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Comment by mcguire | Hacker News Reader

"It never ceases to amaze me how many startups make the mistake of killing off the free drinks."

(One of the comments on the page.)

But wait a minute. Killing off the free drinks is just the signpost. The change is primarily in the size and the culture of the company itself. Charging for sodas might be the first, but it isn't the biggest change that the company is going to, and going to have to, make as it grows.

Does anyone really believe that IBM, Amazon, Facebook, or Google would still be their happy fun startup selves if they still gave away free sodas?

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Google isn't a 'happy fun startup self', but it is a pretty decent place to work. And people do care.

Also, they are de-emphasizing sodas, but what ones are there are free.

Incidentally, the office of IBM I worked at a decade ago had free sodas.

Yeah, Google didn't invent free soda. We had free soda at the startup I founded in 1994. I interviewed at Davinci Email in 1991 & they had free soda and a fridge stocked with free food.

So did mine. And at one point, ice cream in the fridge.

Of course, it was what became the "Solutions Experience Lab", so we had a smart kitchen set up with RFID readers for medicine bottles, and an oven that would keep things cold and remote operation capabilities. And the fridge was wired up to report electricity usage: when they first installed it, they found wildly varying swings in temperature and power use. Turns out, you need to put something in it as thermal mass. Sodas are good, but ice cream doesn't work because people eat it too fast. That got replaced with plain ice.

I would be shocked if Amazon, Facebook, and Google don't still give away free sodas.

Amazon, among several other infamous reasons to not work for them, does not provide free soda or snacks.

Or perhaps in the case of Google, something a bit healthier and more expensive than sodas? Those things are pretty bad for you.

Amazon doesn't.

Facebook and Google both give away free food, so I can't see why soda would be a problem.

Microsoft has free soda and the food is fairly cheap.

Microsoft has free soda and the food is fairly cheap.

Eh? Could have changed since I was last there eleven years ago, but in the last four or five years of my tenure I rarely ate in the cafeterias because for less money I could get more and better food within a five minute walk. And I got to go for a walk at lunch. (So I guess I'm talking on the order of fifteen years ago. Never mind the old man in the corner mumbling to himself about how it was better, er I mean worse, back then.)

Bottom line: Who cares?

Free soda and food? Really?

Aol has free sodas, but not food.

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