The trouble with this is that he suggests all these things that are imitations of what big companies do. How about doing something that there's no way a company like google would do?
- Close the company. Maybe your company just isn't open for two weeks in December or nobody has to work on Fridays during the summer. Nobody feels like they're falling behind and everybody gets a break from each other.
- REALLY flexible working arrangements. There was a story on HN about a small broadcaster that allowed an employee to go surfing whenever the waves were really great. Maybe somebody is really into Phish and gets a day off every time Phish plays a show within 500 miles or gets time off to go to March Madness if their favorite team gets in.
-Real choice in offices. Small companies often move several times in their early history. Look for opportunities to involve employees in office decision-making and let them arrange and decorate their own work areas.
-Real support of their outside lives. This one is two-fold: 1) make sure your employees have time to have lives outside of work, and 2) support those activities. Sponsor the your employee's kid's boy scout troop or let your employees use the office for gaming after hours. (Don't be creepy about it if they don't want company involvement, though.)
> - Close the company. Maybe your company just isn't open for two weeks in December or nobody has to work on Fridays during the summer. Nobody feels like they're falling behind and everybody gets a break from each other.
TI, Raytheon, Lockheed, Northrop, and Boeing[1] close from Christmas Eve through New Years day, and virtually everyone takes the 3 or 4 days off that are required to round it out to two full weeks. A long-time TI employee I used to work with told me TI started doing this for overhead reasons. TI has a large number of fabs, assembly areas, and buildings that are basically high ceiling, wide open flex space. These areas all have to be heated or cooled as a whole, and the cost isn't much different if you have 2000 people in the building or 200. Somebody in corporate figured out that the company could actually save money by just giving everyone the days off and shutting down all the equipment instead of trying to get things done short-staffed. As a bonus, they figured they could sell it as a perk of working for TI.
Not sure if you're already meaning to refer to it implicitly, but fwiw 37Signals does this. They work 5-day workweeks October-May, and 4-day workweeks May-October.
My goal as a startup founder is to make life simpler for my employees. I've been running companies for the past 12 years--at first, I was stingy with employee benefits, before I figured out that giving good benefits helped keep employees around. (Seems obvious in retrospect!)
Here's my current running list of what I do for my employees:
1) Fully-specced new laptop every 2 years. Our CTO just specced a nearly-$3,000 Linux laptop from System76. My assistant and I have Macbook Pros.
2) Full coverage health care 100% paid for by the company, including dependents.
3) Free cell phone; we pick as a team. Currently we are all on Galaxy S4s from T-Mobile. I also gave a paid-by-the-company phone to my CTO's wife (she's helped us out around the office quite a bit as well!)
4) Company will pay your Internet bill at home (within reason; most of us have $70-$100/mo bills from Time Warner.)
5) High-end monitor + cables to plug your laptop into at the office.
6) Nice chairs. We get Aerons. I have had my most recent batch of Aerons for nearly 7 years and have moved them halfway across the country and they still look new.
7) Standup desk if you prefer (we currently have 3; 2 by Geekdesk and one I bought used from another startup founder--I use the latter one.)
8) Free snacks, drinks, and coffee at our office.
9) For executive staff, a company credit card so you can pay for parking, snacks, etc. if you're out without having to deal with expensing items.
In other words, I get my employees whatever they want and the company can afford, within reason, that takes the burden out of them having to pay out of pocket or go without the latest technology.
I'm always willing to add more to this list, but it has to be because my employees want and would use it.
1) Fully-specced new laptop every 2 years. Our CTO just specced a nearly-$3,000 Linux laptop from System76. My assistant and I have Macbook Pros.
So thats a Clevo chassis (p157SM?) with the full 32GB loadout, multiple SSD, 15.6" 95% gamut screen, 780M, top of the line i7 haswell.
Has he/she figured out the switchable graphics part yet? I've got a Sager with the 8970M and have horrible problems with getting the dedicated GPU be treated correctly.
On another note regarding the price: What on earth merits that setup if you get new boxes every 2 years?
My Sager was $1500 with the GPU, wifi card, screen, and (16gb) ram upgrade. There is NO way this thing will be deprecated in 2 years.
> On another note regarding the price: What on earth merits that setup if you get new boxes every 2 years?
If your company has revenue and/or funding (we have both), an extra $500-$700/year is nothing if it makes your employees happy. Something I've learned from experience.
quite high expenses there.upto latest doesn't mean increase performance but can rid time wasted.not sure futured i will be like that or staff wanted bonuses then company benefit
I have a very different idea: don't expect your employees to be at the office 18hrs/day so that they need catered meals, home cleaning, dog walking, and so on. What a horrible, horrible life these "perks" imply. For example, walking my dogs is the best part of the day, not a chore to be pawned off to a service.
Edit: to be clear, I'm referring to the perks in the article, not in the comments. Most of the comments are great.
I hear you. Be humane to your people. It goes a long way.
