valleywag.com — A worker at Google tells us the company is taking evening meals off the menu: "Google has drastically cut back their budget on the culinary program. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had promised shareholders they'd add perks, rather than cut them. Google has long milked its cafeterias for their publicity value
Aug 25, 2008 View in Crawl 4
chad3814Aug 25, 2008
The employee "working harder/staying late" is always sighted as the nefarious reasons that management offers these sorts of programs. And when they remove the benefit, people always say that there will be a loss in productivity, but if the company were really going to loose money from it, they wouldn't do it. The fact is, over time more employees stop taking advantage of these benefits, and then it becomes more costly then what it produces for the company.
insomniac8400Aug 25, 2008
Well the people running the place don't care. They just want to move the food budget over to the profit column. All while ignoring the lost productivity when people start leaving at 5 to go home and eat. They are trading long term productivity for a short term profit boost. But that is how companies run these days. The leadership does whatever they can do to boost profits in the short term and will leave with huge retirement benefits before the bubble bursts. They move onto another company to exploit, while the previous company now has to pay someone even more to do the same thing because now the company is in trouble and needs an expert. And that continues until the company runs out of money and the stock crashes.
alwilsonAug 25, 2008
All companies, no matter how wealthy they are, need to tighten their belts if they want to remain competitive. The company I used to work for always threw a huge company party for Christmas every year. Open bar, dancing, gift exchanges, and free food for everyone! Then they realized the liability and the cost and changed it to a lunch buffet in the middle of the afternoon... with no alcohol and no more Christmas bonuses. It was just a bunch of employees and their families sitting around eating crappy food. Cheap bastards!
fluxionAug 25, 2008
wasnt picking on your terminology or anything, helmets and padded cubes just strike me as a prime environment for writing LOLcode
spoomeisterAug 26, 2008
Saving $60 a month when you make 85K to 120K per year is chump change. So no, I won't be quick to call employees who complain about the change "cry babies".I will call them "f**king cry babies" and "spoiled Gen X / Gen Y brats with a huge sense of entitlement". And then suggest that they learn to live within their means like the average American (i.e. people who make a third to half what they do).
ericmiiierAug 26, 2008
I just filled out another app for Mountain View and I can say this would not change my decision to apply.
raytownAug 26, 2008
Your upper lip?
owned1upAug 26, 2008
I'm not sure why so many people are jumping to work at google, I am a comp sci major and wouldn't work there under current circumstances. Like MindStalker said, they only do it to keep their minions working longer - they are capitalizing on young, stupid, college graduates who are so used to being in a boxed up world they they need someone to take care of them. Don't get me wrong, I love google products, I just don't ever want to be one of the sheep working there. I would rather go out and make a name for myself alone.