
Is the tech bubble popping? Ping pong offers an answer - palguay
http://www.wsj.com/articles/is-the-tech-bubble-popping-ping-pong-offers-an-answer-1462286089
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ElKrist
Last time I went through a series of interview to find a new job, I
systematically asked to go to the bathroom. I believe male's toilet
cleanliness is a good indicator of how employees perceive their workplaces.
Said simply, if it's not clean then I expect employees to give poor
considerations to each other or to the work they produce. You can be fooled by
what recruiters tell you in the interviewing room, the perks they offer (free
food, ping-pong etc.) but I think a company always show signs it can't control
while you're in their precinct.

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steverb
Funny, I use the quality of the toilet paper as a proxy for how the company
treats its regular employees.

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snarfy
These cultures are all artificial. I've worked at a handful of companies that
all brought in the ping pong/foosball/shuffle board, and nobody plays them.
It's always a ghost town.

Instead, employees will bring in their own toys like card games and basketball
hoops, because that's what they like.

The culture happens because the employees themselves have the latitude and
money to make it happen. The foosball table that they are all trying to mimic
happened because some ceo/founder at a successful company always wanted one
and brought one in for himself. Now it's offered as some kind of perk even
though nobody likes the game. The perk should be extreme latitude and high
pay. The culture will happen all by itself.

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Terretta
Hmm. We play the shit out of our ping pong tables.

Engineers, product guys, engineering managers, department heads, everyone
together, usually four up plus some onlookers. Not artificial at all.

We play the card and table games at each others' homes, usually after sous
vide steaks or barbecue.

Our hangouts are nothing like Billions. :-)

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varjag
“If you don’t have a ping-pong table, you’re not a tech company,” says Sunil
Rajasekar, chief technology officer at Lithium Technologies, a San Francisco
software startup."

I really hope it was tongue in cheek quote out of context.

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wobbleblob
This clearly illustrates what's wrong with the San Francisco tech culture: it
is stuck in the 20th century, and assumes that 'tech' means white or Asian
male in their 20's.

Actual cutting edge tech companies order foosball tables.

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noir_lord
Maglev air hocky is where it's at.

(Not sure that is a thing but it should be).

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dkopi
I always thought the main purpose of ping pong tables was to make it easy for
HR to find the employees that should be let off first in case of cut backs.

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akjetma
Oh, no, you're thinking of unlimited vacation policies.

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michaelpinto
This blew me away:

"Venture capitalist Michael Cardamone, the tournament’s co-organizer, approves
of young companies buying tables with venture funds. “You absolutely should,”
he says. “It’s part of building culture.”"

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jychang
It makes sense in terms of cost to benefit. A ping pong table is a few hundred
dollars at most. An employee performing well is $100,000 at minimum.

Little things like free food and ping pong tables actually offer a massive
return on investment.

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cylinder
Who are these people who play ping pong during work hours? I want to finish my
work and go home. If I have a break, I want to go outside and get some sun and
air because I hate being inside all day. I'm not looking for a frat.

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hfaran
Likely people who enjoy taking a break at some point during the day and also
enjoy playing ping pong? I don't see how going outside to "get some sun" is
objectively any better in general.

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gaur
> “It does make a psychological statement to the founders and employees that
> we’re not your father’s company”

No kidding. My father's company wouldn't instill a culture where the
expectation is to work 80+ hours a week and then try to (inadequately) offset
it with shitty little perks like a ping-pong table.

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Philipp__
Had to check if I was reading Onion's article.

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jonobird1
I came to the comments to see if I was the only one.

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Philipp__
This kinda perfectly aligned with current episodes of HBO's Silicon Valley.

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jonobird1
Ha - for a minute, I had to check it wasn't April 1.

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daemonk
"Building culture" seems like an euphemism for romanticizing the workplace to
squeeze more productivity out of employees without spending too much money on
supplementing salaries.

Interestingly, It's kinda like academia in that way. Academics romanticizing
research as being some kind of virtuous or nobel pursuit to justify their
shitty wages and lack of personal time. (source, I am an academic)

I guess we all become devout monks of our own domain at some point in our
careers until we realize the bullshit "culture" that was perpetuated,
ultimately in the employer's interest.

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throwaway2016a
I'm surprised people are so negative here about ping pong tables and such.