But different people want different things. Maybe cleaning your house is not the high point of your day. Maybe one of your co-workers doesn't like having to walk their SO's dog every day.
You can actually buy friends for very little money. It just takes a little thoughtfulness. (Of course, you can ruin all that in a hurry by expecting them to work 18 hour days...)
Sure, on the "different people want different things" comments. But I can hire a house cleaner if I want one. Everything in that list was, in one way or another, compensation for the fact that you are not home. I don't really buy that that is a coincidence. OTOH, I think the comments here are right on the money. Give me a great work environment (whether that is great desks, flexible time, or whatever), and I'll give you everything I have for 40 hours. Only a company can give me that - I can buy my own food, select my own cleaning service, and so on.
I'm not quite as against the list as my kind of snarky comment implied. I'd kill for a driver, but that is because I live a long distance from the Mountain View office where I work, and I hate driving, and the 2hrs/day this eats. But instead, today I am working from home, and that works, too.
Author of the article here. I don't think many people enjoy doing their laundry or cleaning their apartment. I also think most people enjoy free food, as it saves them money. The dog walking perk I can understand, but beyond that, are you legitimately stating that you wouldn't want any of these perks free of charge?
I'd rather spend 9 hours/day coding and 0 hours/day on housework than spend 8 hours/day coding + 1 hour/day on housework. So for me it's a great tradeoff.
I don't think I'm the only developer who enjoys coding more than cleaning his bathroom or doing laundry.
I'm at the point where a decent market rate salary, with generous health/dental/eye benefits, 401(k) matching and ample vacation and sick leave is more than enough to keep me around. But screw me on my annual raise and it'll trigger an immediate job search, period. I consider keeping up with inflation the bare minimum raise, an actual raise should at least beat inflation.
I really don't care to eat catered food, or dry cleaning, game rooms or free massages or half a dozen other perks that startups are known for. If they have those things, that's cool, but I know too many places that skimp on salary, vacation days, insurance in favor of "cheap" perks like a twice a month in office masseuse.
At my current place, about 60 people
- individual health insurance is 100% covered.
- matching 401(k) up to 7%
- 20 days of vacation, can carry over 100% of remainder year to year. Some people from the early days have so much accrued that they're taking some well deserved multi-month vacations.
- fairly standard sick leave, I forget what it is, 80 hrs per year I think, doctor appointments taking less than half a day don't count
- 11 holidays, all are floating so we can take them whenever we want (meaning effective vacation days are 31, but you may have to work on a national holiday)
- flexible work schedule.
- free gym membership (a healthy workforce is a productive workforce)
- various public transit benefits that make taking public transit effectively free
" too many places that skimp on salary, vacation days, insurance in favor of "cheap" perks like a twice a month in office masseuse."
This. Even though it can be aruged that it is probably harder for startups to match big co. salaries, 401K etc but they should at least be honest about it and not just throw these "perks" out there. I mean things like dry cleaning, dog walking, massages are more like "nice to haves" than "really great to have". Would I rather have a 7% 401K match ? You bet.
At the end of the day, Cash is king. Give me that and I will shut up as an employee. Don't shortchange me on things that matter like a decent salary, 401K, health benefits etc. Now being a founder/co-founder, totally different story.
I do understand sometimes that at a startup you have to think about lower salaries and such. And while I think catered food and such are cool. I would definitely trade it in for a proper raise structure and other, more meaningful benefits.
I have a number of friends who work at another startup that caps pay below market rates and instead of pay raises gives them equity. Some of them started right out of college and now, 6 years later are making the exact same money. Sure they have loads of options, but if the company fails to sell it won't matter in the least. Of course in the meanwhile they've enjoyed the other typical startup perks that cost the company some fraction of what a proper salary would.
Here's some free perks that a startup can provide: remote work, flexible hours, no to open-plans, freedom to use any software/OS the developer wants to.
And best of luck to small startups looking for affordable and scalable office space without open floor plans, especially in the Bay Area. I'm as opposed to open plans as anyone. But they're usually a necessary evil for a company trying to keep its burn rate under control. Doubly so for a company trying to keep burn under control while simultaneously growing quickly.
That's assuming that the choice is between e.g. one office of size X that 5 people have to share, versus 5 offices each of size X; of course that's going to be expensive, especially in the Bay Area, but it's completely unnecessary. Make it 5 offices each of size X/5, and there shouldn't be a substantial cost overhead.
In theory, you're absolutely right. There shouldn't be much difference, cost-wise, between renting X space for 5 people and renting X/5 offices. A rational renter/buyer shouldn't have to pay a premium for 5 * X/5 vs X. But the 5 * X/5 configuration is not offered as frequently, or on comparable terms. It's all about the available inventory in the commercial real estate market in any given city.
