Yes, I can prepare my own lunch. But it takes about 24 hours to make a vat of delicious homemade ramen that will feed 500 people. Do you know how long it takes to make a single serving of that same ramen? ...About 24 hours.
Likewise, an office with 100 people can easily have a whole variety of fresh fruit and produce to spontaneously choose and snack from and most will get eaten before any goes to waste. When I buy produce, I have to get exactly what I'm going to eat which means my weekly trip locks me into exactly one set of produce that I'm stuck with.
The set of foods that scale down efficiently is a very small subset of the set of foods that I like to eat.
Also, pragmatically, the free food was a perk of the job that I factored into the compensation package when I took the job. Losing access to the free food is effectively the same as taking a pay cut or giving up a couple of vacation days. Given the state of the economy, I think this is actually a reasonable way for the business to save money right now, and I'm much rather give up lunches than see layoffs happen, but the compensation package has shrunk.
Also, there is real value in not having to come up with new food to eat.
Except now you have the choice of living anywhere you think the cost of living makes sense for you, which more than makes up for this.
> a reasonable way for the business to save money right now
And so is not having to worry about office space, leases, parking, security, and the cost of logistics of running an office. WFH has the ability both save companies money and put more money in workers pockets.
> Except now you have the choice of living anywhere you think the cost of living makes sense for you, which more than makes up for this.
We were able to basically just put one car in storage. Car insurance, gas and parking alone are saving me like $650/mo. That alone would be enough for me to go buy a fresh fruit platter every workday to pick through and throw the leftovers out and still come out ahead.
Of course I can but I just don't want to. This isn't about being cheap or lazy (although I'm guilty of both to varying degrees). The biggest benefit of having a catered office is the lack of having to make a decision about what to eat. I'll just eat what they're serving that day.
I'm a big believer in decision fatigue [1]. Don't make me make decisions about things I don't care about and what I have for lunch is one of those. For years I worked in offices where I either had to bring in my own lunch (never gonna happen) or I had to go out and buy it. I'm fine with the cost of it. I'm not fine with choosing where to go and what to order when I get there. I'll end up finding something I like and just getting it every day until I get sick of it because that's let cognitive load than having something different every day.
That's why I like a catered office.
> Or you could move to a cheaper location and have a nice home office.
I live in NYC because I want to live in NYC. I chose the job because it's in NYC where I wanted to live. On a side note, I think this is the fundamental difference with the Bay Area. hardly anyone wants to live in the Bay Area. They want to work for [Google|FB|Apple|...] and to do that they need to live in the Bay Area. Most other places people have decided they want to live there and then look for work options.
So yeah, I could buy a big house Georgia but... why would I want to?
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-fr...
This doesn't check out. All of those companies have large offices elsewhere. I agree with your take that you work in NYC because you want to live in NYC so that's where you work but your bias is showing that you can't consider that people feel similarly about the Bay Area.
As one data point, I chose San Francisco when I had the guaranteed option to work for the same exact company with proportional pay (stupid high relatively speaking) in my hometown. People with options move where their quality of life is maximized -- that's the beauty of having options.
It doesn't make NYC sound very appealing if working from your home in NYC is hellish.
Working from my home in the Bay is actually quite nice. The best part is getting an hour of my day back because I don't have to commute to work. That 1 hour commute probably added more stress to my day than any other hour.
Speaking personally, I made some optimizations, but there's only so much that can be done with the fixed amount of space that I share with others.
Because living in a big city with lot of options for food (and maybe other enjoyable and interesting things) give you decision fatigue?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Also, can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN generally? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23261569 is another example. We're not here to cross-examine each other or make each other look bad. We're here for curious conversation and to learn.
for me, at least, it's about the contact with other people and the talk during the lunch break. face to face human contact. i honestly can not comprehend how can people wish to be isolated... but maybe it's something different with me.
Between meetings and misc. things that come up I had human contact all day. Lunch was the one time I could have to myself.
WFH != isolation
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
moving to a cheaper location also usually means giving up a lot of things that urban life comes with as well. you cant expect that everyone is going to be happy with that decision
I think most companies already have workers who do work from home, even if they're not remote friendly. So most corporations already have secure email / vpn / firewalls etc etc if data security is crucial. As for tech companies, don't we all push commits from home every now and then? it's already been happening for years.
That said, I've had catered lunches at Google when visiting friends, and that's way better than eating gum restaurants every day.
The decision fatigue is real. But also, there are relatively few options that are genuinely good in the area, especially if you're trying to eat somewhat healthy. You get very bored after a while. Lunches provided by an in house chef are very good, tend to be healthier, and more interesting. I think - like I said, I mostly ate a meal here and there.
(and if we're comparing to cooking at home, obviously that incurs greater time cost)
I'm not trying to be facetious - you seriously can't provide your own meals and snacks working from home?
>> Many people who work at these companies live in big cities where they don't have huge amounts of space and it's not conducive to being productivity, particularly if you live with other people, if you can't get some form of separation.
Do you live in that space because it's close to your office? Ok, so now you're remote you can live anywhere. If there was no pandemic you could work from a library, or café or dozens of other places. You could move around each day. Or you could move to a cheaper location and have a nice home office.