[HN Gopher] The Elves Leave Middle Earth - Sodas Are No Longer F...
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The Elves Leave Middle Earth - Sodas Are No Longer Free (2009)
Author : tosh
Score : 105 points
Date : 2022-05-31 18:34 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (steveblank.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (steveblank.com)
| falcolas wrote:
| A small, mildly entertaining, anecdote about soda:
|
| When Oracle acquired the company I was working for, they made the
| soda free. That is, Oracle made the soda dispensing machines
| simply dispense soda when you pressed a button.
|
| The same company that had a self-service "I Quit" page.
|
| Free soda is _an_ indicator about how a company treats its
| employees, but perhaps not the best.
| cptnapalm wrote:
| Self-service "I Quit" page... that's... wow...
| mberning wrote:
| It's not that rare. Many large companies have an HR portal
| and one of the many options is usually to "end your
| employment".
| throwaway284534 wrote:
| I assume the form has some dissuading text along the lines
| of, "Upon submitting, a goon squad will be sent for your
| immediate removal from the premises." Or maybe they just
| send spiders through the ethernet. It's a big company.
| [deleted]
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I had a client that stocked kitchen fridges with free basic
| foods - drinks, meats, breads, etc. - and quality, healthy
| stuff too. That always impressed me, sending a simple, strong
| message that they cared about their employees and people like
| me, and it had a positive impact on me when I ate my share (and
| didn't have to worry about taking time to get lunch).
|
| At one point they brought in a relatively large team of
| contractors to work day and night on a critical, time-sensitive
| project. A week after the team started I was there, talking
| casually to the manager. They told me that there were
| complaints that they were running low on food in the fridge
| because the contractors were eating it too. What would they do?
| Ban the contractors, with only arms-length loyalty to the
| business, working day and night, and on whom the business's
| fortunes depended, from the kitchens.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > At one point they brought in a relatively large team of
| contractors to work day and night on a critical, time-
| sensitive project.
|
| To me that is a huge red sign that something is seriously
| wrong with the company. Bringing in a bunch of new people and
| having them work long hours does not seem conducive to good
| code.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| It wasn't an IT company.
| mlyle wrote:
| Not everything is permanent code that has to be maintained
| forever. Sometimes you have a migration, or a bunch of data
| to suck in one time from a vendor or acquisition, or
| whatever. You can run appropriate quality checks to bound
| the error rate.
| tomrod wrote:
| Accounting/PeopleOps meets the Real World! Great anecdote.
|
| The free meals are a perk paid for by the people creating the
| revenue. I suspect that perk probably wasn't budgeted for
| addition to the Contractor work. An oversight, perhaps?
| Hopefully folks working got fed.
| ls15 wrote:
| "Be my guest, but don't touch the food!"
| philwelch wrote:
| There's a lot of talk on Twitter the last couple of days
| about how this is apparently a cultural norm for house
| guests in Nordic countries!
| cgriswald wrote:
| For the curious, here is the reddit thread and comment
| that seems to have started it:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/uxz68j/what_i
| s_t...
|
| > @Wowimatard
|
| > I remember going to my swedish friends house.
|
| > And while we were playing in his room, his mom yelled
| that dinner was ready. And check this. He told me to WAIT
| in his room while they ate.
|
| > That shit was fucking wild.
| klipt wrote:
| So what do Swedish guests do - bring their own food to
| others' houses, or just always leave before mealtime?
| na85 wrote:
| I mean if an electrician or whatever came into my house
| to do a job, and ate my food without being offered it,
| I'd consider that extremely rude.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Scale and context matters.
|
| The loss of a single food item in your own house has a
| much larger impact than the loss of a single food item in
| a kitchen stocked to feed dozens of employees - in the
| former case, your lunch disappeared but in the latter
| case there's just one less pack of crisps in a box of 100
| that nobody will even notice and the positive impact of
| that (in terms of morale, especially for regular
| contractors) outweighs the 50c the pack of crisps costs.
| voidfunc wrote:
| Is Oracle all that bad of a place to work? Everyone _hates_
| Oracle for product reasons but I've never met any engineers
| that said it was a terrible place to work or particularly worse
| than any other big tech b2b companies (e.g. ibm, microsoft,
| etc).
| scrumbledober wrote:
| Super anecdotal, but I once interviewed an engineer who was
| currently working for Oracle. During the interview he told me
| that every six months he would go apply to jobs at startups,
| get an offer or two, and bring them back to his manager and
| ask for a raise. He had been at Oracle for 15 years doing
| this apparently the entire time. So it seems some people very
| much like working there. Needless to say I recommended we
| pass on him...
| arebop wrote:
| Every ex-Oracle engineer I've met says it was a terrible
| place to work compared to the big tech company where I work
| now. I also don't know anyone who went to work for Oracle
| after leaving my current company, fwiw.