More often than not, if you're in the market for a space with any discrete offices -- regardless of their size -- you're going to have to "buy the cow" and rent a generally bigger space. That's just how office space is developed, rented, and sold these days. The open floor plan has become such a standard that one has to pay a premium to acquire the equivalent amount of non-open work space.
Non-open offices have become something of a rarity, especially in the Bay Area. Typically they're rented to law firms, medical practices, and other professional associations: companies with lots of cash flow and a relative indifference to price, creating price-inelastic demand in the market.
I really don't understand why a company under cash constraints that's doing digital work would have a physical office anyway. Consider it as a perk - how many thousands of dollars a month do people spend on office space? Would the employees be happier taking that money as salary and working remotely? I'd bet so.
I thought that too when we started our company, but my co-founders convinced me we needed a space. They were right. The company (and certainly the culture) is better because we mostly all work near each other, and see each other, and can overhear problems other people are having. I suppose the math might be different if I were paying SF rents. YMMV.
Flexible hours mixed with remote work are the top ones for me. I typically do my best work before I shower and get dressed for the day, or from 7-11pm at night. The hours when I would be required to be at an office (9-5) are literally a dead zone of productivity for me. I'm actually working at the office today and I haven't accomplished a single tangible thing due to interruptions, informal chats, and meetings. Between that and watching the nicest, sunniest hours of the day out of a small window, it's really killing my motivation.
And there are costs too if everyone's on their own OS and language, in integration and testing and support if the one guy who wrote some critical piece of code in FORTRAN77 on OpenVMS decides to leave...
I don't think nawitus intended for his statement to refer to his actual work - just the work environment. As an example - everybody writes PHP, but some do it on OS X, some on Ubuntu, some on Win8, etc.
Flexible hours, yep fair enough. But the others... well...
- remote work - I agree, it's a nice to have, but if you're joining a startup you're a new team member, you need to be in the same office to get used to each other, up to speed etc (unless of course you're all BFF). Trust me, been there done that and still tackling that problem, it's not as simple as it sounds, especially for new starts. Perhaps after 6 to 12 months we'll consider 2-3 work from home days if you've never done this before. [Disclosure: I work remotely - ~600miles from HQ - and have done for my company for almost 11 years]
- open-plans - until the startup gets seed A money forget open plans, even with seed A it'll be the founders/senior devs who'll be on first come, first served for that office with a door. As a new employee you'll be open plan until your company can afford such luxuries. The best I got at a startup was after second round funding (the kind that affords 20-30 employees new Kinnarps desks, chairs, a proper phone system and a proper server room) and moved into an office with three other staff.
- freedom to use any software/OS the developer wants to - well, what can I say. Your startup has a goal which is definitely not worrying about you wasting time making the stuff you wrote on some obscure distro work with their environment. Forget that one. Everyone needs to be singing from the same hymn book with their dev envs and not wasting time wondering why some crap doesn't work on your machine but does on the standardised platform. Otherwise it adds to the burnrate, suck it up you'll use the tools/OS you're told to....and yes been there before and spent days with a guy who wouldn't use anything but Slackware getting some crap for a demo to work that was targeted at CentOS.
None of the above are free, except perhaps flexible hours. Where I work we're pretty flexible for school runs, medical appts, or hell, you just fancy a lie in for an extra couple of hours (provided you let someone know)....as long as the work gets done, and you didn't have anything on your calendar involving a client or other team member that is mission critical then we can flex hours.
Everyone knows (or ought to know) that the value of most of those perks has to be offset against something in the company's budget. (Namely: your paycheck[1]).
(New) startups shouldn't try to compete 1-1 with the handful of already stupendously successful startups on these items.
Far better to offer something the big boys can't: like actual responsibility (the kind that by definition, always comes with the act of taking on substantial risk); real challenge; and an opportunity (and expectation) to not only see, but contribute strategically to the whole picture -- including things like business strategy, shaping the company's hiring & general social culture, etc. Not to mention things like decent office space, lack of bureaucracy that's inevitable in any large organization, etc.
Those are what I call real perks -- not free massages, a treacly beer keg, or mediocre sushi (half price after 4p!)
[1] Actual benefits, like health insurance and paid training, are an entirely different matter of course. In these areas, the employer contribution (at scale) has a decisive leveraging benefit (i.e. generally providing more than what the employer could for herself out of pocket, dollar for dollar). But most of these fashionable "perks" out in startupland have dubious benefit at best -- and most of them I'd happily trade for the (implicit) negative offset in walking around money that goes with them.
> Far better to offer something the big boys can't: like significant responsibility (that by definition, always comes with the act of taking on substantial risk); real challenge, an opportunity (and expectation) to not only see, but contribute strategically to the whole picture -- including things like business strategy, shaping the company's hiring & general social culture, etc. Not to mention things like decent office space, lack of bureaucracy that's inevitable in any large organization, etc.
