Young, brilliant programmers but still totally dependent on the approval of their peers - to the degree that they not only work very late to get food, they stay even longer to avoid someone judging them.

I bet they even make excuses before leaving at 8 pm... Its really very sad that smart human beings act like that due purely to social pressure.

So is this something you've experienced personally, or is it just speculation?

I've worked for a company that offered dinner significantly before 8pm. The number of employees actually staying that late, or eating dinner was not particularly high. Primarily it was the people who didn't show up until quite late in the morning, or sometimes not until early afternoon.

The last couple companies I worked at offered a dinner at ~8:00. There was no pressure to attend and as far as I know hardly anyone did.

In college I automatically filtered out companies that provided dinner for this reason. If you want a free meal you have to stay late. But then if you leave immediately after it looks like you were just staying for the free food so you may as well stay until 8 to look like a team player. It's a pattern I didn't want to start

Who are the people that actually care about all this? I've yet to find anyone who cares that someone leaves early or stays late or stays just for the meal or whatever. The only thing people seems to care about is, very reasonably, output.

This is true for the 3 big tech companies I've worked for (which is the topic of this thread). Sometimes I get in at 10, sometimes 7. Sometimes I leave at 4, sometimes 8. I've yet to have someone comment on my schedule.

Yet I continue to see people say stuff like "oh free dinner is a trap! ahh!" "A gym on campus? Oh don't fall for it!" I don't get it.

Any option for take out?

Yes. There are (or used to be) to-go containers. Lots of people stayed late enough to just grab food, when I was there. You already stayed that late, it's fine. You can go home without judgement.

Further, a not-insignificant fraction of people stop working in the 4-6 range, do non-work activities on campus (gym, volleyball, various classes), and then eat dinner and leave. I've certainly never felt any form of pressure to work until (or past) dinner.

When I was there (London, finished 2012) they stopped these - apparently some folk were loading up and feeding their families.

Twitter had dinner at the SF office but they discontinued it after they realized that the amount of people that used it didn't justify the cost of operating the kitchen that late. They replaced it with a take-out option, prepared by the kitchen. I really like this since it still allows a useful perk but gives people the option of where/how the take advantage of it.

Edit: it's not free but highly subsidized.

When I was deciding to interview with Google, I picked one of their non-primary offices (which I considered to be Mountain View, Seattle, and NYC). I believe it was a specific decision and continued philosophy of the site director here to not serve dinner to encourage a healthier work/life balance.