Absolutely this. It's easier to force younger coders into a slave-like work environment, complete with beer on tap, foosball tables, and other amenities to get them to live at the office to constantly work on the product(s). I can't say it's like that everywhere, but most startups are _designed_ to take advantage of their workforce to quickly "move fast and break things" looking for their market fit.
>It's easier to force younger coders into a slave-like work environment, complete with beer on tap, foosball tables, and other amenities to get them to live at the office to constantly work on the product(s)
For me as a young coder, the long hours were less about office amenities and more about me a) wanting to get the work done and b) not having a whole lot of other things to do. I got to work at 9:00am or so, and if I stayed until 9:00pm, I'd still have energy to go out to dinner with friends/roommates until midnight or so. Rinse & repeat.
As a 20+ year older version of myself, getting home late means I don't see my child before he goes to bed. I also go to bed earlier because I'm up and awake to deal with said child by 6-6:30am at the latest.
I'd like to see numbers on how many companies actually have beer on tap, or foosball/ping-pong tables at work in 2021.
I worked at a place with a foosball and ping-pong table in 2018, but they were infrequently used, and when they were in use, it was always the same three guys.
> they were infrequently used, and when they were in use, it was always the same three guys.
Incidentally most startups I've been part of, there were just a few guys doing the vast majority of the heavy lifting while the rest treated it as just another 9-5.
Troll public git repositories for committers with the greatest number of hours having commits, then audit for quality?
I assumed this was the kind of thing Microsoft was already doing with both github and linkedin under their belt, either for bolstering their own ranks or as a paid service to offer recruiters.
He made the biggest land grab for developer and engineer mindshare in history, and Microsoft will be able to turn that into advantages across so many different efforts.
The beer on tap exists up until the point that an HR person is hired. I've worked at a few companies that had kegs. Some seemed to make it a habit to drink and code late into the night, which I rarely did, but to me it at least signals that corporate BS hasn't infiltrated the company yet.
It exists until the moment there are _HR violations_ - just like any other practice that's acceptable at an early stage as it grows. I've worked at 10k+ companies that still had beer on tap, and they obviously had huge HR departments.
I recall a ping-pong table at an IBM branch office 55 years ago but it was only used at lunch hour. As a consultant at dozens of companies, I've seen a lot of neat perks especially in Silicon Valley but no beer taps.
