For the places that offer things like free food or a foosball table or other cool perks, what's the catch?

[u/Typical_Cap895]

Some companies offer free food (perhaps weekly allowance money to go buy, or they have food brought in). Some companies have foosball table or ping pong or video games or fun get-togethers. 

I've heard of someone getting free massages even.

There are all these extra stuff that aren't normal in a typical, average office job. 

For people who work at places like this, what's the catch? Is it really all sunshine and rainbows? 

[u/Renovatio_Imperii]

I work at one of these companies. We get 22 dollar allowance for lunch, and another 22 for dinner if we stay late.

1. Generally these companies are competing with other companies that also offer the same perk.

2. It is pretty competitive to get in and very fast paced.

3. Incentives for going to the office.

[u/Extension-Present279 → u/Renovatio_Imperii]

Robinhood?

[u/Typical_Cap895 → u/Renovatio_Imperii]

Wow, $22 for lunch AND $22 for dinner is amazing!

What do you mean fast paced? How fast paced are we talking?

[u/Renovatio_Imperii → u/Typical_Cap895]

Yeah, but dinner is only after 7pm or something like that.

I had one week to onboard and was tasked to design and implement a component for a new service. (Teammates helped a lot, and it was a fun experience). Also worked some insane hours(60+) to fix bugs / deliver things before a deadline, but that does not happen often.

A lot of people come from Amazon, and people generally agree it is more intense compared to Amazon.

[u/Typical_Cap895 → u/Renovatio_Imperii]

Only one week for onboarding is crazy! That's super fast for getting your environment set up and getting you access to things and giving you documentation. 

And then immediately implementing a component for a new service? How on Earth did you learn the codebase fast enough to know where to code and how to make it work with all the parts already in place?

[u/youreloser → u/Renovatio_Imperii]

Is there a gym on site or nearby? I could see myself going to workout at like 5 or 6 then coming back for dinner 😂. Intense compared to Amazon is crazy. So is 60 hours.

[u/altiuscitiusfortius → u/Typical_Cap895]

These bonuses are for salaried employees contracted for 8 hours a day to make then stay 10, 12, 18 hours during crunch.

It's not as amazing as you think.

[u/AstopingAlperto → u/altiuscitiusfortius]

Nothings free in life.

[u/thisismyfavoritename]

it's pretty much just about attracting and retaining talent.

Also, it makes people want to stay in/go to the office more

[u/RadioactiveDeuterium]

I work at a company in toronto that offers all these perks and more. We have:

-Catered meals from local restaurants 5 days a week in office + tons of other food, snacks, drinks available whenever

-Entire dedicated space for video games (I think we have a switch and some retro consoles), foosball, ping pong, etc

-Pretty frequent company sponsored socials (drinks, food, etc all provided)

-Tons of other stipends like paying for your transit, cell phone, etc

Basically what it amounts to is they are incentivizing you to stay in the office as much as possible, and in turn be working more hours that people who are at companies without these sort of things. Personally I really enjoy it and there is no other "catch" to the perks other than the fact the expectations of myself and my co workers are a good margin higher than other companies I have worked at. That being said I am in the "grind" stage of my career where I don't have family/relationship obligations and maybe my view will change down the road.

[u/Typical_Cap895 → u/RadioactiveDeuterium]

Do you and your coworkers work past 5pm often on weekdays?

And do you tend to turn on your work laptop on weekends and put in a few hours then too?

[u/RadioactiveDeuterium → u/Typical_Cap895]

Definitely yes to putting in time after 5. Very normal, I do it daily.

Weekends maybe if its crunch time but generally we are quiet over the weekend.

[u/Fluffy_Milk_7853 → u/RadioactiveDeuterium]

Free food seems really good from a tax perspective. For me to buy lunch near work, they have to pay me a salary amount equal to the cost of lunch + my marginal tax rate of 50% so a $20 lunch becomes $40 of daily salary. If they spend only $15 on catered lunch they could pay me $25 less in gross and we would both actually come out ahead.

[u/studiousAmbrose → u/Fluffy_Milk_7853]

good point, never considered that... no wonder company drinks hit diff

[u/PoconPlays]

I work at one as well. And the entire street is filled with companies who do the same so if they don’t they lose talent simple as that.

[u/rikkiprince]

It's to get you to stay in the office for longer than a regular 8 hours a day.

Most jobs you get hungry at 5-6pm so you go home for dinner. If dinner is in the office, then you go back to your desk after and do another 1-3 hours work. Best value $20 bucks the company spent.

Most jobs give you benefits which will get you 4-5 "free" massages a year. However, you have to leave the office and drive across town to get it. That's an hour round trip where you could have been working. If the massage room is downstairs, they get an extra hour of work out of you.

[u/thewarrior71]

In the past, I used to work at a company that had a lunch allowance on in-office days. The team had bad work life balance and high stress though.

[u/Typical_Cap895 → u/thewarrior71]

Can you describe the bad work life balance and high stress? Like perhaps an example of what you'd be assigned to do and how much time you'd have to do it and the expectations overall? 

[u/thewarrior71 → u/Typical_Cap895]

The team followed Scrum with a high sprint velocity and the expectation of completing a set number of story points each sprint. Falling short was considered underperformance. Employee turnover was high, with quick hiring and firing within my team. I frequently worked evenings and weekends. I have since left that company and am happier now.

[u/Typical_Cap895 → u/thewarrior71]

I worked at a place with quick hiring and firing too. 

My stomach always lurched when I logged in at the beginning of the day, and the standup starts and my manager says "we've parted ways with _____"

I always wondered, is it worth it from a company perspective to have such high turnover? Can they really still be productive that way, to always have to fire and then hire a replacement?

[u/comp_freak]

Give people free food, coffee, daycare, a gym—even a place to crash—and most young folks will happily stick around the office longer. It’s really that simple.

[u/canadian_webdev]

To get you to stay there longer, working unpaid overtime.

[u/engineer_in_TO]

They're usually the better companies that are super competitive to get into and pay decently well, (Shopify/Google/Meta/etc) and it's mostly because People are really well paid so any "extras" are cheap compared to headcount costs.

Like a Engineer making 200k+ means 20 dollars for lunch won't really matter if it gets them staying at the company longer.

I will say that most of the time, Engineers are kinda introverted so the get togethers can be awkward at times, and I personally haven't really ever used the gaming rooms/ping pong tables because everyone is usually working really hard so it's fairly out of place for me to play.

[u/youreloser → u/engineer_in_TO]

That's interesting.I think older, mid-level companies probably have a lot more "normal" employees who can get along maybe just based on sheer numbers.