This is what I enjoy the most about working for a young startup. In my current job, I'm the first hire at a TechStars company. I have the freedom and responsibility to get things done and take on challenging tasks. I don't have a lot of experience on paper so the opportunity to take on this level of responsibility is huge for me personally and far more important than free beer or whatever.
"(New) startups shouldn't try to compete 1-1 with the handful of already stupendously successful startups on these items."
Exactly. Pay staff actual real tangible benefits that improve life for them and their families outside of work - such as a proper salary, their health insurance (if in the US or country where there is no national health service such as we have in the UK), don't expect people to work 18 hour days, give staff tangible and enjoyable responsibilities and make the work interesting.
I can't help but think there are many young devs and engineers, in their early 20's, being sucked into an almost Scientology-like startup lifestyle where they are brainwashed with massages, beer and sushi into handing their lives away for the betterment of the founders.
How bout just treat employees well, pay them fairly, and give them autonomy. That's all anyone really wants. Nobody takes a job for the free dog walking.
Speaking of employee benefits w.r.t. dogs, I had a job for a year that let me bring my dog into the office as long as no one in the office (anonymously) had a problem with it. My dog would lie at my feet and sleep for the entire day basically. I found that on the days I brought him, I was more relaxed and productive, and at lunch, we'd go on a nice walk instead of my usual work through lunch at my desk. Also I was able to stay longer hours if I wanted to since I didn't have to run home to take him out at 6pm. It was awesome. I'd definitely sacrifice some benefit/salary difference to have that again.
I wonder how much demand there is for child care as a perk. At places I worked at -- admittedly, much larger companies -- childcare and transportation benefits were two of the biggest ones.
Offer challenge, responsibility, and the ability to work with a team significantly more competent, productive and unhindered by bureaucracy than they could at a big company? Seems like competing directly on salary and perks with a (rich) big company isn't going to work out well.
A lot of large companies seem to be able to offer enough of these qualities as to make salary/perks a deciding factor. For all the bureaucracy of large companies, they can also provide the resources and connections to get things done a startup couldn't possibly hope to do, and that is a form of freedom in and of itself.
Everyone has different reasons for their choices, but speaking only for myself, none of those things matter much to me. Here's why I'm currently at a big company instead of a startup (and I've done the startup thing in the past, so I have some idea of what I'm missing out on):
1. Research-y projects. Big companies have the resources to place long-term high-risk bets on research projects that will probably fail. Some startups have a single such high-risk bet, but you can't just decide to work on whatever crazy idea you come up with because the company can't really absorb your salary for years if the bet doesn't pay off.
2. Really broad scope. One cool thing about working at a startup was that I could do whatever I wanted as long it was relevant to the startup. In fact, that was the biggest reason I went with a startup just out of school; I would have been some tiny cog on a giant team at a big company (that's not inevitable, but that's what the offers I personally had entailed). But I now have enough credibility that I can go off and do whatever I want at a big company. Since the big company has a much larger scope than a startup, there are many more things I can work on.
3. Resources. At the startup, I could take 100 machines to run an experiment and it wasn't a big deal. If I wanted to use 1000 machines I'd have to get people to ok it because I'd be eat into resources that were necessary for the company's operation. Now, if there's something I'm curious about, I can run a map reduce across the entire internet.
4. Relaxed environment. The vast majority of my team is married with kids, so the office is deserted by 5pm. There are a couple of folks I've seen stay late for a week or two to hit some deadline, but that's like one or two weeks out of the year. The startup was one of the most relaxed startups I've ever seen, but there were still month long crunches of 50+ hours/wk as some emergency came up. In principle, a startup could be as relaxed as a big company, but that's extraordinarily rare. At the big company, one of the most respected people in the office casually remarked to me that he's been at negative available vacation for all but his first two weeks at the company (and he's been here for seven years). At the startup, the most respected people all lost vacation every year because pushed up against the vacation cap.
5. This should really be like 25 or something, since it's not in the same league as the others, but I'm making a lot more money than I was at the startup.
Don't get me wrong -- there are a lot of advantages to being at a startup, and I'm glad I spent a good chunk of my career at one. I'm just saying that there's a lot I'd have to give up to go back to a startup, and the things on that list don't even make the top 30.
For me, I have a young kid and am the sole breadwinner at the moment. My goals are to a.) generate money reliably for my family, and b.) be with my family as much as possible, and c.) not die of boredom at work. Startups are risky and can require very long hours, and I have very low risk tolerance and limited extra time.
Well it sounds like you aren't a 20 year old ready to abused and take patronizing compliments of being a "rockstar" in lieu of given pieces of paper with dead presidents on them ... So not in the same pool. :)
That is a great place to be, and what I had always hoped to get out of a large engineering company. Part of why I gave my previous (and first) employer as long as I did was that I was hoping to reach that point with them, as the work was really interesting. When I realized it was never going to happen and I was going to be stuck as a cog in a classified program for the rest of my career I got the hell out[1]. My current, very small (but not startup) employer gives me all of the above except #3, #5, and #2 to the degree that our size limits it.