| volkadav wrote:
| it strongly depends on which org you're in, with an average
| of "boring, with a big steaming pile of bureaucracy" based on
| my observations spending five years at the seattle-based
| cloud org. if you had a good manager and skip-level stuff
| could be pretty alright, if you didn't god help you.
| falcolas wrote:
| This.
|
| If you have a good manager, and your project doesn't span
| across orgs, you have a ton of freedom. Crossing orgs
| creates red tape you wouldn't believe, since such requests
| "must go through Larry's office".
|
| They also have an absolutely stellar health plan - I know
| of one (US) employee whose spouse got cancer, and they
| didn't pay one penny out of pocket for the entire
| treatment.
| thebean11 wrote:
| I don't think that's out of the ordinary. With most big
| tech health plans you'd probably pay little or nothing if
| you stayed in network.
| rst wrote:
| Immediately after the Oracle/Sun acquisition, there was a
| huge exodus of senior engineering talent (e.g., most of the
| core Solaris kernel development team). This writeup of why
| James Gosling left has some of the obvious reasons (e.g., he
| was asked to take a significant pay cut), but also this
| anecdote, showing Oracle managements' general attitude toward
| the talent:
|
| https://www.eweek.com/development/java-creator-james-
| gosling...
|
| [quoted]:
|
| Making his point about the "creepiness," not only with
| Ellison but with Oracle's power structure, Gosling said he
| sparked a notion to try to improve morale amongst the Sun
| faithful who endured the Oracle acquisition. He said the
| company decided to rent out the Great America amusement park
| in Santa Clara, Calif., and allow the Sun folks to have a day
| of fun. Scott McNealy and Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz signed
| off on the project that came in well under budget and all
| systems were go, Gosling said. Except a few days before the
| event was to occur, Oracle Co-President Safra Catz got wind
| of it and put the kibosh on the thing.
|
| "Safra found out and had a fit," Gosling said. "The word came
| down that Oracle does not do employee appreciation events. So
| she forced the thing to be cancelled. But they didn't save
| any money because the money had been spent - so we ended up
| giving the tickets to charities. We were forced to give it up
| because it wasn't the -Oracle Way.' On the other hand, Oracle
| sponsors this sailboat for about $200 million."
| tqi wrote:
| Couldn't that just be about "fairness" to the other (non-
| Sun) employees?
| HollywoodZero wrote:
| You do bring up a valid point.
|
| One of the tricky issues is when you have other office
| locations based outside of the US.
|
| There's TONS of hoops you have to follow to offer
| comparable benefits for employees in other locations
| around the world.
| rst wrote:
| Not sure it's really a defense of Oracle to say that
| they'd been treating their own technical staff badly, and
| couldn't treat Sun's any different.
| cwp wrote:
| bcantrill had a pretty good take on this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246
| aidenn0 wrote:
| While the whole rant is great[1], "Don't make the mistake
| of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison" is a particularly
| great quote.
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=33m
| hinkley wrote:
| Does Brian still routinely call Larry a Nazi?
|
| I've always found it somewhat amusing that Ellison's facial
| hair is virtually identical to the episode of Star Trek
| where they cross into another dimension where they are all
| evil. Like somewhere there's a clean-shaven Larry who is
| the life of the party and getting recognized by the City
| Council for his humanitarian work.
| teraflop wrote:
| Don't really know about Oracle-the-company, but everything
| I've heard about Oracle-the-database-product suggests that
| working on it is a nightmare.
|
| e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941
| RajT88 wrote:
| I worked for a post-startup company early in my career.
|
| The Christmas parties were awesome, my first few years there
| included parties at the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum.
| There were subsidized vending machines as well. I knew
| engineers who would spend a dollar on the vending machine and
| get a few bags of chips for lunch.
|
| Subsidized vending machines were the first to go. Then the
| Christmas parties. Then a bunch of other changes which showed
| derision for customers and employees both.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| We had something akin to this happen at my company. For context,
| this is a well established mid-sized company with around 5000
| employees. Some beancounter decided that they could no longer
| afford to subsidize the plastic spoons in the break rooms. So
| they announced that when the current stock ran out, they would
| not be replacing it.
|
| The backlash was pretty strong. Not because engineers can't
| afford plastic spoons of their own, or some other alternative,
| but because it was such a _petty_ thing. These spoons come in
| cases of 1000 for under 10 bucks, so nobody can argue with a
| straight face that it was about the cost.
|
| I don't know that anyone actually quit over it, but it leaves a
| sour taste in your mouth.
| jmharvey wrote:
| This reminds me of a startup CFO I worked with, who _could_ see
| the big picture. In the early days of the company, they worked
| in an office that shared a bathroom with a half dozen other
| companies. And the toilet paper in said bathroom was terrible.
