where academia collides with corporate politicking, as an MBA
hired in a tech start-up it is easy to justify a 6 figure salary and stock
options when you can show you are directly responsible for cost cutting of $x,
rather than an MBA explaining they are responsible for $x increase in cost,
but that company moral is up.

------
adnam
As long as free fizzy drinks are considered sacred, engineers will never reach
the income levels seen in the legal, medical and financial sectors. Employers
will treat like adolescents those who behave like adolescents.

~~~
epoxyhockey
Other professions have perks analogous to free soda for engineers. For
example, medical sector professionals go bonkers over free samples.

~~~
hga
Well, that's a little more directly connected to their jobs.

It allows them to start a patient on a drug without friction, or to give a
patient who's going through hard times a full course of treatment without him
having to pay anything.

~~~
epoxyhockey
Then to validate the point, if company X stopped offering free samples,
competitor Y would probably benefit by still offering free samples. Or, the
medical professional could just buy the samples from company X with their own
money because they are no longer free.

------
siavosh
At my previous firm, cuts in these sorts of things was a rounding error in
their balance sheet--completely immaterial. BUT it was viewed as an indirect
signal to everyone to think frugally in your projects, work harder, and temper
feelings of entitlement during difficult economic times. So I've always viewed
these sorts of actions as a management technique, not necessarily a financial
cost cutting one.

------
astangl
One place I worked went in a few short years from having free fancy coffees,
etc. (for developers in their skunkworks office) to departmental secretary
sending out an email complaining about the rate of consumption of cheap
ballpoint pens from the supply closet. (A quick check online confirmed that if
the consumption was reduced to zero, it would save less than $20/yr -- hardly
worth the alienation and bitterness it caused.)

At that company I coined a rule that once companies start to focus heavily on
"branding", it's time to bail.

------
dangoldin
The old discussion here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007750>

~~~
jessaustin
That discussion seemed to be about server names? b^)

~~~
meritt
Naming servers something cute, witty or clever is a gold standard of freedom
among engineers. When engineer perks (server naming, or free
sodas/snacks/food, lax daily start-times, etc) are taken away, the good
engineers will quit.

~~~
16s
I'm not sure about that. If management won't let you name the servers after
characters in your favorite sci-fi movie, then that is an indication that
names matter (ns1 for DNS rather than gandolf or papa_smurf or whatever) and
that management is playing the role of the adult while you are acting like a
child.

If you want to name servers after fairy tale characters and you will have a
tantrum if management won't let you, then you are not mature enough to work
for a company. It's called growing-up and being responsible.

~~~
lmm
Engineers are the ones who will have to use the server names. When management
starts insisting things be done a certain way that's called micromanagement
and it's the biggest sign your company is about to fail.

And good engineers understand the value of memorable names, as well as the
less tangible value of good corporate culture.

------
jimparkins
As much as this story is meant to be about keeping staff happy and managing
expectation. Actually what I think it really does a good job is illustrate
that finance and hr teams are pretty bad at managing the complex cause and
affect that balance sheet decisions make. How many times have you seen someone
leave because they were turned down for a pay increase?. The company then has
to pay 12%-18% of an increased annual salary in recruitment costs for a
replacement - added to the costs spent for managers time during hiring.

------
creatiwit
This reminds of the scene at the biggest virtualization companies and their
great debacle of 2008. A certain VP was hired from one of the old order
companies and the first order of business was cutting free dinners. Never mind
the dinners were for folks that stayed late working crazy hours to finish the
release. Next to go was the stuff in the kitchens. All said done there was a
huge revolt, the VP went back to the company he came from. But the damage was
already done, months later the CEO gets fired and that was the end of one of
the best work cultures in the Bay. The exodus had already started.

At the end of day these are tiny costs when compared to the overall
productivity of engineers. Yes, there are folks who will misuse it but those
are a tiny fraction and cannot outweigh the positive effects. It shows that a
company cares for it employees and is willing to go the extra mile.

------
Jun8
Well, at our place can sodas cost 85c, so they're making a cool profit from us
instead of it being a perk!

But, I was wondering, how much soda did these guys drink? He says the cost was
about $10k. Correcting for inflation (<http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/>)
that's $10,838. Assuming 11.45 for a 24-pack
([http://www2.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?ec=BD_563-EC27726...](http://www2.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?ec=BD_563-EC27726-ProdID11338136&pos=0&whse=BD_563&topnav=bdoff&prodid=11338135&lang=en-
US)), gives us 22,704 cans of coke. Assuming this was an annual expense and
all 50 people in the company drank about the same, that's _37 cans of coke per
person per month_! That's a lot of coke.

