Between the Lines
The Dark Side of Work Perks
Company-provided free food and happy hours impose a sinister creep on employees’ personal lives
Every day, companies around the world execute a low-risk, high-return arbitrage: They buy the time and attention of some of the most highly compensated professionals in the world — programmers, product managers, data scientists, quants, investment bankers, and lawyers — for the cost of a plate of pad thai. Given how much wealth is generated by companies that comp or subsidize employees’ food, and given that for each of those companies, getting smart people to work a little longer is a core competency, free food arguably belongs on the list of important technologies that have a visible impact on GDP growth.
I’ve recently started getting lunch with friends who work at big tech companies like Google. From the perspective of the technical employees and managers, a profitable tech company is a socialist paradise, with monopolistic AdWords pricing instead of North Sea oil. You get your badge, walk past the fitness room, the nap room, the meditation room, and the lactation station, then get all the free food you want.
Free lunch, though, is not where the action is: The economics of free food are driven by free dinner. Lunch just amortizes…
