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food fight
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food fight
food fight
How Google's cafes turned into hell's kitchens
Live by the fork, die by the fork. Now that Google is cutting back on its free food, where will its flacks woo journalists? Morale in Google's kitchens is rock-bottom, as leaderless workers try to keep understaffed cafes running, even as Google management insists they open new eateries. The last place Google's PR staff should want to entertain a reporter is in their cafes. The tragedy of it all: As we learn more about how the Googleplex's food operations fell apart, it sounds like Google executives' ego got in the way of thinking about the needs of employees — or the workers who keep them fed. More »
perks
Dinner saved for Google's geeks
Google's food cutbacks are more targeted than we'd first heard. Dinner will still be served in buildings which house engineers, according to a former Google chef who's made his own inquiries about the changes at the Googleplex cafeterias. Google's only eliminating the evening meal in cafes frequented by nontechnical employees. Somehow, this strikes us as worse for morale. If there were any doubt that Google's non-engineers were second-class citizens, consider it erased. No comp-sci degree? No dinner for you. (Photo by brettlider)
googleplex
There's no such thing as a free dinner. A worker at Google tells us the company is taking evening meals off the menu: "Google has drastically cut back their budget on the culinary program. How is it affecting campus? No more dinner. No more tea trolley. No more snack attack in the afternoon." The changes will be announced to Googlers on Monday. Workers at the Googleplex will remain amply fed, with free breakfast and lunch — dinner will be reserved for geeks only — but it's still a shocking cutback.
More »
Google's food perks on the chopping block
There's no such thing as a free dinner. A worker at Google tells us the company is taking evening meals off the menu: "Google has drastically cut back their budget on the culinary program. How is it affecting campus? No more dinner. No more tea trolley. No more snack attack in the afternoon." The changes will be announced to Googlers on Monday. Workers at the Googleplex will remain amply fed, with free breakfast and lunch — dinner will be reserved for geeks only — but it's still a shocking cutback.
More »
Echelon fuels up CEO's private jet
Network appliance manufacturer Echelon will now cover half the cost of CEO Ken Oshman's travel on his private jet after a vote by the company's board. Previously, the company only reimbursed up to the equivalent expense of first-class commercial airfare for Oshman and any employees travelling on company business. Based on Oshman's travel so far this year, the new perk will cost the company an extra $370,000 a year. [Mercury News]
hubris
How did Google's daycare debacle happen?
John Sterlicchi, writing for the U.K.'s Guardian, just emailed me asking for my thoughts on "this Google daycare fiasco." (The short version: Google closed an outsourced daycare facility in favor of one run in-house, and hiked prices 70 percent, far above market rates; Googlers with kids in the facility, and those on the waitlist, are furious.) He asked: "If someone outside the environs of Google and Silicon valley was looking at this, what should they think? Is Google moving away from 'do no evil'?" Good questions. Here's what I just wrote him: More »
perks
Solving Google's childcare crisis, the Microsoft way
Google cofounder Sergey Brin has explained his company's childcare fiasco thusly: It's an experiment in economics. And yet there's very little that's scientific about Google's approach to childcare, which has been to hand Susan Wojcicki, Brin's sister-in-law, a blank check, and then accuse parents of feeling entitled when the result comes in with sky-high costs. Raising the price well above market rates was the only way, Brin argued in meeting with parents, to reduce a long waitlist. Gosh, how can a large software company fairly handle childcare benefits? If Google weren't so determined to do things differently — wild ono and adzuki beans for lunch! Stanford grads with 3.5 GPAs as instructors! — it might look to Microsoft's example. The software giant offers employees 20 percent discounts on childcare from a number of providers — and its executives are smart enough to realize that they know how to write code, not take care of infants.
