Are These The Most Ridiculous/Awesome Startup Perks Ever? | Hacker News Reader

Are These The Most Ridiculous/Awesome Startup Perks Ever?

thedailymuse.com

22 pointsKMinshew42 comments

My last job offered each employee two "Sunday fundays" a month... Basically we could pick up to two Sundays each month to go have fun on the company's dime, up to $250 (each sunday). You couldn't buy any goods with it, but you could go do whatever you wanted: nice restaurant, skydiving, kayaking, take friends out for drinks, etc. You just had to take pictures and were expected to write a few paragraphs about what you did.

This is a brilliant idea and I now want to do this for my company when we get bigger. Thanks!

It was a great perk. Essentially nobody really made full use of it (the full $500/mo per employee), but it was always great to have the ability to do so... Sometimes you'd just be out with friends for a big brunch and realize, "oh, hey, it's sunday" and pick up the tab for everyone or list all your meals on a Sunday while out hiking the Bay Area with friends.

A few of these would be big turnoffs for me:

- everything at the office (both nine and ten): how about reasonable work hours so I can do things outside the office?

- $500 if I live nearby: if this is just out of respect for the deleterious effects of a long commute, it strikes me as weirdly paternalistic, and actually kind of backwards; people who for whatever reason (spouse's employment, family, whatever) can't live within five miles and thus have a longer commute have both a long commute and $500/month less. Why not just subsidize transit for everyone? Or (and this is a bit tinfoil-hat-like, I admit) it's a way to get people to live near the office ... so it's less burdensome to spend a lot of time at the office.

Indeed, when you look at these in reverse, they really take on a different meaning. Essentially: you salary would be X, except it's less because we're spending it on perks, except that you might not want some of them or qualify for them...

What business is it of the employer's, where I live? Viewed in this light, it's actually discrimination against employees who don't live nearby, a salary cut in fact. It's almost amazing that it's even legal to do something like that.

Imagine if a company said, an extra $500/mo for everyone who doesn't own a car, or everyone who is vegan, or everyone who volunteers 10 hrs/mo, or everyone who votes Republican.

I don't think there's any totally right answer. People who live further away might have lower cost of accomodation, meaning less living expenses, meaning and effective pay rise! "Getting to the office" costs can be "cost of location + cost of getting there". If you live far away, "cost of location" can be less, but "cost of getting there" can be higher. If you live close, then "cost of location" can be higher, but "cost of getting there" is lower (sometimes zero if you can walk). Subsidizing the transit costs is common and only subsidises "cost of getting there", why not also subsidise the "cost of location" for those who don't have a high number on the "cost of getting there" side?

My all time favorite work perk after doing the corporate drone gig + pager/oncall, followed by fast paced SV type gig + pager/oncall and the pluses/minuses that come with those companies?

Nights and weekends off, and a respect for my downtime + work/life balance.

Yet another perk we live by at ZeroCater. Email jim at zerocater dot com or the address in my profile to learn more.

I'm skeptical. If someone comes in at 9 and leaves at 5 sharp M-F, there's no way they'd fit in at most SV startups. You're saying they'd fit in at ZeroCater?

If you're getting shit done, I'm cool with that.

I'm sure you're being genuine, but this seems naive. Startups are small teams, building relatively unproven products. There are a lot of lean times and challenges that test everyone's mettle. I don't think it's very likely someone can do their 9-5, even if they're massively productive in that timespan, and not be looked at funny if the cultural norm is for everyone to work crazy hours. I think the way for reasonable hours to actually work at a startup is for the founders to actively make that the culture.

Unless the company works asynchronously/remotely which has an awesome side-effect of making it feasible to value output over effort.

> Startups are small teams, building relatively unproven products. There are a lot of lean times and challenges that test everyone's mettle. I don't think it's very likely someone can do their 9-5, even if they're massively productive in that timespan, and not be looked at funny if the cultural norm is for everyone to work crazy hours.

My experience? people who claim to be working crazy hours are only actually working crazy hours if you count all hours that are either in the office or with co-workers as 'work'

I joke that by that standard, I do 20 hour days. I mean, my partner is my partner in several senses of the word, and yeah, 4 hours a day apart is not at all atypical. (I mean, I'm exaggerating for effect; nobody counts sleep as work... yet.)

