You don't need fancy baristas and exotic blends, but cafeterias with people making coffee for workers has been a thing in offices and even factories for a century or so, it's not some unique privilege...

OK, but the costs aren't coming from fancy coffee. They come from salaries of engineers. So the question is really about how many employees there are and how much those employees are paid. And maybe, secondarily, how many facilities are needed to provide space for a certain employee headcount.

When those benefits get stripped, the savings won't be used to feed the hungry or the homeless. It'll get capitalized into equity values or profits raked in by the 0.1%.

And the baristas will be out of a job

Ok but cutting benefits just means that baristas are out of work and more $ goes into the pockets of billionaire shareholders who need it even less than you.

The only reason those perks exist is because of the unfathomable amounts of profit those companies make compared to others.

Tax the shit out of these companies and use the money to fund more socially useful jobs in healthcare, caring for elderly people, writing code for public services and a million other things.

The fact that luxurious living wastes labour is not a plus for luxurious living. There are tons of things society could be doing with that labour that are more useful, they just don't get done because we allow pseudo-monopolies to retain too much rent.

I agree with that. But until that happens (if ever) I'd rather companies spread the $ around to their employees rather than keep it all for the shareholders.

The point of company perks is to convince people to forgo more salary than the perks costs the company. On-site baristas are cheap, but they seem really expensive. In the end it’s a subsidized company cafeteria which has been a thing for the last 100 years or so.

The amount people care about free snacks is vastly out of proportion with the actual cost of providing free snacks. That’s great because young people making ~200k don’t really care much about slightly more gold plated health insurance coverage relative to how expensive it is.

> The point of company perks is to convince people to forgo more salary than the perks costs the company.

It's also that the company can provide these things to all employees for less than it would cost for every individual employee to buy them by themselves.

Also, providing lunches and coffee saves company time from employees sneaking out to go get lunch or coffee.

I always assumed this was the reason.

On the other hand, if you're going to have a communal coffee machine, might as well have a bunch of other stuff and then pay dedicated staff to run it, for the convenience of everyone else.

Maybe it's copycatting of the college dorm startup vibe, too.

I can help with that, but that it's not it's aim.

The company could not care less about employees paying more for those.

A lot of bad takes in response to this. An actual reason is that if you are as productive for FAANG as the numbers imply, $1M+ in revenue per employee per year, then the value of having a barista make your coffee instead of you taking 10 minutes to do so is well worth the cost. It might cost the company 80$ of your productivity when you make a coffee but only 13$ to pay the barista. That delta over thousands of employees and hundreds of work days adds up.

> can make my own coffee, I don’t need on-site baristas doing it for me.

Hey, some FAANG offices require you to make your own coffee. I had to make my own espresso on one of the $5k+ espresso machines in the microkitchen. Of course, I'd do that after company-provided breakfast in the cafeteria. My cash compensation alone was what I imagined my total equity would be worth if my first startup "hit it big" and IPO'd.

I agree that it's totally unnecessary, and would cringe when people would complain about the quality of the coffee purchased for the machines, that office X got free laundry service and we didn't, or that it was lame that there was no free dinner on Friday nights.

When I started my career, some Hot Pockets in the freezer seemed like an extravagance. I want a decent pay, a clean work environment, IT infrastructure that isn't a burden, and to feel like I'm making a real impact. Beyond that, it's all gravy.

I don't see why not, it's simple division of labour. A barista churning out coffees all day saves a full day of developer time, while being more efficient and skilled at the task. Same with canteens.

You have on-site baristas for free coffee?

And then 99% of the industry is nowhere near these perks.