Thanks for writing this out and distinguishing between workplace perks and personal spending.
This movement is always going to have a cultural clash between the social pressures of class status and the demandingness of charity as explained by philosophers like Parfit, Singer, and Unger. Lifestyle creep is pernicious, and EAs are excellent at rationalizing luxury spending. SBF’s billionaire lifestyle is an extreme example.
It seems that many EA orgs are modeling themselves after bay area tech companies which are peculiar elite workplaces with massive compensation packages that tend to wrap around and cater to the employee’s entire life. That is not the norm in other high productivity analogous workplaces, like in academia, labs, or non-profits.
I like the proposal of having employees pay for any perks they enjoy beyond what is strictly necessary for job function (computer, workspace, healthcare/retirement in the U.S.). Maybe occasional lunches and a coffee machine. If people think an expensive perk makes them more productive—great! Buy it yourself, and if it really does make you more productive, you’ll get rewarded for it at your performance review. It’s not hard to have people pay for on site perks.
Flagging that I think lunches every single day may be a great productivity investment for an org to make – the alternative is likely people leaving the office to find lunch, taking a significantly longer lunch break. The cost is only several dollars a day per employee, versus a benefit of perhaps several times that. Ditto for having good coffee and snacks available at all times.
Do people take lunch breaks solely or predominately because they need to eat, or is the need to take a break (and/or get out of the office for a bit) an important motivation as well? To the extent an employee’s lunch break is serving the latter purpose, providing quickly accessible in-house food could be partially displacing that need to a different occasion.
If people want to get outside and clear their head, presumably a short walk is generally better than waiting in line at a lunch spot? Regardless, my sense is making food available for those who want easily available food is good idea.
The alternatives also include people packing their own lunch, or having people pay for the lunches they buy on site (a small cafe for example). If the worksite is in a downtown area, there are excellent options within a few minutes walk, and people can pick exactly what food they want. If people are worried about the loss of a few minutes walking, or they are are far away from food, they can order food delivery.
Free work lunches are not a necessary perk, and people can easily pay for it if they think it’s worthwhile.
The exception I’d make is someplace like a K-12 school where they are already giving kids (free) lunch, and marginal costs are minimal to extend the benefit to adults. Or if the work is in the food industry.
Packing your own lunch takes time (similar to going out to lunch), and charging everyone for lunch each day would make the culture between employer/employee feel more transactional (which seems bad for morale).
I wonder how much a person’s view on charging for meals as morale-reducing is affected by exposure to perky vs non-perky cultures. For most US employees, the idea of your employer buying you lunch everyday is not even on their radar.
I don’t understand why a response like this would get so much bad Karma—its a reasonable response in good faith—I think we perhaps need to get better at separating disagree and bad karma voting.
Thanks for writing this out and distinguishing between workplace perks and personal spending.
This movement is always going to have a cultural clash between the social pressures of class status and the demandingness of charity as explained by philosophers like Parfit, Singer, and Unger. Lifestyle creep is pernicious, and EAs are excellent at rationalizing luxury spending. SBF’s billionaire lifestyle is an extreme example.
It seems that many EA orgs are modeling themselves after bay area tech companies which are peculiar elite workplaces with massive compensation packages that tend to wrap around and cater to the employee’s entire life. That is not the norm in other high productivity analogous workplaces, like in academia, labs, or non-profits.
I like the proposal of having employees pay for any perks they enjoy beyond what is strictly necessary for job function (computer, workspace, healthcare/retirement in the U.S.). Maybe occasional lunches and a coffee machine. If people think an expensive perk makes them more productive—great! Buy it yourself, and if it really does make you more productive, you’ll get rewarded for it at your performance review. It’s not hard to have people pay for on site perks.
Flagging that I think lunches every single day may be a great productivity investment for an org to make – the alternative is likely people leaving the office to find lunch, taking a significantly longer lunch break. The cost is only several dollars a day per employee, versus a benefit of perhaps several times that. Ditto for having good coffee and snacks available at all times.
For reference—the cost of meals in the Bay is $15 − 30 per meal per person. So something like $450-900/month per person (not including ops overhead)
For an individual meal or if buying ingredients in bulk and doing buffet style?
For catering.
Do people take lunch breaks solely or predominately because they need to eat, or is the need to take a break (and/or get out of the office for a bit) an important motivation as well? To the extent an employee’s lunch break is serving the latter purpose, providing quickly accessible in-house food could be partially displacing that need to a different occasion.
If people want to get outside and clear their head, presumably a short walk is generally better than waiting in line at a lunch spot? Regardless, my sense is making food available for those who want easily available food is good idea.
The alternatives also include people packing their own lunch, or having people pay for the lunches they buy on site (a small cafe for example). If the worksite is in a downtown area, there are excellent options within a few minutes walk, and people can pick exactly what food they want. If people are worried about the loss of a few minutes walking, or they are are far away from food, they can order food delivery. Free work lunches are not a necessary perk, and people can easily pay for it if they think it’s worthwhile. The exception I’d make is someplace like a K-12 school where they are already giving kids (free) lunch, and marginal costs are minimal to extend the benefit to adults. Or if the work is in the food industry.
Packing your own lunch takes time (similar to going out to lunch), and charging everyone for lunch each day would make the culture between employer/employee feel more transactional (which seems bad for morale).
I wonder how much a person’s view on charging for meals as morale-reducing is affected by exposure to perky vs non-perky cultures. For most US employees, the idea of your employer buying you lunch everyday is not even on their radar.
I don’t understand why a response like this would get so much bad Karma—its a reasonable response in good faith—I think we perhaps need to get better at separating disagree and bad karma voting.
Love this concise argument and reference to philosophy and other types of orgs. Nice one!