If google provides food for employees then that's essentially indirect compensation. Employees can now use the money they would have spent on food to buy other things.

So now that they're remote and have to buy their own food they have effectively received a pay decrease.

How is it entitled to complain about a decrease in compensation for the same work?

I find this legalistic perspective horrifying. It's as if you think every aspect of the relationship between you and your employer has to be written down as part of a contract and endlessly scrutinized.

For me, and I expect for most humans, the ideal employer-employee relationship is much more tacit. It's like being part of a sports team. There are bounds of duty and privilege that are mutual, acceptable to all parties, and do not have to be written down.

If everything was written down, it would make work intolerable. Every action would have to be catalogued, defined, and priced. In an effort to create a "better workplace," you would be destroying the things that makes work tolerable.

I think that's an exaggeration of what OP is saying. It's fuzzy, but there's a definitive distinction between "every aspect of your relationship" and benefits that impact someone's bottom line like free food.

OP did not say, and I wouldn't either, that every aspect of a employer-employee relationship should be documented and tracked like a PnL. But no one should pretend that it's not a debate over "unwritten compensation", and the value the employer gets from the employee. If employers didn't want to quantify that, there wouldn't be demand for corporate spyware and monitoring of employees. Yes, the Microsoft 365 option was shut down, but it's an arms race, and that's one battle in a war.

Why shouldn't employees want to extract the most value they can for their labor, and push back when the terms of that agreement change? If cost cutting or taking a loss necessitated a firing, would that "tacit relationship" prevent someone from being fired? My guess is no. Business is business, not personal.

I extended the previous poster's argument. He said food should be priced in, my point is that work is only tolerable because we stop pricing things in at a certain point. I agree with you: that line is fuzzy, but we have to place it somewhere (and amenities should not be priced in).

> Why shouldn't employees want to extract the most value they can for their labor, and push back when the terms of that agreement change? If cost cutting or taking a loss necessitated a firing, would that "tacit relationship" prevent someone from being fired? My guess is no. Business is business, not personal.

One conception of employment involves voluntarily adopted shared goals. Another conception is that employees rent themselves in exchange for money.

I suppose I think we need to find the happy medium between those conceptions. Too much of the latter perspective leads to alienation (because you conceive of yourself as a wage slave) whereas the former can lead to exploitation.

The article is arguing that Google is too far into the latter conception. It should towards the former, not all the way, but at least a little.

You just pulled that argument out of your ass. I wasn't implying that everything needs to be written down in a legal document.

Also I can't help but feel that your perspective is coming from a place of privilege. If I had to guess I'd say you either A) Haven't been screwed by an employer before or B) Are the employer.

I guarantee that if your employer fucked you over you'd be paying a lot more attention in the future.

Google has been known to point out the perks, such as catering, when asked by candidates for more salary during negotiation, as well.

Yeah it's interesting that the person I was replying to used the word "privilege" when describing those perks. As if Google was doing this out of the goodness of their heart.

It can be privilege to have a job, any job, that comes with perks like included food, or healthcare, even if those are part of one's negotiated compensation package.

Then you're just asking to be taken advantage of. You are more important than your employer. Therefore you should be looking to extract as much value from your employer as possible.

If you don't think your employer is doing the same then you're just naive. Google isn't catering food out of the goodness of their heart. It's a calculated cost-benefit analysis to attract and retain top talent.

Edit: It's also a tactic to get people to work longer hours.

I also think it's a privilege to be born healthy, to have access to clean water, et c, and I don't think that makes me "asking to be taken advantage of".

I don't for a second think that Google is doing anything out of the goodness of their hearts, just that most people's jobs have no perks and few or no benefits whatsoever.

Anyone working anywhere that pays them a six figure salary and provides food and healthcare is pretty fortunate, all things considered here on Earth. It's nothing to do with Google.

>>If they really complained about not getting compensated for buying their own food during lockdown I think "entitled" is a fair descriptor.

I very much disagree. If you were getting food at work previously, as in - it was clearly your agreed part of compensation - then I would absolutely complain if suddenly I had to buy my own.

>> But the flipside of that is that, when there's a deadline, I'm very invested in meeting it, even if that means working a lot of hours.

Again, that's fine and if you want to do that yourself, great, everyone would love to have you as an employee. But the second your manager walks in and says "john, I expect you to work this weekend" I'd start looking for a different job. Taking personal responsibility and working harder and more hours to finish something is one thing, being told you have to because your manager demands it is unacceptable.

