> Even after breaking down my yearly compensation to an hourly rate, I bet there will be a marginal difference in the money the company makes by keeping me working the extra hours and the price I'd pay for buying such food everyday

Any company providing you multiple meals per day for free is getting the better end of the bargain. Make no mistake about it. It's an arbitrage between the cost of cooking labor + cooking material vs. your labor.

In other words, you're getting the short end of the stick. People do not value perks rationally. If they did, they would deny every last one of them.

How many people value anything rationally? Ever?

As humans we are programmed to be pain averse. I hate foraging for and/or cooking my food. I consider it an utter waste of my time and breath. Yes, I care about my health, but don't have the money to pay an arm and a leg for a personal chef, or even plan meals. In short, I want to eat well (tasty+healthy), but without any direct effort on my part. That is the pain I am averse to. If a company can remove that pain, for me it is a fair exchange, even if in a most superficial manner.

Give and Take. Plus, no exchange in life is perfectly equivalent. Is it?

Fully realized, you could have all the benefits offered (selfishly) by your employing corporation instead provided by an employee's union co-op. Even the building. The corporation would just be thin pipe keeping labor flowing in one direction and money flowing in the other.

There was a company, a big one, that I forget the name of that was run like that through the second half of the 20th century, but I can't remember the name :(

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

I'm sure there are as many folks with your motivations and inclinations as there are with mine.

So you admit you are getting a bad deal?

>I hate foraging

Have you EVER foraged in your life?

>I want to eat well (tasty+healthy), but without any direct effort on my part.

If you are talking about the meals that Google provides, there is no evidence that their food is any more healthy than alternatives.

Personally, quite the opposite actually, if you read my full comment.

Have you EVER foraged in your life?

You mean, by the dictionary definition of foraging? In the wild? Then, No. But, if you mean gathering edible items that are uncooked or semi-cooked, to be cooked for creating a meal, then, Yes. And I consider it an utter waste of time. So, what's your point?

As for the nutrition value of Google meals, perhaps you know more than I do? Are you a (ex)Googler? I'd wait to hear from some current Google employees to get the truth on this point, rather than rush to judgement.

The deal "provide me a decent meal and I'll stay at work another hour or so" is, evaluated rationally, completely 100% fine by me. I'd rather stay at work for an hour than take an hour out of my day to cook & clean, or spend the equivalent of an hour's wage on feeding myself.

I don't know about you, but my salary (plus benefits) rate is about $95-100 / hr.

So, let's say I 'work my butt off' for an extra 4-6 hours a day. That is an extra $3000 of unpaid work, per week, that the company gets for giving me food. Or, $200 per meal.

(That's not even taking into account the considerable extra value that the company gets in owning the results of my work.)

Aside from that quibble, look at it from both sides:

The company spends a few hundred dollars a week on meals and gets 5-10x return on that money. Everybody agrees this is a good deal for the company.

The employee trades a few hours of his life for food. The hours he works, he would not have received any money for anyway unless he was working another paying job. The employee is trading "opportunity costs" (imaginary value) and receiving substantial value in "free" food.

If the "opportunity cost" of those extra work hours are sitting in front of Netflix watching zombie movies, he probably got a good deal trading that time for food. If the "opportunity cost" is starting the next hot startup, he got a bad deal.

Most would say the above is harmless and it benefits the company, which benefits the employee, so why is it such a bad thing? It's bad because this type of culture makes it extra easy for engineers to burn out.

I am genuinely curious because I hear that argument thrown around a lot, anytime non-monetary compensation is being discussed among the HN crowd.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=aapl+goog+msft+facebook

Look for revenue/employee.

If you strip out just the developers at a big company which is very profitable and product focused, you'll get even more insane revenue-per-employee figures.

It's depressing/unpolitic to say, but the "free meals, shuttles, etc." are intended for the developers, management, and other highly-in-demand people. It's probably overall worse for corporate culture to set up multiple tiers of employees, some of whom don't qualify for those perks, but a company with huge numbers of easily-recruited, low-value-add employees (e.g. walmart) tends to have crappy perks; a company with a small number of key employees with absurd productivity and profitability per employee (hedge fund?) tends to have amazing perks.

(That startups tend toward binary outcomes based on the productivity of the first 5-10 people is probably not in dispute here, I assume and hope.)