| Like, not just standard-office-building terrible. Really,
| really bad. So CFO takes it upon himself to rectify the
| situation. He orders a couple dozen rolls of standard-issue
| "premium" office toilet paper (still not that great relative to
| home-use TP, but good by office standards) and leaves it in the
| bathroom. Two days later, it's gone: someone (not clear whether
| it was someone at the startup or one of the neighboring
| companies) decided to take it home with them. Everyone in the
| office starts grumbling about the state of the TP situation
| again.
|
| Not to be outdone, CFO places another order; several cases this
| time. And it takes a few more days, but sure enough, it all
| disappears.
|
| At this point, CFO is fed up. He orders two full pallets of TP.
| After lunch one day, several volunteers unload the toilet
| paper. Multiple stacks, floor to ceiling, in the bathroom. More
| stacks in the supply closet. Stacks in the hallway. Stacks in
| the lobby. Everywhere you look, there's toilet paper. And if
| people were stealing TP after that, it wasn't at a rate that
| anyone could notice.
|
| Including the ongoing costs for the subsequent 18 months until
| they moved out of that building, the "unlimited TP" policy
| might have cost the company $10k. But it bought a lot more than
| that in terms of employee goodwill. Knowing that the bean
| counters are focusing on "our employees are producing a product
| worth $x; let's figure out how to have them do more of that"
| makes a big difference.
| conradfr wrote:
| They should have said it was to save the planet.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _The Elves Leave Middle Earth - Sodas Are No Longer Free_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30173379 - Feb 2022 (1
| comment)
|
| _The Elves Leave Middle Earth - Sodas Are No Longer Free_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27445943 - June 2021 (3
| comments)
|
| _The Elves Leave Middle Earth - Sodas Are No Longer Free (2009)_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19690250 - April 2019 (2
| comments)
|
| _The Elves Leave Middle Earth - Sodas Are No Longer Free_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16801710 - April 2018 (2
| comments)
|
| _The Elves Leave Middle Earth - Sodas Are No Longer Free (2009)_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13134712 - Dec 2016 (69
| comments)
|
| _The Elves Leave Middle Earth - Sodas Are No Longer Free (2009)_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5751329 - May 2013 (390
| comments)
|
| _The Elves Leave Middle Earth - Sodas Are No Longer Free_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007750 - Dec 2009 (226
| comments)
| raccer wrote:
| Holy moly, first thread summary I've seen, very cool! Is this
| an automatic thing now? (assuming url match I suppose)
| ColinWright wrote:
| I used to do this a lot, but I've given up. I used to run a
| 'bot to do it, but I got a lot of pushback and discontinued.
|
| Dang is a moderator, and he does it when he thinks it's
| useful. I suspect he does it "by hand" but, like me, has
| written scripts to help.
|
| Given that your account was created 12 years ago I'm a little
| surprised that this is the first thread summary you've seen.
| dang wrote:
| Yes - I wrote software that makes it fast to do by hand.
|
| You'd certainly be welcome to resume! I think including the
| number of comments is the important bit, plus not pointing
| to threads with zero comments - but IIRC you had both of
| those features.
|
| Edit: one fun fact - it's surprisingly difficult to post
| links to past threads without coming off as somehow
| reproaching the latest submitter for posting a duplicate.
| In reality, of course, HN allows reposts after about a year
| (and this is in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html),
| but many people don't know that and interpret the list of
| past threads as an implicit criticism, which is a shame.
|
| I've tried out a bunch of different wordings trying to
| minimize that misunderstanding. The simplest one seems to
| be the most effective - I just say "Related". Somehow the
| word "related" sounds less like a criticism. It also has
| the nice property of being inclusive, so for example it's
| fine to include other articles on the same topic.
|
| One of these years, I still want to build software support
| for collecting related URLs and related past threads into
| HN's official UI. Then we can all build up sets of related
| things collaboratively. That will hopefully make HN more
| interesting.
| pvg wrote:
| _Then we can all build up sets of related things
| collaboratively._
|
| You could also take all the posts and related links, toss
| them in a big adjacency matrix and, oh I dunno, rank the
| relatedness of pages.
|
| Dumb jokes aside, these do add a lot of extra structure
| to the dataset and people might think up something
| interesting to do with that.
| drivers99 wrote:
| This comment is one I still remember from 9 years ago (from the
| top of the May 2013 thread).
|
| > Then one day a guy came in with a hand cart, loaded the
| coffee machine on it, and rolled it away. A week later the
| layoffs started.
|
| > [...]
|
| > In other words, the free sodas are the proverbial canary in
| the coal mine. When they die, it's time to get out if you don't
| want to die with them.
| HollywoodZero wrote:
| I used to be in a management role a number of years back and
| faced this same issue.
|
| Thankfully I was able to convince executive management that for
| our several hundred employee company, running a Coke soda machine
| was basically the cost of 1 Tech Support headcount.
|
| That's it.
|
| One of the most popular in-office perks, the Coke freestyle
| machine was 1 tech support headcount.
|
| That was years ago. And we still have that machine.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Yes, it's a cheap employee morale device. How much do the
| alternatives cost?