~~~
breadbox
Eh, not really. Think about it, when the soda is free:

You drink a can in the morning, because if you're a soda drinker you're
probably not a coffee drinker, so this is your morning caffeine hit. Then
you'll have one at lunch, because you're eating. Sooner or later you'll get
thirsty again, so you'll have one in the afternoon. Maybe two (since the
afternoon is about twice as long as the morning). So, 3-4 cans of soda per
day, multiplied by 20 working days in a month gives you 70 cans per month.
Assume this is near the high end of a spectrum of soda-drinking behavior, and
you'll get an average of around 37 per month.

------
Imagenuity
Tell the executives they're wasting money on free parking. From now on., all
executives will be charged $20 a month (or $1 a day) for parking. The primo
parking spaces will be $50 a month. Surely that is reasonable! And watch the
executives go into an uproar. This might help them understand in a way they
can relate to.

------
mindcrime
This is something I think about a lot. Right now, our startup is just the co-
founders and one intern, and we don't even have office space yet. But assuming
we are successful and start growing, at some point we will have employees,
office space, offices, etc. And what I find myself pondering is "how do we
make sure we create the kind of culture and environment that we want to work
in, and that other people will want to work in... and how do we preserve it as
we grow?"

Now, you might say "Mindcrime, you're in a 2 person startup with no revenue
yet, if you spend 2 seconds a year thinking about this stuff you're wasting
time". But I think it's important for the founders to think hard about culture
and work to start embedding that culture into the very DNA of the company,
from the early days, and actively look for ways to resist the "culture decay"
that @sgblank talks about in this post.

Assuming you have a founding team who retain a substantial degree of control
over the firm as it grows (ala, say, Sergey and Larry, or Zuck) you wonder "is
it possible to preserve the best part of what makes the company great, even if
grows in size 10x, 100x, or more"?

------
troymc
I've read that the same thing happened at TechTV. When the free food
disappeared, it sent a signal, "Cash is tight. We're in trouble. Be worried."

------
hrktb
There's a saying that when a company starts cutting pens and station office
availability, it's time to search for an exit. I'd say it's the same kind of
mechanics here: It's not that soda is so valuable, it's that the company
reached a level where every little thing starts to get scrutinize and needs
justification, and there's no going back from then.

------
fournm
I'm always amused by how quickly drinks seem to go in order to save costs when
the cost of drinks for an entire small department of developers is nothing
compared to the salary of a single one of them, yearly.

Not to mention the whole "developers and loose change" not going together
thing so we tend to value them as worth far more than we should.

------
marshray
I've seen free snacks go away at one company - but it was during the company's
first downsizing. The company was losing money. We engineers grumbled a bit
but no one really faulted them for it.

The Support department set up a cash shop with far more variety of snacks than
we had before.

------
bdunbar
Where I work people still talk about 'the year they stopped giving away
turkeys at Thanksgiving'. That was in 1986.

------
mistermcgruff
I worked at a large consulting firm that went public a while back. As part of
that process, they took away the candy bowls from the front office. Fast
forward a few years after going public, benefits are cut to the bone. Vacation
has been slashed in half.

Cutting costs (especially silly ones) is often a sucker's way to
profitability. When people cut costs, they like to think they're being
analytical. They often end up ignoring some indirect costs. A better model
would include the expected cost in efficiency and human resources via
departures and low morale.

------
ejrowley
I work for a small company, not a startup (I've been here 9 years), about 20
people. Yesterday we launched a website, today we got Pizza. I was happy. It
cost the company £100 but it made all of us feel appreciated.

A couple of weeks ago I ask an owner how much he wanted for an old TV we had
in the office, hoping that he would say just take it (the tv was 8 years old
and not been used for about 3), he didn't, he wanted its ebay value. We agreed
£30. That made me feel sad, less appreciated.

tldr; Small things can affect people in a big way.

~~~
h2s

        > wanted old equipment for free
        > had to pay a nominal price for it instead
        > felt sad and less appreciated
    

Gotta say, your disappointment really isn't resonating with me. Sounds like
quite a reasonable response on their part. People in management perform a
constant balancing act with things like morale and expectations. Perhaps it
wouldn't have been prudent to have you be seen to be getting "special
treatment". Unless there were 19 similar old TVs to give to the rest of the
team, then you can guarantee several people would have felt resentful about
you getting yours for free.

