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Comment by Hominem | Hacker News Reader

I worked at a place with free food and this exact thing happened. At first it was order any two meals off seamlessweb.com a day. Then it was order one meal, which meant people ordered enough food for two or three meals once a day. Then there were spending limits. Then there was a "town hall meeting" the CEO claimed he had been doing some investigations an came across a worker who was drinking ten cans of coke a day. Out of concern for our health, they would be eliminating all beverages except water coolers. Then meals were only free for certain people. Then free meals went away.

It is easy to eliminate these kinds of perks because many people will be in favor of cost cutting. Not so for salary, not many people will argue in favor of across the board salary cuts. I'll take salary every time.

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I would have probably quit sometime between spending limits and a "town hall meeting" about food being worth everyone's time.

It was a funny meeting. The CEO was a hell of a salesman, he came in with a nalgene bottle and made a big show of taking big gulps while touting his new health initiatives that just happened to include cutting a perk. By the time he left people were saying it was a good thing he was so concerned for our health. He did the same speech 5 times in one day to get all the employees, must have been pretty hydrated at the end.

Coke costs all of 25c/can in bulk. Even 10 cans a day is only 2.50

Coke costs all of 25c/can in bulk. Even 10 cans a day is only 2.50

Yep, and it baffles me when companies miss the forest through the trees and cut something like sodas. In the scheme of what a fully loaded engineer costs the company, even 10 cans of soda/day is minuscule (~$625/year).

As companies get bigger the same thing always seem to happen. The bean counters see the large costs of providing free X to thousands of people and/or people who work there start taking advantage of the situation (bring home a 12 pack of soda each day for all their roommates). No matter how cool the company claims to be, this seems to eventually happen to all large companies past a certain size.

It's nearly impossible for people to truly grasp that $500,000/year for 50,000 employees is the same impact as $10/year/employee. Even incredibly smart people get this wrong. It happens in business, in politics (see all the people arguing that policy X that works in country Y can't be implemented in the US because the US is Z times larger than Y), everywhere, even with people who otherwise have a very strong grasp of math and science.

It's baffling.

Quite an amusing anecdote.

On one hand, it conjures up pictures of a real slimeball, the typical "snake oil salesman".

On the other, I get the impression he is a really charismatic individual. It certainly takes some skill to stand up in front of a bunch of people, take away something from them and convince them that they are better off.

Probably a great combination for a CEO.

"Let's have a chat about how you're drinking too much Coke" has to be the most reliable indicator of company performance I've ever heard.

Yeah, I put that chat in the same category as talking about upgrading tools and other things the company should already have taken into account cost wise.

If your boss starts complaining about sodas, $50 license upgrades for team software, cheap HW upgrades like RAM, etc... then it's time to leave.

And plus, informal perks aren't part of the contract. It's like part of your salary you can lose anytime.

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