|
| > for our several hundred employee company, running a Coke soda
| machine was basically the cost of 1 Tech Support headcount
|
| It cost you $50-100K/yr to run a Coke machine? Maybe I'm
| misunderstanding something!
| incanus77 wrote:
| > All these engineers were still heads-down, working their tails
| off, just as they had been doing since the first few months of
| the company. Too busy working, most were oblivious to the changes
| that success and growth had brought to the company.
|
| This gets at the vague steps that the author mentions at the end
| about supporting transitions of _people_, but I was waiting for
| them to get concrete about how the engineers should have
| _positively_ been made aware of the success and growth. Pay
| raises to market rate? A bonus? I'm guessing that in actuality,
| it was little more than verbal pats on the back.
|
| I guess it's different for each company culture, but this makes
| it sound like the engineers worked hard, the company got solid,
| things were taken away, and then the superstars started to leave.
| I've seen similar patterns a few times. What are some positive
| ways that people have seen these patterns fought?
| ftlio wrote:
| Based on how I've seen it mismanaged, the only way I see it
| working is hiring "provisional VPs". In the same way that you
| might have hired slow and fired fast in the beginning for
| competent ICs, you need to do the same with the now executive
| management skillset that's required to break off and scale
| whole divisions of the working organization. The other side of
| that is you need to equip them with the actual subset of the
| talent they need, and not hold back some employees who were
| there in the beginning for special considerations.
|
| The ICs have been there for years, knife fighting with the
| market and the competition, and then someone comes in from some
| adjacent market or some other vertical entirely, and the
| expectation is that all the work done to go from zero to one
| needs to be fit to their agenda, and not the other way around.
| Everyone who has lived it knows its backwards, and yet I've
| seen the trigger get pulled on this so slow that it had a
| measurable effect on the exit.
| devchix wrote:
| To present an alternate point of view, I never grokked this idea
| of free soda, free food, catered lunches, sleeping pods, dry-
| cleaning, massages, ping-pong table as a way to attract talents.
| If I took a risk to work for a startup, I want a lean machine
| that pays me in ridiculous cash or ridiculous options, and
| obscene milestone bonuses. The only thing I think I'd really care
| about is "bring your dog to work" and "onsite/nearby child-care",
| there's no substitute or purchasing-equiv to that. A startup is
| an intense high-stress environment where focused work and time is
| invaluable; none of those "perks" directly drive the goals, if
| anything they seem hedonistic distractions from the goal.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I like the explanation from this article [1] titled "Why perks
| matter": because perks like that avoid context switches and
| remove "distractions and other things which could disrupt [my]
| flow".
|
| As a human being who regularly needs to eat, not having to
| worry about having the right amount of snacks and/or change at
| hand can make or break my day. Trying to code while hungry is a
| waste of everybody's time and money, which is how free food
| pays for itself. And don't get me started on trying to code
| when all you really want is a nap...
|
| [1] https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/11/16/context/
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I thought I remembered reading somewhere that Google (or some
| company in a similar position) had worked out the math and
| figured that the free meals more than paid for themselves in
| increased productivity (or at least seat time) because
| employees weren't getting up to go off-site to find lunch. As
| often as not they'd be quickly back at their desk coding away.
| a4isms wrote:
| Never mind startups, I once had a client who was in the
| printing business, a numbers-driven blue-collar culture at
| the time. They worked out the loss of productivity from
| workers going out to the coffee truck and decided it was a
| win to spend a little money on coffee if it kept workers from
| going outside when they heard the truck's horn.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I think the point of supplying food and drink on-premises is
| exactly that, to foster "focused work and time "
|
| The objection isn't so much the price then put on the food and
| drink. It's the conversion of 'valued employee' to 'hourly
| crank-turner'. No longer a valued critical member of a team,
| now the corporation regards you as a 'resource'.
|
| E.g. did the executive perks disappear too? No? Now you know
| what pigeonhole you've been placed in (demoted to).
| freetime2 wrote:
| I tend to agree with this viewpoint. I actually found that my
| happiness decreased when a company I was working for started
| providing free lunch every day. The lunch break - along with a
| change of scenery, a short walk, and the freedom to choose
| whatever I wanted for lunch - was important for my well being.
| Also, employees would often complain about the free lunch
| options on certain days, which is kind of sad.
|
| I suppose it would have been different if it were a big campus
| at a FAANG, though, where they have lots of different
| restaurants to choose from spread out through multiple
| buildings. And the food the food looks amazing.
| dzdt wrote:
| I wonder about the "unintended consequences" takeaway here.