> But the second your manager walks in and says "john, I expect you to work this weekend" I'd start looking for a different job.

Of course. A condition of my personal investment in meeting deadlines is exactly my not being treated like this.

For what it's worth, food in the United States is very clearly never a part of your agreed-upon compensation in the way that health/retirement benefits are; it is a "team-building office perk" offered by the employer. If it were actually part of your compensation, then you'd be taxed on it.

I know it may be easy to misunderstand this, and to think of it as part of your compensation, because in a way it feels like it, but in a real legal sense as currently structured it very definitely is not part of your compensation.

>If it were actually part of your compensation, then you'd be taxed on it.

Which is a somewhat contentious topic. Not an accountant, but seems to be one of those perks that's right at the very edge of IRS rules.

https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/benefits/pa...

To be clear, my statement was descriptive of present circumstances, not normative. As you point out this is in flux and may be changing in the future. If food does become a taxable benefit and part of overall compensation, then I might expect to start seeing some people opting out of it entirely.

> But the second your manager walks in and says "john, I expect you to work this weekend" I'd start looking for a different job.

It's definitely a failure of management, but if John was playing games all week and now is being asked to work this weekend to finish, that's also on John. His manager should have stopped the all week playing, but people want to be treated like adults and be given personal responsibility, etc...

Agree and disagree. Without pushing a point too hard, I will ask you this - what if your employment contract states you are to receive $X,000 per year in food or food stipend? Would you be in favor of employees pushing for subsidized food while remote?

Ok, and there’s a deadline at work. There’s also a deadline at your spouses work, your kid is sick, and they took off work to look after them last time. What do you do?

Roll initiative!

On a more serious note, that all depends on the type of contract you've got. If you're salaried and get a constant wage, you're not exactly being compensated for going above and beyond, especially in terms of hours worked.

Surely, if the work to be done is important, that means the employer is willing to pay for the privilege of having it done during off hours? If not, I would argue the employer, not the employee is feeling entitled.

Totally agree with what you’ve said.

Sure yeah, if you’re getting the equivalent of overtime or time-and-a-half, ok, it may become worth your time and like you said you are getting compensated for the extra effort and sacrifice.

But the author of the article is talking about salaried FTE Google employees. I’m a salaried tech employee, I don’t earn extra comp for working weekends. I assume that is the norm.

Hence why the authors attitude is indeed entitled, and not the employees, as you’ve stated.

Any reasonable person understands that "compensation includes food stipend of $8000" in a contract means they get $8000 if they're home. Clearly GP is referring to less cut-and-dry scenarios, i.e., nearly all scenarios in this domain.

Agreed yeah, hence the loose question. I’d assume this is a less formal scenario of oh, we have cafeterias, you’re welcome to eat there, but this isn’t some formal stipend. Makes sense, more curious on if that changes GP’s position on the topic with that added info. I’ve worked for places that did alternatively have a formal stipend amount.

My employer has killed off office perks during lockdown; it doesn't seem intentional, more of a bureaucratic thing. People are still in the office, but the management aren't, so things don't get done.

I've told them that this is an issue for morale - the old "buying the cheap toilet paper" adage comes to mind - but I'm not holding out much hope that anything will happen.

Is it a significant hardship for me to buy lunch? No. It wouldn't be a significant hardship for them to give it either.

To be brutally honest - we all need _more_ support during lockdown and restrictions, not less. In the UK, work and the supermarket are pretty much the only legal reasons for most to be outside at the moment.

A small number of people did this on the imageboard, which is widely known for collecting and upvoting fringe complaints. It is a company of like 130,000 people. A few of them are going to ask for things that seem unreasonable to others.

Google is somewhat known for being slow to fire. I personally like it. Managers are expected to try to get their reports to survive PIPs rather than using them as a boot out the door.

On paper that's fine. Do that too much, though, and your willingness to burn personal time for the company's benefit will become the norm and factor into their planning. Getting management to un-learn that is difficult and tricky and often not accomplished without the loss of several employees with that reason pointed out in the exit interview.

I mean in your last sentence, it really isn't a privilege if you have to do "intense, focused work" to get it... it then becomes compensation

Loss of said compensation does certainly warrant some conversation about it. Also I don't really appreciate it being painted as ALL Googlers when, like most things in life, a small passionate minority affected by this brought this up and most people didn't think twice about it