In my first job at a fancy tech company in the Bay Area, I saw more free food and drinks than I've ever seen outside of a grocery store. It was crazy. 30 different kinds of beers. Free drinks, snacks, lunch.
I jokingly said out loud, "what did we do to deserve this?". A coworkers overheard and replied, "speak for yourself".
It’s funny how impressed people are by food and beverages. Let’s be super conservative and say it was only for a mere 20 people. What percentage of wages do you think is being spent on that stuff?
Let me give you a hint - if the existence of snacks made people work a mere 20 minutes more a week it would’ve already paid for itself. The calculus is a bit more complicated for full service lunch, but you get the idea.
I don't think it's the literal spending money on snacks that impresses people; it's more about the thought behind doing that.
For example I work in a company where the salary is pretty good, but they're also super stingy in general. No snacks, no socials, shitty laptop, etc. It betrays a lack of interest in making employees happy.
The absence of things like snacks is also an indication of how much the bean counters are in charge, because as you say it's probably good value for money in terms of morale, but as soon as the bean counters come in they see you spending £1k/month on snacks or coffee or whatever and that's an easy thing to cut.
Not only that, but if the company once had these things, and then took them away, it might be the wake-up call that snaps an otherwise satisfied employee out of his complacency and cause him to start looking around where the grass might be greener. Steve Blank wrote about this in [1]. Congratulations, you saved a couple of hundred dollars but caused three good employees to leave.
Yeah free food is a really good way to spend money on your employees. Just the cost of people walking to get food makes it worthwhile to provide on site.
I worked at place before that didn't have coffee so people would walk to the coffee place in groups that took 15-30 minutes. Sometimes twice a day. It became a routine part of the day, everyday.
Like literally throwing the cost of an invisible bag of Starbucks beans in the garbage everyday to save the visible cost of brewing a few cups.
> The entitlement was and probably still is crazy.
Google pays SWEs around $300k average total comp and gets $1.5 MILLION per employee (SWE or not) per year in revenue. With a profit margin of over 20%.
A single project can increase revenue by $100m/year so not sure if "I made the company $500m over the last five years" is entitlement. Tech companies should be paying more and not less.
This kind of math betrays a total lack of understanding of the way businesses earn money. With vanishingly few exceptions, no one developer makes the company $500m, and this is trivially testable with a quick thought exercise:
Would Google's bottom line drop by ($500m - $devSalary) if that developer were to quit this year?
Of course not! In most cases Google's bottom line wouldn't even notice if Google failed to replace them, but if their job was really important and they did have to replace them, they still wouldn't notice that it was someone else and not that one dev.
This suggests that the dev isn't actually what's making Google $500m/employee, it's the systems that make up Google that are making Google $500m/employee. Any one employee doesn't actually contribute nearly that much to the functioning of the system, otherwise every company would make $500m per developer.
So the only sense in which Google "should" pay more isn't a practical one (clearly they pay enough to fill their roles) or a justice one (they're not stealing $500m in value from each employee if their bottom wouldn't much notice any single employee's absence)—it's some sort of argument about an ethereal sense of fairness that says that by merely participating in a system you're entitled to the average per-person output of that system. Which is definitely an ethic, but it's not one I can get behind.
>So the only sense in which Google "should" pay more isn't a practical one (clearly they pay enough to fill their roles) or a justice one (they're not stealing $500m in value from each employee if their bottom wouldn't much notice any single employee's absence)—it's some sort of argument about an ethereal sense of fairness that says that by merely participating in a system you're entitled to the average per-person output of that system. Which is definitely an ethic, but it's not one I can get behind.
I see where you're coming from but I think you're missing the fact that large projects have lots of bullshit work that requires high skill but is technically lower value. There is a lower bound to what people will accept, as people with marginally better skills get lucky enough to get highly-visible and much more highly compensated roles. The pay stratification you wish for is already built in, and the average just reflects the fact that these companies DO make enough money to have competitive pay rates.
That framing doesn't change my logic at all: replace the direct earning of $N/year with the probability of earning $N/year and the same logic still applies. An employee doesn't contribute the probability, an employee working within the Google system contributes the probability. The system is doing the bulk of the work, and the per-employee probabilities of earning all that money are dramatically smaller in any other system.
The very well-compensated early employees, leaders, and executives, working together as a team to create something that was greater than the sum of the parts. The average Googler in 2025 wasn't even on the team that created the initial system, they're a cog in a machine that someone else designed years ago. A very well paid cog.
It's not lol. It's more akin to construction. If you need 100 people to do a job in a given amount of time, you might be able to get it done with 99 people without issue. But that one person might have had an insight that would save you a lot of money overall. And if you kept getting rid of people, at some point the others will not be able to pick up the slack and might even ruin the project unwittingly.
