Googlers Buy More Junk Food Than Microsofties (And Why Rapleaf Is Creepy) | Hacker News Reader

Googlers Buy More Junk Food Than Microsofties (And Why Rapleaf Is Creepy)

techcrunch.com

39 pointscitizenkeys22 comments

Speaking as someone who works for Google (in New York), I can't speak for Microsoft buti basically get fed 3 meals a day during the week. The same is true for Mountain View and for other larger offices.

So for many Googlers there's no reason to cook at least 4 nights a week, if you're so inclined.

In New York in particular there's really no reason to cook at all as it stands. My fridge has soda and expired milk in it. Sad but true.

Maybe Microsofties buy more foodingredients because they have to fend for themselves?

> get fed 3 meals a day during the week

Sounds like a nursery :)

Do your wife and kids eat at Google regularly too?

He obviously doesn't have either. Although perhaps that was the joke behind your comment?

It seems reasonable - most folks at MS (at least in Redmond) only eat lunch here, and maybe order a pizza if they stay late.

Am I alone in thinking it is strange that so many people use their work email for non-work stuff? I'm guessing the data originates from a grocery rewards program. I assumed everyone (at least a tech co. employee) uses a personal email for these kinda stuff by now.

I certainly use my gmail address for pretty much everything (unlessi need to use @google.com to confirm a discount or something).

Particularly for software, if you think about it, it's a potential security risk to identify yourself as someone working for a prime target for hackers and (D)DoS'ers.

This kind of mapping does not require that you use your work email to sign up for the loyalty card.

I've talked to a company who does the same thing for retail shopping. They're cagey about it, but it sounds like they'll map your work email to any credit card spending you've done under that address -- which in turn maps to your billing address and opens up the entire pandora's box of your shopping behavior. The loyalty card is tied to your cc from spending, but you don't even need that -- name combined ZIP+4 has a pretty viable level of uniqueness.

Thanks for the explanation. Adds to 'creepiness' level of the method. I find it sort of funny. A startup is making money from the data mined from Google employees and it is being called creepy. I say it is poetic justice :)

That poetic justice cuts right to the heart of the do-not-track debate, too.

Big players have an angle to weasel out of the proposed legislation -- if you can see enough packet traffic (think Akamai, Juniper, Google, Comcast), who gives a fuck about cookies? The big guys can sell ad targeting galore, and little guys are hosed. It has the potential to lock up the ad monetization ecosystem.

And for all the creepy online targeting -- how about what happens offline? Way more data. Way more detailed. No one seems to give a crap.

FWIW, the rapleaf guys seem perfectly nice in person. They just can't seem to get out of their own way with this 'ick factor' stuff.

Pretty sure these correlations aren't statistically important. N events will give a deviation of ~sqrt(N) - which for N = 6000 is > 1%. Therefore seeing that 12% of Microsoft people buy Capri Sun but only 10% of Googlers is pretty meaningless.

Furthermore, we don't know how many items the test was against, leading to only those items that had large discrepancies being reported.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias#The_file_drawe...

I'd like to know what the average age of Microsoft employees is vs Google employees as well.

The document attached to the article shows the age distribution for both companies.

The Kroger loyalty programs gave me the creeps several years ago when I first moved out and had to buy my own groceries.

Since you have to be a member of the tracking program to take advantage of any specials, I signed up, but I used the stores address, phone and contact information. The cashier asked for a driver's license which I had misplaced. She wasn't an idiot. She just didn't sufficiently care.

It bothered me that I had to lie to protect my privacy and be able to get any of their advertised specials at the advertised prices, so I found an alternative grocery store in my area. It's a greenbacks only, bag it yourself in your own bags store.

They carry good produce, meats, and the usual grocery items -- except that there's very few well known brands, but I got used to the "sort of Coke" and "almost Cheerios". Which was easy to get used to when I saw my total grocery spend was cut in half.

Unfortunately, I value my money over my privacy in most cases. Fortunately, this was one of those cases where valuing my privacy turned out to be a win all around.

EDIT:: Punctuation.

In my experience, giving any information at all for a Kroger card is completely optional - I picked up a form with a card attached, threw away the form, and the card's worked fine ever since.

I suppose if you talk to a clerk they may be trained to pressure you into giving away info, or it may vary by region/brand, or policy may have been different then.

Notably, I've yet to find a grocery store loyalty system that doesn't let me look up my "misplaced" tag by phone number. So I just give Jenny's number (867-5309) as my phone number at the register and I never even sign up for the program.

I think a more accurate title would be "More Googlers Buy..." rather than "Googlers Buy More...", and for honesty, there ought to be a "Very Slightly" in there somewhere.

The interesting story here is about identity and privacy, though.

Here is the post from RapLeaf's blog with analysis from their team.

http://blog.rapleaf.com/blog/2011/03/22/whats-cooking-in-the...

I like it how the author is all about reapleaf "being creepy" for doing what they do, while publishing their results to get visits.

This headline is pretty deceptive. The first graph also shows that Google employees buy more fresh fruit and vegetables.

Does Microsoft have as much candy on-site as Google?

Depends on the group. Each team gets morale money ($/head/year) to spend at their discretion on events, swag, and snacks. Your administrative assistant, top-level manager, and group culture will set how things go. When I worked on the Visual Studio Environment team, there were frequently M&Ms, snickers, etc.

When I was leading a team, most were sort of health nuts (even by MSFT standards, where 9/10 people seemed to be avid hikers or ski/snowboarders) so we mainly had fresh fruit and granola bars. And Alaskan Amber beer, though not too often :-)

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