In my experience, it's true. It does build culture. In our case, Foosball is a
place were employees can bond with each other that transcends business
boundaries. Marketing and engineering people both like Foosball - same can not
be said for a lot of other extracurriculars.

We even hold tournaments during company time that at least 3/4 of the company
chooses to play in.

When you are spending at least 1/3 of your time every day with the same
people, I think it is healthy for you to occasionally do something together
that is not work. I assume the people here who head straight home also have
never gone out after work for drinks with their co-workers or gone to a sports
game with them, or anything like that. Foosball and ping pong provide an
opportunity to do that.

In fact, as a manager I often challenge my team members to a game of foosball
when I get a sense something isn't right and it gives me an opportunity to
chat with then 1:1 without feeling like an intervention.

Should you buy a $1300 foosball table when your company is not making money?
IMHO, absolutely not. But if you have a good sales month, go for it. I'd
rather be in a company where people get to know each other than one where
everyone sits quietly at their desk all day and leaves just as quietly at the
end.

Then again, I hold a different world view than some other people. I think that
a FU money exit is unlikely for most, and getting a four hour a day job
without a pay cut is unlikely for most, so if you're going to spend 1/3 of
your life at work, a fair measure of success is if you can actually be happy
while you are in the office.

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lowglow
Can we use the classic metric of aeron chair sales?

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cm2187
Do they switch to stools in bad times?

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Apocryphon
Standing desks.

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PakG1
I was going to make a crack about how standing desks could get expensive, and
then I checked Amazon and was impressed.

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ryporter
Well, this indicator is not the worst one of all time. That record is probably
still held by the price of butter in Bangladesh. [1] Seriously, all you need
to read from this article is the following quote:

Mark Cannice, a University of San Francisco professor, issues a quarterly
index of venture-capitalist confidence. “I put more faith in venture
capitalist insights and confidence,” he says, “than I would in ping-pong-table
sales.”

[1] [http://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/08/stock-
market-...](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/08/stock-market-
indicators.asp)

~~~
fghrthtb
I wouldn't

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chetanahuja
_" Startups pay up to $2,300 for a high-end Butterfly-brand table."_

Oh shit we've been doing it wrong. When PacketZoom moved to it's current
office space (with a bit of spare room), we plonked down ~$130 for something
like this bad boy..
[http://www.dickssportinggoods.com/product/index.jsp?productI...](http://www.dickssportinggoods.com/product/index.jsp?productId=12152583)
and put it on top of an ikea table we inherited from the previous occupants.
Perfectly good playing surface with decent bounce and no obvious defects after
a year of use:

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banku_brougham
I work at a big tech company. They don't provide table tennis, but every
building has one or two, or more. I find that a game is better for me to get a
boost than the coffee. But i still drink the coffee.

Interestingly, I rarely played when I was in a business role, but ever since I
switched to a tech role I've played every day. I bought two paddles as well,
it's some kind of metamorphosis.

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gambiting
The article mentions a few companies that used to buy ping-pong tables and now
they stopped - but surely you can only buy so many ping pong tables until you
don't need any more? It's not like you can be buying X tables per month,
forever. You will either run out of people interested in playing, or space for
them - or both.

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mathattack
Is it a symbol or an actual game that's used? I've had them in many offices
but rarely seen them used.

To me the ping pong table and exposed surfaces in startups reflect wood
paneling in law firms. It's symbolism rather than functionality. Symbols do
matter.

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arez
the graph venture capital vs.ping pong tables reminded me of this
[http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-
correlations](http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations)

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mrkmcknz
But what happens when those companies already have a ping pong table or five?

I mean there's a limit to how many ping pong tables Twitter wants to load into
their office.

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erikb
Here's the thing though. If nobody invests based on ping pong offers but you
do, then the gain for your successful bets should be a lot higher.

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LoSboccacc
not really insightful, but it sparked my interest, so I'll leave this google
trends search there

[https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=startup%20bubble%2C%...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=startup%20bubble%2C%20tech%20bubble%2C%20housing%20bubble&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-2)

make of it what you will.

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royroyroys
I've found it's easier to have a conversation whilst playing pool.. Maybe
others are opting for this too? :)

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jonobird1
Correlation or Coincidence? I get how they got to this conclusion, but I think
latter.

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puranjay
That ping pong table chart is largely useless

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redcodenl
I think they've saturated the market...