| Correlation is not causation. It seems to me that the talented
| startup engineers leaving and the decision to discontinue free
| soda don't likely have a causal relationship between them. Just
| both are things that happened along the growth path from startup
| to established company. More of a common cause explanation. If
| they had kept giving free soda would it have really kept the
| engineers from leaving? I have doubts.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| My thoughts as well, but it _is_ plausible that if the sodas
| had remained free, it would have taken a few more months for
| the "elves" to notice that this was no longer the kind of place
| they wanted to work. The "uproar" basically sent the message of
| "this place is run by accountants now, not engineers", and that
| was what sent the engineers to the exits.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Hmmm ... anything is possible. You don't offer any evidence for
| your hypothesis and by that standard, anything is possible. The
| OP was there, at the company, saw what happened, and has
| observed several other similar circumstances.
| thayne wrote:
| > The sodas were just the wake-up call.
|
| It probably wasn't just the sodas, it was probably a
| culmination of a lot of changes, and the sodas were the straw
| that broke the camel's back.
| ajuc wrote:
| It's a combination of things - if company takes away benefits
| and provides no new benefits - you as an engineer lose money.
| Meanwhile in current market just changing the company means a
| rise. Why settle for an effective salary cut when you can
| trivially get a rise instead? The difference between no rise
| and cut is huge mentally.
|
| Additionally if the company saves money on such a small scale
| it sends the signal things are BAD.
| freetime2 wrote:
| I could see myself being really upset by this change. It's not
| just about the cost of the soda - it's also about convenience.
| Now if I want to have a soda at work I need to remember to keep
| change or small value bills in my wallet. And if one day I
| forget then I need to leave the building in search of a treat,
| or else just go without - in either case I'm annoyed.
|
| And more than that it's about feeling valued and respected. It
| can be really upsetting when something you've gotten used to is
| taken from you. Especially when you know the cost to the
| company is just a tiny fraction of the overall operating
| budget, and unlikely to make any significant difference to the
| bottom line.
|
| Interestingly at my first job that I worked at, sodas weren't
| free, and it never really bothered me. But if they had been
| free, and one day stopped being free, that would annoy me. I
| think there is an asymmetry between the satisfaction people get
| when they use a perk, and they dissatisfaction they get if you
| take it away.
| HollywoodZero wrote:
| The interesting thing is that in MANY of these situations,
| you can guarantee that executives are getting free drinks,
| lunches, etc. as part of the perks.
|
| I've seen it happen. No soda, no food. But the executive
| assistant will do a lunch run every day for executives. And
| will pick up drinks too. Or there's usually a stocked fridge
| for executives near their wings of the building.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| You get what you pay for. Hire an accountant? They'll ask
| questions, refer to the team etc. Hire a CFO? They've been hired
| to make an impact.
|
| Few companies are good at promoting from within.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| I wonder how we got a cultural thing where coffee is usually
| expected to be provided free, but other beverages fall into a
| different class.
|
| I assume that if it was provided from dispensers like at McD's,
| it would be similar in expense to coffee.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| When I worked for Intel, the coffee was absolutely _not_ free.
| The only freebies were filtered water and toilet paper.
|
| It never bothered me that much, but when I joined a company
| with freebies, it was like a breath of fresh air.
| NtGuy25 wrote:
| Recently joined a company with legit soda machines(the fancy
| ones with exotic stuff like cream sodas), slim jims, ice
| cream, cookies, cakes and which buys lunch for the engineers
| every weekend. It's amazing. I came from a place where you
| had to pay 2 $ for a soda!
|
| It's definitely one of the things that you don't realize when
| you don't have it, but when you do it's like heaven. It's
| really helped me get more work done since I can snack away
| and it encourages me to get up for walks around the office.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Years ago (like, 1993 or so), our college CS class visited
| Jones Farm. One of the stops on the tour was a break room.
| All of the drinks were free at the time, whether it was
| coffee or coca cola. One of the engineers there remarked that
| at Microsoft only the _caffeinated_ drinks were free. LOL. I
| just about believe it.
| ajross wrote:
| Coffee is free at Intel. Or was, back when people worked in
| offices.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Not if you're a green badge it isn't.
| ajross wrote:
| Contractors don't get perks like that anywhere, thanks to
| Vizcaino v. Microsoft. Withholding resources afforded to
| permanent employees is weird and counterintuitive, but
| it's how employers demonstrate compliance.
| gowld wrote:
| Coffee is extremely popular, and too easy and cheap to meter
| when produced on site. Soda costs more and more hassle to buy
| (in cans/bottles), is extra work to make cheaply (install and
| maintain a tap), and mostly is grossly unhealthy and most
| people (outside of coder stereotype) don't want it at work.
|
| SodaStream-style device fits the coffee mold, but it's less
| popular and not traditional.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| I don't have numbers, but my expectation is that cost is of
| the same order of magnitude. I don't think coffee is all that
| cheap. I'm thinking of all the problems I've seen with the
| plumbing leaking, the machine being left on and burning
| requiring extensive cleaning, broken pots, and so forth, all
| on top of the material expense. Soda doesn't have to deal
| with the heat, but it does have pressure, so that probably
| kinda balances out.
| rhino369 wrote:
| Coffee is a productivity increaser.
| erwinkle wrote:
| as is caffeinated soda
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I once heard that Microsoft subsidized caffeinated soda,
| but you had to pay for the caffeine-free options. That may
| just be an old wives' tale.
| philwelch wrote:
| Not as much as you'd think; for me, at least, the sugar
| crash counteracts the caffeine.
| gnulinux wrote:
| There are a lot of caffinated seltzers now that don't
| have any sugar but do have flavoring and CO2
| gwbas1c wrote:
| And it turns some people into jerks. (It has similar effects
| to cocaine.)