After reading a few of your posts in the past, I've thought about applying up where you are now (I'm an EE doing nothing EE related in my day job). I'm not sure I want to live in Madison, though.
I don't make nearly as much as my SF counterparts (midwest US), however factoring in for my insanely good health benefits and the ability to walk to work makes this almost too good.
Health insurance combined with a bureaucratic system that makes work oddly relaxing is a little too much to leave right now. I'm 26 with better benefits than my father had when he retired.
Wow that's awesome. I work at a big bank and we have none of those things. Everything is shit and I can't wait to leave.
Our mobile development environment is a locked down internal Windows XP laptop that doesn't let anything in or out, so we had to write our own tools to package code to leave the laptop.
We wrote a simple little "chat" client in Node, but before sending the code off, it was packaged into a .jpg, and unpacked on the other side (my development macbook). This is how we've been dealing with code for over a year now.
Shit pay, 0 resources basically. Can't wait to leave.
I've had a few jobs that were similar, but I ended up loving them.
Pay was good, resourcing was terrible, but the problem sets were really interesting and overcoming the technical challenges to get work done kept it interesting.
Haha, you are certifiably insane. When I do a job, I expect not to pay much attention to my setup. I want to spend max 2 days to setup my environment then never touch it again.
I work for a large bank, and whilst my desktop is completely locked down, our development is done on remote (but still internal) boxes where we're essentially given free reign.
each team is essentially autonomous, and they pick the tools they wish to use.
yes, there is lots of paperwork, e.g. getting anything deployed requires multiple people from across the firm to agree, but it's mostly automated and doesn't take more a few hours of background time, and it's understandable: the amount of money the firm would lose if something went drastically wrong is eye boggling.
the problems are challenging and interesting, I get to experiment with extremely high end equipment that isn't available for general purchase, and the hours are good (as is the pay).
(though I admit there are parts of the organisation that don't have this freedom: you have to be careful when interviewing)
> each team is essentially autonomous, and they pick the tools they wish to use.
This will lead to a maintenance problem shortly. I worked in similar environments. Technically clueless managers think that they only have to throw requirements over the wall and let the developers figure out how to implement them. When someone leaves the team the replacement needs to become acquainted with totally unfamiliar code, libraries and tools.
same with me, I have a working experience in Accenture and IBM and Both company sucks...
I do not get any benefit such as daily perks which make me not to leave my job...
Recently, I applied for Google Designer Job and when I get a job there, I swear that I will write a blog post for Hacker News about the working environment of Accenture...
Honestly the managers moved heaven and hell to get me into this position because I specialize in a specific piece of software that they are using.
I can't just ditch them. I love the team and I will see this product through until production, then I'm asking for 40k/year on top of my current pay or I'm leaving.
The fact that his managers had to move heaven and hell to get him indicates that he doesn't actually have any leverage.
Once the project's out, then he will have leverage in the form of a track record. Now his managers can say "look at what this guy's done for us, do you honestly want to let him go?"
You go from "Everything is shit and I can't wait to leave" to this? You sound like me two years ago. All I did was bitch about my job, but made excuses whenever someone asked me why I stayed. I suggest you find something better as soon as possible. Once you do, you'll wonder why you ever stuck around the hell hole for as long as you did.
The best perks for a very small startup are the ones that don't scale, because then Twitter can't copy them. For better or worse, serving lunch scales. Laundry service scales.
What doesn't scale?
- Find out what your employees REALLY like and make it part of the culture. Tofu of the month club. Concert tickets for Mongolian mandolinists. The key is this taps into people's personal identity, and helps the team bond. It is VERY hard for Google to copy things like this.
- Hire much better management. Google can no longer give large chunks of equity to new managers. A small start-up can. Outstanding managers (which are very hard to find, and need to be hunted just like outstanding programmers) will find a way to keep the best employees by challenging them and keeping them engaged with the work.
- More autonomy. A small company can say "Use your judgment on expenses" and "Give it your best guess on new technology" much easier than large companies who have to worry more about cross-organizational consistency.
Somebody start a company that integrates all these services in to an API for perks and let's employees choose what they want and then the company pays for them. That's what I was doing before a stronger passion called me, but the problem was real and getting beta customers lined up was as easy as I'd ever had it.
AnyPerk.com is a great platform for providing employee perks and discounts. It works for companies of all sizes. We implemented AnyPerk at my last company when we were 52 people. And, we are implementing it at my new company that has less than 10 employees. Size doesn't matter. Great service. Highly recommend.
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BetterWorks, the employee perks startup led by Los Angeles entrepreneur and investor Paige Craig, has told its customers that it will be shutting down May 31.
The company offered tools to help businesses manage discounts and rewards programs for employees. In the past few months, BetterWorks still seemed to be rolling out a steady stream of new features like catering and groups and permissions. In fact, Director of Product Varun Krishna told me that BetterWorks was seeing growing interest from larger enterprises (though in retrospect that may have been a polite way of saying that it wasn’t making enough money from small- and medium-sized businesses) (...)
