> I find these types of cutesy “culture” things very infantilizing and belittling. I don’t do my job for a fruit basket.
This always just feels like negative-sum macho posturing to me. I'm a serious programmer and good at my job, but of course I'd rather have a fruit basket than not have a fruit basket.
But does that contribute in any way to your productivity? In my experience I’d rather have the investment be prioritised towards more tangible things like additional training. Flashy and marketable perks like fruit basket often unfortunately get prioritised over non sexy, but meaningful improvements and articles such as this, don’t help.
> But does that contribute in any way to your productivity?
It contributes to my happiness, which is ultimately what I care about - productivity is another means to the same end.
> In my experience I’d rather have the investment be prioritised towards more tangible things like additional training.
You talk about things being "prioritised" but I just don't think that matches how these decisions are made. It's not like they're taking money out of some fixed pool (again, at a practical-decision-making level); I see no reason to think that fruit baskets make training less likely. (Indeed I'd say that providing fruit baskets speaks to a willingness to offer cheap-but-effective things, and I'd rather work for somewhere that tried to offer cheap-but-effective training than somewhere that tried to offer expensive training).
Not at all, especially because the status signalling effects are very real. If I accept the fruit basket from a manager with a shit-eating grin and act like a cheerleader about it, it’s a big net loss for me. I’m agreeing to a status system that devalues my work ethic and rewards managers for cheap tricks instead of true skill building or cultivating motivation. It positions me like a child in need of a parent to give me a gold star for doing my basic responsibilities.
This way of management to cultivate “downward looking perspectives” that intentionally belittle or undermine subordinates is a very real and pervasive thing.
A large part of the sociology book Moral Mazes is dedicated to the taxonomy and descriptive analysis of exactly this kind of corporate behavior.
This always just feels like negative-sum macho posturing to me. I'm a serious programmer and good at my job, but of course I'd rather have a fruit basket than not have a fruit basket.