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| While the effects may be on the same spectrum, I don't know
| how comparable the two actually are. Maybe I should start
| my day with a line instead?
| acchow wrote:
| You want to feed your employee healthy foods because healthy
| bodies are more productive.
|
| Also health insurance costs.
| samatman wrote:
| Two thirds of Americans (European numbers are similar, higher
| if anything) drink coffee every day, which is, not to put too
| fine a point on it, an addiction. I'm one of them for sure.
|
| It's easier to just give people their fix, and there's a long
| history of this, paid coffee breaks were an early concession
| unions demanded during industrialization.
| lol_what wrote:
| people really don't understand what a blessing it is to not
| have sodas be free. that kind of culture with an expectation of
| it (and 'snacks') being free will create a lot of fatness in
| the industry
| cbsmith wrote:
| I don't see it as unintended consequences of Soda Not Being Free.
| It's an attribution mistake, not entirely different from how SEM
| tends to get attribution for conversions it didn't really earn.
|
| The Elves leaving is unintended consequences of the company
| getting larger, and not finding a way to manage it in a way that
| retained top talent. The soda exposed it, but it was going to get
| exposed one way or another.
| the_af wrote:
| But that's exactly what the article states. It doesn't say they
| left because of the soda; it says it was a wake up call that
| made them realize it was no longer the company they liked and
| which they helped build.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's not attribution mistake, it's a proxy variable. Nobody
| ever though people left because of the soda.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Or, if you prefer, it's one piece of evidence that is easy to
| measure.
| cbsmith wrote:
| Right... and so consequently what is gained by hiding the
| evidence?
| rodgerd wrote:
| It's a general problem of being, as the Brits put it, "penny
| wise, pound foolish".
|
| Some bod in accounts can show an obvious change in the bottom
| line by cutting a cheap perk. The problems in retention,
| hiring, delivery are all someone else's problem and much harder
| to quantify.
| cbsmith wrote:
| See, I think that's not getting it. Cutting the drinks isn't
| what cost them the people. It's just what caused the loss of
| people to be _evident_. Particularly since the organization
| _had_ changed, it would have been unwise NOT to bring the
| perk policy in line with the rest of it.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I remembered once working at a large corporation with deep
| pockets, and lots of people with (cough) questionable value to
| the company.
|
| As soon as we hit a recession there were cries to cut back on the
| free food and sodas.
|
| It sent a very wrong message to me, as many of the people I
| interacted with on a daily basis were _horrible_ in their jobs.
|
| It seemed that pausing hiring recs and a few well-targeted
| severance packages would have saved more money than cutting back
| a few freebies.
| gowld wrote:
| Well-targeting severance is hard to do.
| mwigdahl wrote:
| Similar story -- back when I worked at a physical engineering
| company, one of their cost-cutting methods when things got
| tight was to cut down the amount of time they ran the A/C
| during the day. This applied to all floors of the building
| except the one where the partners' offices were.
|
| This led to a number of people routinely using their breaks to
| take the elevator up to the "partners' floor" and cooling off /
| airing their sweaty BO for the bosses' benefit.
| gav wrote:
| I think that these cost-cutting schemes never really work
| out, they either cause the best people to leave or trade
| money for work-done.
|
| I worked for a bank where they had terrible coffee on our
| floor. We used to joke about how bad it was until one day
| these fancy automatic machines showed up that ground the
| coffee for each cup, they even had milk! Times were good,
| we'd walk over to somebody's desk--"I'm running a build, do
| you want to grab a coffee?"--and we'd chat in the break room
| about how great these new machines were.
|
| Then we had a couple of quarters in a row with bad numbers,
| cutbacks were being made, if we do this then we don't have to
| have layoffs, etc. We lost our fancy machines.
|
| The impact to morale was huge, we only had had them for a
| couple of months, taking them away once we got used to them
| was a huge deal. But more importantly, most people on our
| floor were now used to drinking partly-decent coffee. A
| couple times a day we'd go to the nearest coffee shop and buy
| our own, which involved walking to the elevator, waiting,
| going 23 floors to the lobby, badging out, walking across the
| street, getting coffee, walking back, badging in, waiting for
| the elevator, going up 23 floors, then finally back to your
| desk. This had to waste at least 20 minutes, more if the
| elevators were busy.