Betterworks missed the mark in a lot of ways, but in other ways they were doing well - but their seed round and series a were so huge, if it wasn't going to be a multi-billion dollar company it wasn't worth continuing. If you want to be a hundred million dollar company who could make your way to being a billion dollar company, do this but do it better.
I've worked for 3 very early stage startups before I joined my current position at a pre-IPO company. My previous company also grew to a 300 person company when I left for my new job. Few observations -
1. I will never again work for a very early stage startup. The equity grant given in exchange for the reduced salary(compared to larger companies) and the long hours are just not worth it.
2. Small perks like helping with chores, catered food, etc don't matter. I'd rather take a break for an hour and eat outside and go home at a normal hour.
3. "Loyalty" and "Commitment" are empty words, companies have none. They do whats in their best interest, you should do the same.
4. Startups more often than not tend to be poorly managed, and it can be frustrating dealing with it.
5. Startups with excessive hierarchy are the worst.
I think the most significant benefits are the ones an employee can't simply buy for him or herself.
For example, we offer an extremely flexible leave and vacation policy. It's a great benefit because it's good for employees, good for the company, and it doesn't "cost" anything!
Better, are the ones that big companies can't really offer: like being part of something that's rapidly growing and evolving and knowing that you can have a significant impact on the entire company. Personally, I think seeing something I did make a difference is one of the most important factors in job satisfaction.
The biggest "free to the company" perk a company could offer me is great package shipping/receiving during the day, and ideally, use of the company mailroom at cost to ship personal packages. But receiving inbound Amazon packages so I can collect them at the end of the day when I go home would be more than enough.
The other perk I care a lot about is parking. Even better, parking for 2+ cars, so I can leave a car at the office when I don't drive in (public transit or whatever), and stuff like leaving a car at the office if I'm out of town for a week. (company motor pool cars, even if it's just a couple old Suburbans or a Prius or something, would be fine for this too. Or a zipcar or bmwdrivenow site if they're close.)
(the other thing I want is an office, rather than open-plan, and either a secured enough space that I could leave $5k on the desk in cash without worry, or physical security in the form of a serious locking door or office safe; but those are to be productive, so they're not really perks)
> But receiving inbound Amazon packages so I can collect them at the end of the day when I go home would be more than enough.
I have never worked anywhere this was not possible. But then, i have never worked in a really big (big enough to have its own campus) company. Is this really not allowed in some places?
> The other perk I care a lot about is parking.
Me too - but in my case, bike parking. At the moment, i have to lock up to a stand in the alley outside my office; which is just tolerable (the stands are solid and the alley is fairly busy). A secure place to lock my bike up is not just a perk, it's actually a requirement for me to take a job.
It's more an issue in a small to midsized company with badly run mail and no actual receptionist; it's inappropriate to receive a high volume of personal mail when it distracts someone who isn't officially a mail handling person every time fedex/ups/etc. comes to the door. Also sucks if packages go missing. I've been in both kinds of places.
I really like the secure bike lockers as an option for this, unless people have private offices where they could also keep bikes.
Or you can think about it this way "If you don't work for the company that provides all these perks, you can spend $280.00 out of your own pocket and get the same benefits". You can still work at other companies just make sure you're compensated for all these perks.
I need to have creative freedom in both design and features.
So far I have none, I'm a code monkey with a bunch of Photoshop, UX and "Project Director" goons taking shots.
None of them can actually build the end product nor work in the medium.
I left a rather dull bank job to cross the country and join a startup. For those running statups, here's why I joined, what didn't matter and why I left:
WHY I JOINED
1. Lack of bureaucracy. Granted, I worked at an exceptionally bureaucratic bank, but I longed for a place where I could just do something without having 10 meetings to ask permission from people who weren't qualified to decide if the project was valid or not. Projects that could have taken months took years.
2. Benefits. The startup not only paid 100% of my health insurance premium, they offered great insurance. That's a big deal in the USA. I had a child who had a hospital stay. It cost me $100 out of pocket and would have cost tens of thousands otherwise. It was like having thousands of dollars added to my salary.
3. Relocation. They paid for movers to pack and ship my goods directly. I didn't have to mess with reimbursement or advances. If you're looking to get the best you can find from across the country, this can be a big deal.
3. A new language/challenge. I had started writing code in Python and loved it. It was a refreshing change.
4. Smart people. I can honestly say that the startup I worked for had the smartest staff of any place I've worked. It was intimidating at times, but I learned a lot in a very short period of time. I ended up touching a lot of parts of the system that I didn't have much experience with and it was a huge learning experience that will benefit me for the rest of my career.
5. Great hardware. I felt like I finally had enough horsepower on my development machine to actually do my job. The default was a well-equipped Mac, but other developers could choose what they needed.
