You rise a very important point here. The benefit of free soda or food at work is not that employees can save money; it's that they don't have to think about food. It is abstracted away.
One of the reason those problems appear is probably the wrong mindset of management layer. They think of themselves as the bosses, while they should be thinking they're doing service jobs. Software companies sell software to make money. Software is made by developers (and designers), and sold by sales people. Anything else is support structure. Developer abstraction layer [0] to help translate software to money. But often the structure is inverted, and managers become "shit funnels" instead of "shit umbrellas" [1] - forcing developers to be concerned with things not related to developing. And then productivity declines and good devs leave.
[0] - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/DevelopmentAbstractio...
There are good reasons for you to leave that situation. For one, the fact that your employer can't afford a cleaning service is a very bad omen. Secondly, programmers don't usually like being deprived of their programming like that, so even if your employer isn't about to go under, it's likely that some of your colleagues are planning their own exits. It's also almost certainly a departure from the job description you signed up for.
I have to admit, I am wondering why you're still working there. There must be some good mitigating circumstances, right?
Several reasons. These cost cutting measures are new, and I've been trying to decide whether they are a big enough reg flag for me to start getting serious about finding a new job (I've decided they are). Also, I have some personal life changes coming up in the next 6 months as well, and I'm hesitant to add a job change to those big personal life changes unless I have no choice.
> There must be some good mitigating circumstances, right?
Definitely. I like the team I'm working with, and other than the slightly ridiculous cost cutting, the work environment is remarkably low stress and friendly.
And what other evidence are you waiting for untill you decide that you have no choice?
The only issue is that if you have a valuable workforce that has the option to leave instead of desperately needing the job, you need everyone's buy-in, or at least full understanding of the circumstances.
Apparently that hasn't been done, which is incredibly stupid, especially in such a relatively small company, but not uncommon.
A simple alternative would be to let one programmer go, and start hiring again when business picks up. However, once you go down that road, it's a lot harder to rebuild the team again. With that as the alternative, it shouldn't be too hard to sell, at least not in the short term.
I'll clean my own desk, but make me clean the office and I'm out of there, unless it's a scrappy start-up in which case it's OK. I hope your company has many other redeeming qualities, cause they sure sound cheap!
Is that how it's supposed to be written, or did you just tell me you get coffee for half a cent?
(Serious question. English isn't my first language.)
Verizon Wireless had an issue with charging for wireless data like this a few years ago that made for a funny story.
Wow. You only clean (aside from desk clutter and kitchen spills) at work if:
(A) Your job is literally to be a full-time cleaner.
(B) You are a partner in the company (0.05% stock options don't count.)
But it's what it says about the company that concerns me. It seems like they're saving pennies at the risk of employee happiness.
You're tricking yourself into a false comparison here. It's your responsibility to clean up after yourself. You spill coffee in the break room, go get a paper towel and clean it up.
It's not your responsibility to clean for your company. Unless you applied to an unusual job posting, it never was. Vacuuming the hallways and scrubbing the office toilets is not cleaning up after yourself. It is cleaning up for your company.
> my job is to write code, not to spray cleaner on a toilet bowl.
There's nothing snooty about this. How do you think a janitor would react if their first day on the job they were sat down in a call center and told to answer phones?
Your company doesn't care about you and your job description has changed. Time to head for the exit.
EDIT: obviously if you're a partner in the company as Michael mentions things are different, but it certainly doesn't sound like you are.
I'm not, and I have no equity in the company.
It's not an unreasonable request to you, in that the company buys your time and this is what they want you to do. It's a fantastically unreasonable request if they're actually in business to make money and you should take a good look around at the company; this could be an early warning to jump ship. Be assured that other people are already thinking this, and that in such situations the people leaving first are the smarter, better employees; as each one leaves, the company will struggle a little bit more.
Edit: As I read your post, I heard this low blaring horn kind of noise, getting louder and louder, much as during Heath Ledger's scenes in Dark Knight. :p
I reckon you could probably have a go at estimating the new cost of cleaning by estimating how much time everyone spends cleaning and what their hourly rate is - this might give you a better idea of how badly things are really going. It might be really scary :)
I disagree here. His company almost certainly hired him for a stated purpose, and that stated purpose almost certainly didn't mention a part-time stint as a janitor. The company doesn't (IMO) get to change the bounds of the employment agreement on a whim.
Personally, as for having to clean a bathroom shared with 30 people at work? No way. Not unless I own the place, and can fire the bad ones who mess it up.
Having someone who can turn off your income and damage your professional reputation tell you that you have to drop everything at 4:00 and clean a toilet is a different thing altogether. That's ridiculous.
Again, if you're a real partner/owner (0.05% equity does not count) you do a bunch of undesirable work (including cleaning toilets, if it makes sense) because the buck stops with you. If you're an employee, you simply should not stand for this.
Oh, thanks, now I know what I would do in that situation: pay some professional cleaner to come to the office when it's my turn.
The bigger issue, to me, is that management decided to stop using a cleaning service. The 30-employee workforce is now part of a cleaning rotation. So, once a week, we are all expected to stop what we're doing and spend 30 minutes to 2 hours cleaning something, depending on our assigned area.
How can that possibly be cost efficient? You derail the thought processes of all 30 of your employees for at least a half hour every week. 15+ man hours that your highly skilled employees could be using elsewhere. In the case of the half-dozen programmers here, it's even less efficient. It takes a lot of concentration for me to get into a mental state conducive to good programming. 30+ minutes of cleaning is enough to get me out of that programming "mode", and it is very difficult to regain that state of mind once lost.
I think that's at least part of the reason why these progammers were so up in arms about the soda machine: Because now they have to think about it. The company has introduced an annoyance and distraction (I'll admit, a trivial one) into their work day, for very little apparent effect on the company's bottom line.