| greedo wrote:
| People have a high level of loss aversion.
| philwelch wrote:
| The implication being that targeted layoffs are less damaging
| to morale than getting rid of free soda?
| gwbas1c wrote:
| When someone impacts morale, forcing a team to work with that
| person is _highly damaging._
|
| The managers all knew who these people were, so they could
| have given them severance without calling it a layoff. I'm
| mostly referring to a situation where everyone else would
| have been relieved instead of spooked.
| t-3 wrote:
| Severance may come with it's own difficulties: state
| unemployment payments, contractual obligations,
| bureaucratic overhead, manager pushback.
|
| I think leadership-oriented types tend to esteem headcount
| the way nerds esteem CPU core count and frequency - up is
| fine, down is not acceptable unless you're absolutely
| forced. Neither is a really rational position, but they
| overall tend not to be too detrimental so there's no
| widespread change.
| the_af wrote:
| Targeted layoffs of people everyone complains about because
| they are bad at their jobs and also terrible as team mates
| sends a way better signal than keeping them and removing
| perks from employees who do work.
| Animats wrote:
| It's worth watching the little stuff. When you see a retail
| establishment with a partly burned out sign, and it doesn't get
| fixed quickly, you know they're in trouble.
| moate wrote:
| I'll mention that to the bodega owner in town who's been in
| business longer than I've lived here. I'm sure it will get a
| chuckle.
| justin66 wrote:
| It's the deviation from the norm that's a potential warning
| sign. You'd know the cool bodega might be in trouble, with a
| lame new owner or something, if the sign got fixed or a bunch
| of painting was done...
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| There are plenty of shitbox stores making tons of money though.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Maybe it pays to have an image of not wasting money looking
| pretty.
| sammalloy wrote:
| > When you see a retail establishment with a partly burned out
| sign, and it doesn't get fixed quickly, you know they're in
| trouble.
|
| As others have already mentioned, this only holds true for a
| specific kind of store and market. Many businesses don't care
| to fix their sign. The Safeway near me had a broken sign for
| almost two years.
| Animats wrote:
| Uh oh.
|
| I saw Sears stores start to have broken signs about 3 years
| before they went bust.
| vkou wrote:
| That's an interesting data point, but I don't think I'm
| going to make a lot of money by shorting Safeway's proxies.
| thehappypm wrote:
| It's classic elastic vs inelastic demand. Grocery stores
| don't need to worry so much about their brand image. Not
| zero, but less than a store selling luxuries.
| lordnacho wrote:
| My reading of it is that it isn't the soda, it's having the bean
| counter become an authority that can make decisions.
|
| If you work day and night to get a product out, and then a CFO
| slides in above everyone on the team, and on top of that they're
| a cheapskate, that sends a signal.
| klelatti wrote:
| Indeed, but also it's a sign that senior management
| collectively - inc the CEO - now see trivial cost cutting as a
| worthwhile use of their focus and a good way to generate value
| for shareholders.
|
| Not a good sign for any company.
| the_af wrote:
| Well, the article spells out that it wasn't really about the
| sodas:
|
| > _The engineers focused on building product never noticed when
| the company had grown into something different than what they
| first joined._
|
| > _The sodas were just the wake-up call._
| a4isms wrote:
| Having been through this transition multiple times, I agree
| that it's not about the sodas or the CFO. Why do you think
| they hire CFOs? To do things like this. To impose cost
| discipline. To be the person everyone is mad at instead of
| wondering why the company hired a CFO in the first place.
|
| Same with "HR types ruining the culture" and "middle managers
| running amok." Those people all get hired to transform the
| company, because leadership has decided some thing very
| fundamental: _What got us here, won't get us there._
|
| PG once wrote that startups should frame their reason for
| existence as "trying to answer a question."
|
| Famous questions of the past: Will microcomputers sell? Will
| people pay a premium for bit-mapped graphics and a mouse? Can
| advertising sustain a search engine? Will the world use a
| social media web site built for college students?
|
| But at some point, you know the answer is "yes," you know
| that a sustainable business is possible, and you are no
| longer a startup. The difference between "answering a
| question" and "running a sustainable business"is vast.
|
| Maybe killing free soda is not the best way to start the
| transition, but one way or another, all the people who want
| to explore the unknown, test their visions, and answer
| questions are going to leave, to be replaced by people who
| enjoy playing the world's most cut-throat, high-stakes engine
| game, business.
|
| If you truly enjoy what a startup is and how it works, you
| need to pack your parachute long before the free sodas go
| away. You need to pack your parachute when everyone realizes
| that you are no longer wondering if your company can become a
| real business, the only questions are how, when, and who.
|
| On the other hand, maybe you want to build a real business
| once you know it can be done. Gates did. Jobs did. Long
| before them, Ken Olsen did at DEC. If so, accept that the
| sodas will eventually go and the controls will be imposed.