~~~
qu4z-2
At my workplace it'd probably have been given for free, and I'm pretty sure
none of my co-workers would resent the recipient. Come on, it's an 8 year-old
TV. Everyone who wants a TV has a better one already. Are we really so petty?

~~~
Xylakant
A company can't just write off things that are in it's inventory. They can
either be lost, destroyed, trashed or sold. If you sell them, it has to be at
a reasonable market value or you're in trouble with the IRS. So it's not
unreasonable to ask for the ebay value. Ask for a low ebay value if you're
being nice.

------
obviouslygreen
I think part of the issue in a lot of these circumstances is irresponsible
spending to start out with. If the people in charge are spending exorbitant
amounts of money on snacks to begin with, that's partially a nice perk, but
it's also short-sighted: Benefits are important, but setting expectations is,
too.

I've worked in startups that made this mistake, and once you've been down that
road a few times, you can tell when people didn't think enough before they
started placing those early food and drink orders. There's a line to walk
between nice perks unmaintainable/excessive spending.

Of course, if you do decide you've gone too far, the article's scenario can
play out, whether it's coincidental or whether the cut actually is because of
financial problems (in which case it's unlikely the snacks broke the company,
but they certainly don't help in that regard, and they do make it that much
harder to effectively manage budget cuts without incurring even more employee
ire and attrition than absolutely necessary).

------
pasbesoin
I've been through this more than once.

Adding my experience to the data points of anecdote -- from working outside
the Valley and in larger, more "traditional" corporations (albeit ones where
sodas and at times meals were made free as perks -- either an historical
legacy or a management practice gleaned from magazines and consultants).

When the soda stops being free (or meals, if you're so lucky, etc.), it's time
to go.

If don't simply want to take this external advice, _listen_ for yourself to
the explanations that are given when this is done. After absorbing a bit of
that language and convolution and misdirection, if you don't want to go on
your on accord and the basis of direct experience... well, some people do do
all right. But, from my perspective, they don't tend to be people I enjoy.

------
marshray
I have a simple technical solution to this problem:

1\. Charge employees by volume for sodas.

2\. Reimburse them for their urine.

~~~
jpatokal
Unintended consequence of your technical solution: employees start chugging
gallons of water.

(But yes, I LOL'd.)

------
ArbitraryCrow
Foreshadowing aside, I neither expect nor care if my employer provides me with
beverages. Not even coffee. If it's there, I'll probably take advantage of it
from time to time, but it wouldn't actually influence my decision on where to
work.

------
varunkumarm
Isn't this posted already at HN. Interesting to see so much discussion on a
repost.

Link: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007750>

------
liquidise
As a senior engineer who recently left a company undergoing a very ugly
transformation, this strikes remarkably close to home. As with this case, the
major pressure to change came not through the executives but rather the board.

I have strong aspirations of starting a company, but have seen too many
examples of a board's personality being at odds with [what feels like] common
sense business interests.

Anyone have any advice on ways to a) properly vet your investors and b) curb
these situations down the line?

------
jimmaswell
I didn't know it was a normal thing for companies to just give out free
food/soda to employees like this, moreso to complain about not having them.
How common is this?

~~~
gdulli
Are you asking how common the free food/soda is, or the feeling of entitlement
to it? The former exists where there's competition for employees. The latter
is a pre-existing but latent condition that comes out in proportion to the
presence of the former.

Personally, I've never forgotten that I'm lucky to have "extra" benefits, and
I've never started believing I'm owed them.

~~~
jimmaswell
I guess I haven't thought about competition for employees - I've only tended
to think of the situation as employees competing for jobs. Does competition
for employees only tend to happen in places like SF?

~~~
gdulli
It's also this way in Cambridge, MA. And probably other places where there's
more demand for highly-skilled developers than there are candidates. Maybe in
smaller cities that are trying to bootstrap a startup scene.

------
JoeAltmaier
Steve Blank says its a sign of a company growing and you didn't notice. So
that sounds natural and should be expected. So is he criticizing soda-jerking
or not?

I would think if it were managed, with lots of communication about new
benefits that reflect the changing company behavior (more execution-centric,
less skunk works) and new work-hour expectations, then it can seem ok.

------
jlarocco
It's funny, to me, that the guy will sit in a meeting with a bunch of
executives and VCs, all making significantly more money than he is from the
software he's writing, and the major complaint he has is that they're cutting
off free soda.

~~~
mikeash
His major complaint is that they scared away all the good talent.

~~~
jlarocco
Okay, I didn't make my point very well.

To put it another way, it's amusing that the software engineers make a big
deal out of free food and drinks, when the people "above" them are getting
massive pay checks from the software engineer's work.

It's no wonder we're getting another tech bubble when software engineers will
sell themselves out for $5 worth of snacks.

