mathiverse wrote: ↑Thu Sep 24, 2020 12:39 pm
A downside of job perks is that they can result in you not learning the skills they cover for. See all the 20 somethings at big tech companies who still don't know how to cook because they had three square meals from the company since they started working (and from the school before that and from their parents before that).
At least one of the big tech companies has cooking classes on site. Although most people do actually seem to know how to cook (that said, I'm nowhere near the main "campus" - and "campus" tells you all you need to know about how people look at work).
EdithKeeler wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2013 11:23 pm
I am curious why so many feel like working at home is such a great perk. In my job, I think working at home is a big pain. I'd have to buy a new desktop computer and a second screen, and put up with this weird phone situation that makes everyone sound like Timmy in the Well, on a 3 second delay. People who work from home at my company are closely monitored to ensure they are actually working during the "core customer hours," so you can't effectively take your lunch at 2 in the afternoon and get your hair done or something.
Most importantly, I really like to partition home and work. Home is where I go to escape work.
I worked from home for 4 years with another company, full time. I missed the camaraderie of the office.
Partitioning is indeed important - you pretty much can't do sensible WFH without a separate, dedicated, work-only room. (But that can pay for itself in terms of no commute costs.) Equipment is trickier, but at least for full time WFH employers here have to cover equipment costs - and arguably electricity/heating costs (that one gets a bit hard to fight for though).
If you're being monitored like that - you need to find a different company.
I'm actually in the intermediate situation of: we're officially an in-office company, and the culture is in-office (although you can sneak in fairly regular days WFH if you do good work) - but the company decided to do WFH due to the virus situation. So we've lost all the office "perks", which is free food (I only ever had breakfast and lunch - no way am I going to stay in the office until 6pm or whenever dinner is served), gyms (don't use - can do my own exercise), games (really? do you really expect me to spend my free time at the office?). And even though I've lost those perks - and yes I now have to pay for breakfast and lunch - life is still much nicer not having to commute, not having to sit in a noisy open plan office where you can't concentrate (I don't really care from a work efficiency perspective - that's not my money going down the drain if I can't focus - but it's still psychologically tough being looked at and subjected to noise all day), and being able to take breaks as needed with zero guilt. Amusingly, I get better work done now.