leaks
Google's daycare debacle: the Kinderplex memos
Google no longer advertises subsidized daycare as a benefit to its employees. So why is the company building luxuriously unaffordable child-care centers at the behest of Susan Wojcicki, the sister-in-law of Google cofounder Sergey Brin, and closing down Kinderplex, a more affordable center operated by an experienced Silicon Valley daycare provider, CCLC? If you can answer that one, you're probably clever enough at solving puzzles to qualify for a job at the Googleplex. According to internal memos obtained by Valleywag, Google executives promised in May that its new centers would not see a price hike of 75 percent. Instead, Google management hiked rates 68.34 percent — at the cost of reducing hours and increasing the ratio of children to teachers. Google is phasing in the hikes for currently enrolled children, and offering a scholarship program for the least well-off, writes Laszlo Bock, Google's top HR executive. What Bock never addresses: Why is Google spending shareholder money on a perk that it is now so ashamed of that it doesn't market it to its potential recruits as a reason to work at Google? The memos: More »
perks
Google daycare now a luxury for Larry and Sergey's inner circle
Life inside the Googleplex already resembles a daycare center, with its primary colors, bouncy exercise balls, and free food. But if you're a parent working at Google, daycare has become a nightmare. As recently as last July, Google advertised its Kinderplex child-care center as a perk, though the rates it charged weren't much below the market price. The reality: Googlers haven't been able to get their kids into the Kinderplex, thanks to a long waiting list, and the facility is now closing, being replaced by overpriced facilities designed at the behest of Susan Wojcicki, the multimillionaire sister-in-law of Google cofounder Sergey Brin and mother of four. Google employee-parents are up in arms — not over the price hike itself, but over the way the decision came down from on high. More »
5:00 PM on Fri Jun 13 2008
By Owen Thomas
23,098 views,
50 comments
Latest by n/a: When Brin and Page decided to take my You Tube Business Model in 2004 when I submitted it them to more »
perks
Comcast CEO's family gets $300 million if he croaks in office
Had Comcast CEO Brian Roberts died during 2007, the company would have had to pay his heirs $60 million for five years of salary and bonus, a $223 million life-insurance payout and another $14 million in stock awards and other payments. Add it up and Roberts's heirs get a $298.1 million "golden coffin" if the Comcast CEO croaks in office. Roberts's 88-year-old father — Ralph Roberts, chairman of Comcast's executive committee — earns his family $87 million
cubicle culture
Google's ever-shrinking 20 percent time
Google has introduced Gmail Labs, a digital playground for Googlers to develop new features for Gmail in their spare time. It's a well-staged PR event, a timely effort to remind the press — and through them, potential hires — that Google lets engineers spend 20 percent of their time on side projects. Gmail Labs, though, is a sign of how 20 percent time as early Googlers knew it is vanishing from the Googleplex. More »
5:00 PM on Thu Jun 5 2008
By Owen Thomas
5,591 views,
9 comments
Latest by OaklandTechie: Wait... Google actually has deadlines? more »
google i/o
Google misspells binary message -- or does it?
Google's developer conference in San Francisco, Google I/O, is a temporary geek paradise, a replication of the Googleplex's lavish perks. Flight of the Conchords played last night. Google also provided puzzles. TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington noticed that a binary code sequence on Google's T-shirt for the event spells "GOOGLE KO". A mistake? Or a test to see if readers are clever enough to notice that the top half of a "K" looks like an "I" and a slash?
google
Why Google employees should leave before it's too late
The recruiters at Binc interviewed current and former Googlers to compile a list of five reason to stay at the company and five reasons to go. At 1,054 words, a Googler would use up all of his 20 percent time reading it. Here's the 100-word version. More »
lawsuits
Microsoft plans to offer Yahoos $1.5 billion if they'll stay with the company
During proceedings in a shareholder lawsuit against Yahoo's board, Microsoft lawyers said that the company has set aside $1.5 billion to retain Yahoo employees. This cash is separate from a Yahoo board-approved severance package that guarantees two years' pay to anybody laid off after a change in control. Already, two-thirds of our readers said they would prefer to see Yahoo merge with Microsoft instead of AOL. Sources confirm the sentiment is similar inside of Yahoo. (Photo, "Free Man's Prison," by code_martial)
Estimate: Google spends $73 million a year on free food
Silicon Alley Insider estimates that Google spends $73 million a year feeding its U.S. workers. The figure is probably low, since many employees invite their families over for free meals. [SAI]
Silicon Alley Insider estimates that Google spends $73 million a year feeding its U.S. workers. The figure is probably low, since many employees invite their families over for free meals. [SAI]
confirmed
On Earth Day, Yahoo dumps "Green Guzzler" shuttles
Yahoo has indeed axed its San Francisco-to-Sunnyvale shuttles, a tipster tells us, confirming a longstanding rumor. Ah, but here's the twist: Yahoo has replaced earth-friendly biodiesel buses from Compass Transportation with vehicles from Bauer's Limo. No one told Yahoo's purchasing department that today is Earth day. Bauer's also supplies Google with shuttles, but according to our tipster, Yahoo is getting the dregs of its fleet: More »
cubicle culture
Departing Googler: Perks are nice, but I was bored and not getting rich
An anonymous software engineer who says he used to work on AdWords, Google's lucrative if straightforward ad-selling system, has written a blog post explaining why he's leaving the search giant. Unfortunately, his tenure at Google did not include a tutorial on the use of the "Return" key, and most of his post is one long paragraph reaching 1,422 words. Here's the 100-word version on why he split for a social-networking startup. More »
quotable
Google chefs have the best jobs in the business, if not in the company
Google chef Eric Dela Cruz works Monday through Friday — an unusual schedule for a master of the culinary arts, most of whom never have a weekend free. From this interview he gave to food blog YumSugar, it sounds like he has the best job in the industry: low-pressure, big budget and, as long as the food is good, positive feedback from everyone he runs into.I get to cook whatever I want with the best quality food around. It's really great because we purchase everything top quality and everything we buy has a positive effect on the environment. We buy 100-percent sustainable, local ingredients. There is no pressure to make money on each plate, I don't have to cook what sells. Food is art and Google is my playground.Here's the rest of the interview and a photo gallery.
