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.
