great point. I sometimes see TVCs absolutely loading their plates with food, and it makes me think about what a blessing it is for them to be able to access high quality food at least once per day.
I agree "for them to be able to access high quality food at least once per day" is a good workaround in the current economic climate but, is "blessing" truly the right word?
Don't you think "access to high quality food anytime they want for their whole family" (ideally through appropriate pay) be a minimum bar before they consider themselves, or we consider them, even close to "blessed"?
And the convenience is something that you simply cannot replicate with money right now.
The only way to place gyms, makerspaces, and all the other fancy amenities right next to everyone's house would be to have very dense "techie towns" where the population (would have to he at the very least hundreds, better thousands) are all roughly like-minded, and even then you'd have issues with access control and trust (which requires a lot less friction inside a company, where too-far-out-of-bounds behavior is kept in check by the implied collateral of your high-paying job).
Or, just, you know, a city with modern density levels. This is entirely achievable even without some “techie town” if the density of an urban area is sufficient, as it is in many cities in the world.
While I agree with the notion, this is fairly short sighted. There are a lot of TVCs or "non-tech" employees of FAANG for whom free food makes a huge impact on their livelihood in high CoL areas.
But also, it's going to save them a lot of cash. Those amenities are incredibly expensive. So much so that the IRS has probed around as to whether they're properly taxed at a compensation level commensurate with their value.
I think that's the point in the UK HMRC is super strict on that.
I recall 20 years ago a large UK company wanted to offer free tea and coffee as a perk.
And avoid also to avoid every group having its own coffee/tea club - which lead to messy looking offices and also incidents when some ones decides to take Wally" to task for not contributing.
Basically HMRC said oh that's nice here's the tax bill so that was the end of that.
Ironically it bit the HMRC in the ass as the CFO used the ability to distribute profit based tax free shares as a big F&% you.
Companies change over time. Google is doing fantastically well financially but they'd be remiss if they did not use this to get rid of a large chunk of opex if they could. Note that that company is happy to send customers invoices for $30 so I'd go on the assumption that if they can save many millions they'd be interested.
I'm with you. I'd love a one-time budget for modifications to my home that will actually make it viable as an office. I've invested in a better chair, monitor(s), peripherals etc. That money shouldn't have came out of my pocket.
That's being said, I don't work for Google, but the guarantee that I'd be able to move some place cheaper for a year would make these expenses easier to swallow.
My company (in Norway, so not FAANG) shipped all their office stuff to us. So before the first week of WFH was over I had gotten my chair, desk, screen, keyboard etc all set up at home.
But if these things last longtime or become permanent, I think people will start reconsider where they live. For instance, we could need an extra room for a proper office.
Googlers can't use our workstations at home, but we can use our laptops for remote desktop/SSH. Everything else is processed in data centers which means great performance everywhere. We've also got monitors and office chairs to bring home.
There are major cons to WFH - less collaboration, impact on productivity. I don't think Google cares enough about the 'cost savings' aspect of it, if it has any impact on productivity.