6. A great location. This is less important, but was an attention-getter when they made me their initial pitch. Santa Monica, across the street from the beach/pier. I'm not sure how it could have gotten better.
WHAT DIDN'T MATTER
1. The salary. I actually took a pay cut if you factor in the cost of living. I don't regret that decision.
2. Foosball table. Some people liked playing on a break during some very long hours, but I honestly just didn't get it.
2. Free food. They went all-out with the snacks and didn't hesitate to order-in food on our frequent late-nighters. I got fat.
WHY I LEFT
1. The hours got way out of control. I knew there would be overtime, but it became far beyond what I could sustain. The startup went through a tight spot and we all pitched in to rebuild the site three times in less than a year. I've heard that the hours have leveled off and sometimes wonder if I shouldn't have stayed.
TL;DR: Hire the best, give them the tools and environment to get their job done. Make relocation a no-brainer and health insurance (in the US, at least) best-in-class. Make salary competitive, but don't get in a bidding war with other companies. Offer the best location you can, and above all, don't burn people out.
Nothing particularly tempting to me, but it was refreshing not seeing those startups that just offer group massage coupons and crap listed at least. That's more like spam than a benefit.
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My company specializes in upgrading the snack kitchens to the quality of Google, which we're uniquely qualified to do, as the #1 sourcing agent for them, Virgin America, Whole Foods and 10,000 other shops and groceries.
Quick word of advice: shell out the cash for a better web design. The text looks awful and blurry on Windows 7 -- you have a great idea marred by poor presentation.
Yeah, I was referring to your site. I was on Windows 7 at the time, and the text looked very blurry (like a low-quality jpg), but it looks sharp on my MacBook. If you can't replicate that on Windows, I'll send you a screenshot.
Steve, great to see you here! We started delivering back in the fall, and overnight, it's become an inspiring list of customers.
There's a minimum delivery per order to amortize the hidden costs of picking and packing, but we can match almost any budget by ordering for a few weeks at a time.
I'm 46 years old, yes probably a bit of a crumblie here, but don't get me wrong I love the energy that startup's have, I've been there (.com #1) and have done that, and would do it again.
But even when I was in my late 20's during .com bubble #1 (~1996-2002), I just wanted to be paid a decent wage for my skill set, I wasn't interested in "equity", "perks" and all that nonsense. I just wanted to bank money.
At the time I worked in Edinburgh, next to nice bars and decent food outlets. Yes there was partying and fun (but we also worked hard 12-15 hours a day), but it was on our time, and our dollar (or pound), and when we chose how to party and how much to spend doing that, it wasn't the startup's time and money or their idea of "fun", it was our hard earned cash, we spent it how we wanted (or not).
I hated that artificial...."startup fun" with pool tables, free drinks, meals etc. At lunchtime I (and my teams) wanted to go for a pint, eat a lunch that wasn't decided by the company, and you know, have free-will, and free conversation, outside of the constraints of the startup lunch room, where the founders were lurking all the time, listening in.
I didn't (and still don't) care about perks like laundry, or housecleaning, or in-house meals, healthcare, etc, just pay me properly and let me decide on these things. I'm (and was already back then) a grown up. I am able to make a sandwich for myself, I can wash my own clothes, and hoover and dust my own flat, when or if I wanted to.
I like, and have always liked, doing housework once a week (even in my early 20's!), I turn on BBC Radio 4 and listen to catchup radio (Any Questions, Westminster Hour, From Our Own Correspondents, etc) and it's peaceful, calming and helps me get away from work for a few hours, and I can reconnect with the real world outside of IT, and then return to the bubble hopefully informed about real things that matter to real people.
So, in a nutshell, pay your employees properly, let them decide what their perks are from their salary. All tha perks do is create a work camp in exchange for hard cash, pay your employees properly so they can decide when or if they want their laundry or house cleaning done, or where they wish to eat.
The more I hear about SV startup benefits, the more it creeps me out, so please, fuck off, stop becoming a developer nanny state at the expense of paying your employees a proper and fair wage. Also, to the young devs out there being sucked into this nonsense, seriously, start thinking for yourselves and stop enslaving your lives to these faux perks. Demand to be paid fairly and put cash in the bank, forget the foosball table and free drinks, it's a distraction.
ps: WRT to your employer providing, say, dual 24" monitors, a PC with i7 CPU and a decent chunk of RAM with SSD. It is not a perk, it's the tool you need for the job. The guy who is out on the road doing AA/RAC/Green Flag to fix your puncture for a fraction of the money that you earn is running around in at least $90-$100k worth of truck and tools. Why should your "startup" employer consider $2k - $3k worth of computer, which is your tool, a perk. You deserve no less than a wobble free desk, a chair that doesn't give you blisters on your backside after eight hours solid sitting and a computer that you don't want to throw out the window or brain your manager with.