~~~
tompko
I'll quite happily take the snacks if it means I can code in peace all day and
not have to worry about finding funding, talking to investors, keeping the
company running, etc. They're the ones with money on the line too, they
probably deserve the "massive checks".

------
Gravityloss
But why does anyone bother counting such small money? Hell, we don't even use
one or two cent coins in this country at all. The time and effort saved is
much more than the nitpicking about a cent here or there.

------
pvdm
I left Cisco after the free soda's went away.

------
jhull
We were a 6 person startup that hired a CFO and cut soda because our burn was
too high and we hadn' t raised money in 3 years. We experienced that exact
same meeting and resulting effect at our company. It probably seems strange
that we would get a CFO this early, but our finances were a total mess and we
had a co-founder who dipped so 4 years after the founding we were hamstrung
when going out to raise money.

------
Rickasaurus
Solution: Soda fountains instead of cans. Lets seem the take that thing home!

------
seivan
I once was scolded for taking too much of what did eventually become the
"managements" coffee.I was offered the ability to purchase packs so I could
drink from that particular coffee machine, price tag: $60. The "others" were
directed to another coffee machine, slightly inferior.

The fact that I worked more than 14 hour days, weekends, had to pay for my own
cab fares home (because trained stopped at 23:45) and occasionally had to
spend nights working on features to hit marketing deadlines. At one time they
hired a freelancer who wasn't up to par so I had to do all of his + my stuff,
four nights in a row. At some point all nighters was more common than non all
nighters.

This is what happens when non devs take over and we become machines.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1008178>

~~~
mratzloff
No, that's what happens when you are complicit in bad management taking
advantage of you.

Saying that good companies, even software companies, can only be ran by
software developers is a rather odd takeaway.

------
michaelochurch
This seems to indicate to the power of _common knowledge_ (see:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic)> ) which is not the
same thing as shared knowledge. Common knowledge means everyone knows that
everyone knows (that everyone knows, to infinity) and that's _far_ more
powerful.

The real crimes have nothing to do with soda. Some manager is hired from
outside and is mandating daily status reports. Complain about _that_ and you
get in trouble, or people think you're a slacker upset that he can no longer
hide. Or, let's say that you find out that some newly-hired VP/NTWTFK (Non-
Technical Who-The-Fuck-Knows) is outearning engineering old hands who took
actual risk; it's unjust, but if you complain about it, you endanger not only
your career but the careers of the people who gave you that information.

The thing about free soda is that you can complain about the loss of it
without showing insecurity or political bias _because the change is in the
common knowledge_.

Companies get away with much worse crimes than free-food reductions (which
aren't even crimes at all if (a) they were never part of the promised
employment deal and (b) times are legitimately tough) but because there's no
way to hide that stuff, those end up being the touch-points for complaints.

You can't complain about the new stack-ranking system without seeming
insecure-- so executives can divide-and-conquer along those lines (we're
firing 5% each year in a "low performer" witch hunt, but the top 15% get
bonuses!)-- but the loss of free food is a more socially acceptable and
universal grudge.

I actually like the fact that when Douchetember 11th happens, these trivial
perks get phased out as well. If the executive shitfucks knew how to rob a
company, they'd keep the free soda while turning the crank slowly on the
robberies that actually matter (meaner performance review systems, equity
clawbacks and cliffing).

Imagine what would happen if a large company kept its trivial perks but still
disempowered engineers, gradually, over time. It might manage to hold a "best
company out there" reputation 10 years beyond actually deserving it. Not that
I know of any companies like that, but just imagine how effective it might be
and how much executive robbery (at the expense of clueless talent) could go
on.

~~~
biot

      > I actually like the fact that when Douchetember 11th happens
    

Is that a national holiday in VC-istan where former employees go home and
grind their axes?

~~~
michaelochurch
It's a national holiday on which incompetent execs are flown into high levels
of existing companies.

------
illumen
Old trick. This is taught as a way to get people to leave by themselves. Often
followed by contracts not being renewed, and people moved into hours they
don't like or into roles they don't like.

Those people leave by themselves, then the firings happen... and stock goes
up, targets are met... BONUSES ALL ROUND! Woo! (Or merger/new
investment/whatever needs a up+right graph).

~~~
DanBC
Good staff can get new jobs. So they leave first.

You're left with people who are duffers, and possibly doing harm to the
company. Or with people who have many years with the company and who will be
expensive to layoff with redundancy payments.

~~~
kefka
No, you have it all wrong.

Firstly, I'm sure the work policy you signed off has tons of rules. Most of
them are never enforced. Now, you enforce them stringently.

Awwww.. People you didn't like now have cause for you to fire them.

------
st3redstripe
Very insightful!

