Re:Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech co...
by jessaustin on Thursday July 26, 2018 @09:57PM
(#17622917)
...Facebook has felt that the restriction is not too onerous for the building to be worth occupying.
Perhaps originally they thought they could inspire enough of a public outcry like that seen in this thread to get the rules relaxed eventually... with their recent PR troubles that probably won't happen.
Re:Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech co...
by nostrademons on Thursday July 26, 2018 @11:59PM
(#17623335)
I'd bet that it's honestly not that important to them. They'll probably forego the cafeteria and just let their highly-paid employees buy lunch the way 99% of the population does. It won't be a popular building to work at, but if you work at Facebook, are you really gonna quit because you work at an office without a cafe? You've probably got bigger things on your mind, like the 20% drop in the stock price that happened today.
Re:Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech co...
by dunpeal on Thursday July 26, 2018 @09:51PM
(#17622883)
This is an informative comment, thanks.
It does make more sense for a development like the Village, but I'm still concerned about the encroaching and escalating intrusion of local lawmakers in a benefit employers wish to provide their employees.
But when The Village was zoned, it was explicitly done with street-level retail for a wide variety of restaurants. There are over a dozen restaurants within a 5-minute walk of Facebook's offices, plus a Walmart, Safeway, Whole Foods, and produce market, all of which have ready-to-eat meals.
Something that's left out of a lot of the news coverage of this: it's not a law but a development condition attached to the particular property that Facebook is occupying. When a real-estate developer wants to develop a piece of property, there's a complex negotiation with the local municipality (or county, if it's in unincorporated land) that includes things like contracting for water/sewer/garbage services, how to ensure there's adequate police & fire coverage, how the town will build new roads to handle traffic generated from the property, what's the impact on schools & community services, and what types of dwellings & permitted uses are available for the property (you can't build a skyscraper in the path of SJC airport, for example, nor can you build a chip fab on residential land). Written into that contract is the cafeteria clause under discussion here. While I have some doubts about whether this is a good thing (I've got another comment here where I expressed mixed feelings), it's a contract and not a law, and obviously Facebook has felt that the restriction is not too onerous for the building to be worth occupying.