Edit: bit hazy on my age back in .com #1, but the sentiments remain the same.
oddness... I would have thought the best thing a startup or small company (or any company) could do is treat it's employees like real actual individual people rather than them being a warm body filling that job title.
I've had experiences with a number of employers and also tried managing both groups of kids and devs so I'll share my thoughts (kids are easier).
Everyone has to eat. The easier you make this for people the better; apart from anything else hungry brains don't work properly so it's the company that looses out. A small kitchen including a microwave, toaster and fridge should be bare essentials. Make sure you have knives, cutlery and bowls/plates; potentially more if you have people working silly hours (eg enough facilities to knock up a plate of food). Don't baulk at supplying a minimum of tea/coffee/sugar/milk, nice water and potentially snacks too. If people are using the milk too quickly for whatever reason, it's really simple; buy more.
Previous places have done Pizza Friday (weekly, monthly or quarterly) which is always nice. It brings the entire office together which is great for getting to know colleagues and amazing things can happen when distant arms of the business sit down together over food.
Be easy with timekeeping and have some sympathy for the length of people's commute. This isn't possible with all roles, but my current contract doesn't have start/finish times or even an amount of hours in it -and it's amazingly liberating. Lots of our people have silly commutes (I'm driving for about an hour and a quarter) but I don't think anyone has a stressful one. Everyone (who's in) tries to get in before 10am (we never schedule meetings earlier) so people arrive between 7-10 and tend to leave some time around 4-8. If you get stuck in traffic and end up running late then it's annoying but it's not _stressful_.
With the right team, this seems to work extraordinarily well. People are happy and healthy and personally invested in doing a good job and take pride in it. When a deadline looms, something serious breaks or even if you've just got happily engrossed in something interesting then no one bats at eyelid at being in the office at >10pm. We have an on-call rota, but most people have set up personal alert systems so we get notified when we're not holding the phone -it's a matter of pride and respect both to our customers but also to each other. -tldr: bosses often expect people to work late but all is doom if you're not at your desk ten minutes before your official start time.
It's very distancing and disjointing to know you can't put anything down (from thoughts in a notebook, spare laptop charger, _my_ selection of random cds and usb sticks), basically make provision for future and be able to find it in weeks to come. I think physical carries across to the mental too; my brain finds it easier to resume from where it left jobs at home time when my general workspace is in the same state in the morning. At the very least people should be given a locker or a set of draws they control, especially if they're out of the office for periods of time. In technical roles I find hotdesking and hot-computering sucks more balls than imaginable; it's awful to the point where I actually used "sucks more balls" on HN. Oh, and if you have to refuse me local admin rights (and even if you don't), give people a couple of VPSs in a safe DMZ that they have root (and snapshot/rollback ability) on.
Open office culture can be fantastic (your mileage (or relevancy) may vary), but please don't think I mean stick everyone together in a big echoy room where you can't hear yourself think. If you're working on a laptop then really it shouldn't matter where you're doing it so make sure people get just as good wireless at their desk as in the office next door, the quiet room or outside next to the pond. Open culture should mean that no one is afraid to ask questions and that no one takes questioning personally and is willing to explain anything. If you're having a meeting or discussion (that isn't specifically private/privileged) then anyone is welcome to sit or wander in, listen and ask questions or offer explanations. Everyone gets to put forward their best ideas and then you pick them all apart with everyone else and hopefully all come to a consensus. Personally I love it when people see flaw in my 'obvious' ideas well before I've tried implementing them and then explain exactly why it sounds great but here's the key you missed -or simply, it's nice to know we've got each others backs. All this relies on good people and good leadership, but when dev, ops, networking and even sales and management are all on the same page then great things will happen.
Night/Shift workers: If you're a 24/7 operation then you've got people that work even odder times than the rest. Night and shift workers (I've seen 7-7 is relatively common and people end up out of sync with the rest of the business. Make sure they don't miss out when people get fed or when the office comes together -these are the people keeping stuff going when everyone else is asleep or enjoying weekends; imho it deserves more respect than is usually awarded to it.
- Close the company. Maybe your company just isn't open for two weeks in December or nobody has to work on Fridays during the summer. Nobody feels like they're falling behind and everybody gets a break from each other.
- REALLY flexible working arrangements. There was a story on HN about a small broadcaster that allowed an employee to go surfing whenever the waves were really great. Maybe somebody is really into Phish and gets a day off every time Phish plays a show within 500 miles or gets time off to go to March Madness if their favorite team gets in.
-Real choice in offices. Small companies often move several times in their early history. Look for opportunities to involve employees in office decision-making and let them arrange and decorate their own work areas.
-Real support of their outside lives. This one is two-fold: 1) make sure your employees have time to have lives outside of work, and 2) support those activities. Sponsor the your employee's kid's boy scout troop or let your employees use the office for gaming after hours. (Don't be creepy about it if they don't want company involvement, though.)