But that's not how most people outside of the startup world think about it.

To a normal person? screwing off on hacker news? not work. checking facebook? not work. going to a long lunch with your friends that you work with? not work. playing video games with your friends from work? not work.

You take those things out? and the hours your average startup guy puts in start looking a lot more reasonable.

The thing that irritates me is that there is this culture of exaggerating your hours that is extremely destructive to people who aren't in on the joke. I know people that actually track hours, and they stop tracking hours when a co-worker comes over and starts a conversation. that's not work, in their eyes. And if you track time like that (bullshitting- not work. Hacker news (and using the internet for things other than looking shit up)- not work, eating- not work, commuting- not work; etc...) just getting to 40 hours means you don't have a whole lot of non-sleep personal time during the week; and those (in my experience) diligent ex-defense contractor types can be some of your best employees.

For one, I agree with lsc's response. Our employees are definitely in the office more than 40 hours a week, but that includes hanging around after work for dinner or a couple of beers.

That said, I generally work eight hour days, and I don't feel like I'm being judged when I walk out of the office at the end of the day. It's a solid part of our culture - that's why I said it's one of the perks we live by.

edited for spelling.

That's a bit of a non-answer. Your answer is also quite common in places which do require basically formal/informal "on call" time, so it's hard to know if you're different from other ones.

It's also an honest answer. We do have an on-call rotation for emergencies, which are very rare. If you're busy, pass it on to the next person on the list. I'd say our team spends about an hour a month total on these.

Operative word is most. I'd also be fine with someone doing that if they were meeting their objectives. We generally don't work much more than that and I think we're all happier for it (and consequently more productive).

Touché.

The commute stipend (#6, imo) is genius. 500$ (monthly, presumably) if you work w/in 5 miles of the office. People pathologically underestimate the negative affects their commutes have on their lives. When mine disappeared I got massively happier immediately, and the time I would have spent commuting shifted mostly to work.

This is actually quite a common perk offered by Japanese companies in Tokyo (GREE, CyberAgent, etc).

Interestingly, my former employers had what I believe to be a more common system in Japan: they paid you more to live farther away from the office, by subsidizing your monthly train pass. (One could actually turn this into an untaxed wage increase by buying the 6 month pass at the standard discount, rather than six 1 month passes, and pocketing the 6th month's subsidy. Eventually HR realized this, cut the subsidy, and directed everyone to buy the 6 month pass. HR was surprised that this decision was unpopular.)

One of the reasons for subsidizing commute expenses in Japan is that they're typically both high relative to employee salaries and the benefits are not taxable as earned income, whereas giving equivalent sums of money for other purposes does make that money taxable. For example, my read of the relevant regulations suggests that paying somebody to live close to the office constitutes taxable income but subsidizing their commute is not.

In case it isn't obvious, I'm none of Japanese, a tax lawyer, a Japanese tax lawyer, or your Japanese tax lawyer, but the regs are fairly straightforward if interested parties want to look them up:

http://www.nta.go.jp/taxanswer/gensen/2508.htm

[Funny anecdote: My boss attempted to sell me once on moving next door to the office, on the grounds that this would save the company money on my train pass and let me continue working without that pesky hard stop at 30 minutes past midnight when the last train to Ogaki left. I think he was genuinely confused when I told him "I consider that less a bug and more a feature." The joke was on me, though, after crunch time happened and I had to buy hotel stays at my own expense after staying until 3 to 4 AM.]

I also received a bonus while working in London (I always thought it was called "London Waiting" [1], which seems like a more accurate a reflection of their train system).

I think it was £3000, which was a large amount back then.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_weighting

Facebook and Powerset used to do something similar. With Facebook I think the deal was $600/mo towards rent if you lived within a mile of the office (then on Hamilton St in Palo Alto)

I can second that. Reducing your commutting time makes a massive difference to your quality of life.

One thing I never fully understood is putting monitors/hardware/computers under perks.

How the heck did they imagine you would work?

It's marketing.