Okay, you're right, I grabbed the wrong number. Sub in $1.5m/year or $500m/5 years and replace "bottom line this year" with "bottom line over the next 5 years".
The exact numbers don't matter, the point is the same: with only a few exceptions, no employee contributes the average per-employee output to the company. If they did, you could pick up your laptop and go to any other company and start earning them $N/year for whatever value of N you prefer.
First of all, Pareto Principle, so some employees contribute a ton and many contribute less. Second of all, having been in tech individual employees do drive projects that wouldn't have happened without them for a decent amount of time. In aggregate that moves the bottom line a ton
As for your second point, that's a straw men argument that assumed companies are omnipotent. The employees who drive the bottom line cannot truly prove this to a new employer so their value is diluted by those who don't. The general solution is to go into management (more visibility and no cap on comp), or to create (or join) your own startup (which doesn't have a rigid interview process and you can use "references"). Which many do given how many startups exist in the Bay Area. Companies also may give out large bonuses in RSUs to keep those employees.
> First of all, Pareto Principle, so some employees contribute a ton and many contribute less.
Correct. But with very few exceptions I don't believe that any one person contributes $500m in value over 5 years.
> Second of all, having been in tech individual employees do drive projects that wouldn't have happened without them for a decent amount of time. In aggregate that moves the bottom line a ton
In aggregate, yes. But it's the systems that aggregate the contributions of the employees and turn them into profits.
> As for your second point, that's a straw men argument that assumed companies are omnipotent. The employees who drive the bottom line cannot truly prove this to a new employer so their value is diluted by those who don't.
I'm assuming you mean omniscient, and no, I'm not assuming omniscience because I'm not actually talking about a company's ability to attribute value creation, I'm talking about the employee's ability to attribute it. Any random Google employee who thinks that they contributed $500m over 5 years can't just pick up their laptop and go work for a startup and expect that startup to make $500m over the next 5 years. It's not happening. The only way that their project made $500m was as a project embedded in the enormous money-making system that is Google, and absent that system they don't make that much money for the company.
And as the CEO he's one of the few people who can reasonably make the claim that he's instrumental in creating the money-making system that is Google. We can argue about whether or not that perception is accurate in his case, but CEO pay being totally out of line with most employee compensation is based on the idea that I'm talking about: the system makes money, employees contribute to the system, and the more systemic your role is the greater your contribution to the system.
I'm not interested in engaging with you further because you've now twice ignored the main point of my argument in favor of nitpicks and out of context quotes asserting that I said things I didn't say. There's no point in engaging with that style of argument. Have a nice day.
The main point of your argument is materially different if you mean $500m or $1.5m. I agree there's no point in responding if you're just going to flip flop to whichever is more convenient to that particular response and then get upset when called out for it. Either make a consistent argument or deal with it when called out.
edit: There's also a material difference between no one, a few, many and the majority. You made a specific claim that no employee provides more then $1.5m of value. I disproved that with Google's own comp. Not my problem you're butt hurt about being called out for being wrong with quotes you said yourself.
Their special skill is ensuring they are the place where all ad money goes by being better at getting eyeballs for that money and being better at targeting ads to those eyeballs. Many many many companies have tried to usurp one or both sides of that without success.
You may not like their business model but they are objectively very good at what they do.
The above comment also completely sidesteps the monopolist and regulatory capture factors in difficulty to usurp Google, and thus incorrectly implies that a level playing field exists.
The problem is nobody knows if they are really better at targeting ads. They say so, of course, but who could prove it? Google is the main player in the ad industry and when they say that they are the best, everybody hears them. If a small player tried to say so, nobody would be aware of that, even if they were right.
Are they though? Why is TikTok a thing if Google is so great at what they do?
Google has great research going on, but their products seem to be mostly coasting along. There's still some growth, but is that more than inertia and network effect?
Where the large innovation in their product that keeps them ahead?
Coasting is exactly how I'd describe increase revenue by 6x in 10 years. "Coasting."
> Are they though? Why is TikTok a thing if Google is so great at what they do?
So your bar for success is having a perceptual monopoly on the whole world? Or just the digital world?
You're jumping to mental gymnastic to not acknowledge that Google has consistently grown while being highly profitable. It's a massive success as a company.
> Coasting is exactly how I'd describe increase revenue by 6x in 10 years. "Coasting."
Again: inertia and network-effect.
> It's a massive success as a company.
Undoubtedly. And they appear to be great at not failing. Like any bureaucracy, that works until it doesn't. What new markets have they created or taken over in the past 10 years?
Google’s economic model has been like that for decades and it’s paying for my early retirement. Being “exploited” in this way is nice work if you can get it. The companies with narrow profit margins don’t pay nearly so well.