| the_af wrote:
| I don't disagree. I wonder if it's possible to work at a
| stable company (not a startup) that doesn't treat its
| employees as an annoyance to be constrained and mistreated.
| hinkley wrote:
| There is a large cage here. The weathering suggests that it
| may have been here for a long time.
|
| There is a large sign next to the cage.
|
| There is a stick on the ground.
|
| > read sign
|
| The sign says, DO NOT POKE THE BEAR
|
| > get stick
|
| You pick up the stick.
|
| > poke bear with stick
|
| Despite your better judgement, you poke the bear with the
| stick. The bear rouses from its sleep.
|
| > poke bear with stick
|
| With a terrible roar, the bear turns on you. Reaching through
| the bars, it tears your arm off.
|
| There is an arm laying here, holding a stick.
| Fnoord wrote:
| Although Luke did not lose his arm in wampa cave on Hoth
| (he lost it at Cloud City) he could've gotten a new one at
| the Redemption which was stationed at Hoth at that time.
|
| Ontopic: I wouldn't give a shit about soda or free soda,
| but coffee and tea is always free here for employees in my
| country (quality may differ!). I simply would not work for
| a company which wouldn't feat this. So the social norm
| defines it and keeps its own behavior status quo. That's
| also a reason why its difficult to get rid of
| smoking/smokers tobacco in society
| metacritic12 wrote:
| Right, I think that's exactly the point of the article. In no
| world should free sodas make a substantial difference, but it's
| rather the signal it sends.
|
| Much like a single cockroach at the entrance of a fancy hotel
| isn't by itself a problem if it's limited to exactly that
| cockroach...
| thedailymail wrote:
| As famed beancounter Warren Buffett says, "There's never only
| one cockroach."
| stevievee wrote:
| Unfortunately, this anecdote re-enforces a stereotype. The CFO
| in this story is bad and so is senior leadership and the board
| for allowing the new CFO to run amok. Not all new CFOs are bad
| and not all CFOs with leadership will destroy a company.
| airstrike wrote:
| You're fighting an uphill battle on HN...
| stevievee wrote:
| "Engineer good, MBA bad" ...there I fixed it.
| EnKopVand wrote:
| It's sort of the natural evolution of companies as they grow in
| size. When they are small, things are just done, but as they
| grow and as they bring in more people, the cost of those
| resources also grow. The free sodas are a fun example (and here
| outlined as the wake-up call) but where it really starts is
| when someone higher up notices the cost of a department that
| has grown from 5 to 20 people, or something similarly eye
| raising, and then bring in the E&Y type consultants to help
| transition into a scalable business. Which simply involves
| reporting, cost-trimming and looking into efficiency. The sodas
| are where the rebellion break out, but the seed are sown long
| before that as the "bean counters" and "process people" slowly
| begin making business intelligence part of everything because
| it lets everyone report on everything.
|
| You can't even say that it doesn't work, because it's how every
| major company operates. On the flip-side, it's not like Coca
| Cola has really invented anything of worth for like a 100
| years. So while bean counters are financially good for
| investors, they are probably pretty terrible at running our
| society, because it's the engineers that actually build things
| and the founders who come up with the saleable ideas.
|
| Anyway, if my career has taught me anything it's to do your
| thing. Being part of the transition from startup to enterprise
| can be a lot of fun as well, so long as you know that you can't
| really fight the MBA types and win.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >someone higher up notices the cost of a department that has
| grown from 5 to 20 people, or something similarly eye raising
|
| I don't think the soda cost per person would be different for
| 20 people though, so it seems a weird thing to raise the eyes
| about.
| ajross wrote:
| Of course it's not any different. But the focus has
| changed. When you're an early stage startup, a 0.7%
| overhead for junk food (made up number, but that's probably
| not too far off) is a fundamentally negligible thing. It's
| like 3 days of runway, if that.
|
| Basically: who cares, the company will live or die based on
| products and funding rounds, and you're just trying to make
| the company not die at this stage.
|
| But to an established company trying to make money, 0.7% of
| revenue is a huge (seriously, huge) line item in a CFO's
| accomplishment list. Consistent profitability is built on a
| long, grueling ladder of tiny incremental bean-countings.
| And to an established company trying to make money, that's
| where the focus turns. And those are the employees who get
| rewarded.
|
| It's not that either side is "right", it's that they have
| opposing priorities and that growing companies need to
| manage that tension and not just give in to the temptation
| to lock the soda machine.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >But to an established company trying to make money, 0.7%
| of revenue is a huge (seriously, huge) line item in a
| CFO's accomplishment list.
|
| Ok, that seems pretty weird right there, 0.7% overhead of
| an early stage startup is now 0.7% of revenue even though
| we agree it is just increasing as the same rate of hires?
|
| In other words while each new programmer hired will drink
| the same amount of soda as the others it should be
| evident that the percentage of revenue would be
| decreasing, otherwise they have some serious problems
| that getting rid of free soda will not fix.
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