If you've never been treated as an adult before, "We will treat you like an adult. You'll even be able to spend money without asking for permission." sounds like an outrageous perk. Many, many decisions about compensation and working style at startups are optimized for an audience which has never been treated as an adult before.

This is similar to how Google recruiters deploy their free food perk, incidentally. Google has over-the-top food benefits and has since forever. This is so widely publicized that people who are not in the tech industry know about it. Everybody who would take a job at Google is aware of it. Nonetheless, if you were to today ask a Google recruiter for a salary bump, they would as a matter of policy ask for a little time to think it over, then come back with "Well, we give you all the free food you can eat. A meal in Mountain View runs about $15 to $20 or so, and you could easily get 10 of them a week from us, so that's worth something like $10k a year right there, right? Boom, I just got you the extra $10k."

And this is standard policy because it routinely works on people who are smart enough to work at Google.

The food is a bit of a actual perk. That's why it's common to be taxed (benefit-in-kind). The tax man knows that employees/employers would be able to pay money to employees without paying tax by giving many non-money benefits.

That's why it's common to be taxed (benefit-in-kind)

It is not the practice of the United States to tax certain types of food benefits, including (almost certainly) the way in which tech companies customarily deliver food to their workers. You can read the test here:

http://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b/ar02.html

Search for: [Meals on Your Business Premises]

I am not a tax accountant, I am not your tax accountant, etc, but I'm 99%+ sure that I'm right on this with regards to the IRS.

For startups, it can be challenging to compete with Facebook and Google when it comes to perks. Startup money needs to be invested wisely, at the same time, we need to attract the best talent possible.

I'd be interested to hear what reasonable/not-out-of-this-world-crazy perks motivate you to work for a startup.

How about no perks, or close-to-no-perks?

I like money, and I like spending my money on my own time. So I'd rather be paid well, and no matter how good the company's financials look, I'd prefer to work at a company that isn't spending money on catered lunches I probably won't eat, ping pong tables I won't use and group events I'm not inclined to attend.

There are plenty of talented people out there who don't need their jobs to provide a social experience, lifestyle or free stuff. Startups that go crazy on perks should consider that these can be just as much a turn-off as a turn-on to prospective employees.

I actually agree completely. These kinds of perks are a big turn-off for me, they almost feel like I'm still in school instead of at a job.

I'd much rather just have the higher salary, and not feel like the company was trying to be anything except the place I work at. I can provide my own social life and activities, and would rather work at work, than play ping-ping or pool there.

If you want to the best people, you need to pay the best. You can't have the best people, but pay average.

In my experience even a significant pay increase is usually not what makes you win/lose a candidate to a more established company.

SeatGeek started giving everyone $100 a month to spend on live event tickets. It doesn't accrue -- use it or lose it. I think concert attendance in the office has increased 5x since the new policy was started. Not quite a beach vacation, but fun!

At Thumbtack, we brew our own beer. Currently making a Witbier and a Tripel ;)

#5 is awesome! team build anywhere tropical :)

Interestingly, that struck me as one of the worst ones.

Anyone with a family at SendGrid, or other responsibilities (like the need to care for an elderly parent)? And can they actually leave them behind when they go on vacation, or are they forced to forgo this benefit?

Mind you, skipping the trip means more than just "didn't get to play in the exotic locale", it also means the team-building has solidified a team that no longer includes you.

I agree completely. I think it can be a real problem, when the office basically sends the strong signal that everything is basically geared towards unmarried 20-somethings.

That might be the point... </cynical>

My personal favorite is the travel perk (#4)... though I wouldn't say no to having a company boat!

My personal fave is where thedailymuse has a edit quartet, not trio, of HN accounts, only one of whom discloses his role, dumping links and shill commenting in each other's submissions including yourself, acav, nlow, and elliotbell.

Plus 7 or 8 accounts created just to dump a few of your links.

Company boat? Would be a better perk if everyone got a boat

That would be bad compensation rather than a great perk. It would just be compensating people in a way they wouldn't spend the money given the choice. The company boat takes advantage of it being easier to get value out of a group "owned" boat than an individual boat, since a lot of overhead is shared and the amount of time the boat sits there unused is minimized.

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