Labour doesn't make money until the labour is already provided, so how much money labour can produce is an unknown until hindsight is available. An established company with a stable business can make some pretty reasonable forecasts, but when it comes to startups and other new business ventures one is ultimately straight up guessing.
Demand being a function of how much investment money is available is going to be closer to reality, although that is not the whole story either.
I worked at Facebook for half a decade during its golden period and there were a lot of people who shared your sentiment.
…in fact, when some folks suggested engineers organize, the types who complained about worker entitlement remarked: “we make enough, why would we organize?”
This perspective of worker entitlement is really harmful to labor, I assure you that the execs rarely talk about entitlement as they issue bonuses to themselves now while simultaneously embracing rolling layoffs.
Now engineers are working to obsolete themselves with AI and reduce their bargaining power permanently for the promise of a post-scarcity AGI facilitated future that is all but guaranteed. But they’re just entitled, that’s the problem.
my reply to you would’ve been: “oh, not much, we just made the founder the richest most powerful man on this planet. Right now he’s probably on a giant island in hawaii which he wholly owns, in a €200mm mansion, having an orgy with 25 escorts, while on lsd. Oh, right now he just took the jet, one of 6 €50mm jets he owns, to fly to the coast of italy. there, he will fly his giant helicopter to land on his giant 3 floor yatch with 3 pools where he will fuck 30 more chicks at once. But yeah, we get extra free food for having contributed to that”.
The point is that many tech companies in the Bay Area were not profitable, never going to be profitable, but they treated software developers like kings because of the distorted market supported by low interest rate environment.
In a lot of cases, the companies leverage a large chunk of their employees' time to make very hefty returns. It's the least they can do. As someone who runs a company now (having been an employee previously), it is obvious to me that the cost of providing food is a rounding error in the overall company budget, and is well worth it, if it keeps people happy.
10 years ago I was at an “innovation lab” of a big HR tech company that gave out free lunches and snacks. The best explanation I heard was a coworker originally from the big boring corporate HQ who said basically this is a software petting zoo for big investors to look at. “Good code monkey, here’s a banana!”
I've always felt that the moral panic about food perks in Tech was weird. That's not free, it's part of your salary. Sure, you can't buy index funds with Pineapples but at the end of the day it's still remuneration.
The market TC is crazy high, do you add a minor bump in $$$ to attract some candidates that will go to Sweetgreen? Or you add flashy food while taking advantage of economies of scale? Bonus, the very expensive people stay more in the office.
It's because there's a story that a lot of laborers (and capital owners) want to believe, that capitalism is a great meritocracy, and the rewards of it are based on one's moral fiber, instead of purely a function of every individual's leverage effect on the returns on capital/labor.
Watching the Bay Area from over the Atlantic was always a very bewildering experience. I honestly think you guys now get something closer to the reality of European startups, where we’d always have to fight for customers and investor money on (in comparison) ludicrously lower levels—our seed round were 100.000€!
The sentiment of the OP resonates with me; it’s closer aligned with reality, and building a product that actually produces value, that needs to satisfy customers, is both a rewarding and a humbling experience.
> we’d always have to fight for customers and investor money on (in comparison) ludicrously lower levels—our seed round were 100.000€!
Lucky! Here in Colombia I went for the `get investor` phase, and despite get 'great' interest and even win some competition where I go to a thousands event to get it, I get at then end US1500 (today money) that was restricted in what I can spend on (nothing in what I need that was get more developers!).
(The rest of the money, that was for the startups consultants)
The replies are hilariously illustrative of your point. Why do you guys keep working for theese evil capitlists taking away the bilions of value you generate and leaving you with pitiful hundreds of thousands (+free snacks)? You should start a cooperative or something.
They got free snacks in exchange for labor utilized to capture billions of dollars of market value, which will generate cash flows far into the future. You need to understand the game you are playing.
Can I offer a different perspective of providing drinks and food at the office?
Add to that coffee places and more on the company campus.
In some cases, maybe not yours, that is also a way to keep employees in the campus/at the office together. Nice things for the company happens there: you go with your team, have lunch and also have a meeting/discussion about the project you are working on.
I think when the company can afford it it is mostly a win-win situation that maybe it is presented only with the benefit side for the employee.
Your salary is not about moral desserts but about how much value or money you bring to someone else.
That’s why a laborer gets paid a few dollars for a backbreaking day of work and Matt Damon makes a million dollars for holding a can of Pepsi and smiling for the camera for 15 minutes.
I jokingly said out loud, "what did we do to deserve this?". A coworkers overheard and replied, "speak for yourself".
The entitlement was and probably still is crazy.