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Comment by ahallock | Hacker News Reader

I've invested thousands of dollars in my home setup (which will never be done), to create an amazing working environment. Why would I want to give that up? Sure, employers may give you a little $ to customize your desk and equipment, but if I'm going to be spending so much of my life at a computer, it'd better be amazing.

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My employer's work environment is worth much more to me per year than the entire cost of your home setup thanks to all of the free meals and the gym equipment alone. Just something worth thinking about.

I don't know what bothers me more. People willingly selling their souls to companies or the companies that spend humongous amounts of money to keep their employees away from their homes and lifes...

Why do you think I'm "selling my soul" just because I go into the office and eat the free food they provide? I work normal 40 hour weeks. I'm not being dragged away from my home and my life. You've got an overly cynical take on it. They're just nice perks that the company can provide cheaply at scale, e.g. I'd rather get three free meals per day than the $5,000 it costs my employer to make those meals per employee, because if I were buying those meals out it'd cost more than $5,000 per year.

Usually when offices offer those perks it is to keep people at work and blur the line between work and home. It's not cynical to point that out. By offering really expensive perks they are filtering for people who value those perks over salary (because there really is no free lunch)

I don't think that's true. We don't have any perks that are explicitly targeted at keeping people in the office longer than the normal workday, e.g. we do have beer for various weekly events but it's from 5-6pm only. Again, I think you are being too cynical. The perks exist in order to provide a desirable workplace and be competitive in the hiring market. They help attract and retain talent in a way that simple salary does not. They also take advantage of the company's economy of scale in order to provide greater utility for the same amount of money, e.g. I'd rather my employer spend $5K per year on feeding me three meals a day than get the ~$3K after-tax and have to pay for my meals myself.

I know people have different priorities and that's okay.

I see it like this: I did things to improve my quality of life and people who can't do this are missing out.

I can use a computer system of my choosing, most companies admins aren't too BYOD friendly.

I can bring my girlfriend to work, buy groceries, prepare my own food and eat it. I could not do this if I was at an office somewhere else. Most companies got small kitchens where you can't cook as good as at home and many companies only grant you 30-60min break, which aren't enough for all this.

Also, my girlfriend works shifts, so when I work at her place, we sit together in the living room most of the time. The social interactions I normally would have with some random coworkers I now can have with the person I love. When I stop working, she often starts, so when I would get home from office, I wouldn't meet her there.

I can sleep till 10 and have my first meeting while I'm still in bed.

> I know people have different priorities and that's okay.

That's quite a change of tune from your previous statement:

> I don't know what bothers me more. People willingly selling their souls to companies or the companies that spend humongous amounts of money to keep their employees away from their homes and lifes...

If you'd said originally what you said now then I'd have had no disagreement, but instead you literally accused people like me of "selling our souls" for going into the office to work and taking advantage of the perks there.

Yes, I'm sorry.

Do those free meals meet everyone's requirements? My office gets pizza or tacos for us on a very frequent basis, which while a nice gesture doesn't fit in with my own diet at all (which often means if I'm at the office, I end up eating my carefully prepared meal while being stared at funny while everyone else chows down on junk food).

Consider other dietary options like pork free, gluten free, vegan, IF, etc. Also just the plain factor of some employees just won't like a given kind of food (not everyone likes tacos, etc).

Quite frankly, I can eat super cheaply and healthy at home, on my own weird food schedule. I don't need my office to feed me (though the gesture is a nice one).

I'm at Google, and yes, there are plenty of vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, kosher, etc., options. It's still impossible to meet everyone's needs, but at least 99% of employee's dietary preferences are taken into account.

Before responding to these sorts of threads it's important to recognize that Google/FB/etc... are so far outside the norm for any company and not just tech. Most people working do not have access to full suite of gourmet food for every meal, a private gym, labs, etc...

A significant proportion of the overall HN readership has access to these perks. It's not unreasonable to discuss them in the context of the pros/cons of working from home.

The linked page / disucssion is not for the small percentage of google/fb workers.

You are still a minority.

If you're gluten intolerant then you're also in the minority.

Sure, but I'm not commenting in the discussion on the linked article, I'm commenting here, for which the factors I'm mentioning are relevant to lots of people. If you work at a top tier tech company and live reasonably close to work, working from home doesn't have much draw except possibly if your open office work environment is noisy and distracting.

I'm not aware of a single company in the city where I live that provides such perks. Some companies might offer a few, but not at Google or Facebook's level. This is in a metro area with over a million people.

Point taken. If you get amazing benefits and a decent desktop setup, it can make a lot of sense. Where I am, companies definitely don't offer amenities of that caliber.

How old are you?

Meals at work would have appealed to me when I was in my 20s. Now in my 30s and married I wouldn't make use of such a thing even assuming said meals would meet my special diet. I don't eat much and I want to be hungry when I get home in order to sit down to eat dinner with my family. If I ate a full meal at lunch I wouldn't be very hungry for dinner.

It would annoy me that I couldn't 'trade' in food for cold hard cash.

In my 30s too, but no family, and I eat normal food. I also work out a lot, so there's no problem getting hungry often.

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