Free massages and haircuts: What is (or was) ‘perks culture’ in the tech industry? - The Straits Times

[mnews]

NEW YORK - A deep-tissue massage. Housekeeping and laundry services. A haircut after lunch.

For most, that is a vacation at an all-inclusive resort. For many Silicon Valley workers, it was just a typical day at the office.

Over the past two decades, the tech industry became famous (or infamous) for its “perks culture”, a custom of providing employees with fanciful and luxurious amenities. Companies like Google and Meta tried outflanking one another in offering the most extravagant extras on Skittles-colored campuses as they competed for talent.

But widespread industry layoffs and an expensive pivot to building artificial intelligence led to a decline of perks culture. Tech companies have started scaling back on the goodies that differentiated their workplaces.

Salesforce, a software maker, in 2023 got rid of a ranch retreat for employees and nixed a monthly “well-being” day off for salespeople. Netflix has unofficially walked back its generous parental leave policy by guiding employees to take less time off, The Wall Street Journal reported on Dec 18. A Netflix spokesperson said that workers still have the flexibility to decide what is best for them and that its policy has not changed.

“Not so long ago, these perks were given a lot of emphasis,” said Mr David Lewin, a managing director of consulting firm BRG.

In autumn 2024, Meta fired dozens of employees for using meal-delivery vouchers to buy household goods, The Financial Times reported, signalling a curb to any sense of entitlement.

Google pioneered the modern tech perks culture during the dot-com boom, when in 1999 it hired a massage therapist for its 40-person start-up. Other tech upstarts also tried to break from the stodgy environments of industry stalwarts. Yahoo’s break rooms were outfitted with foosball tables in the ’90s. Its competitor, Excite.com, tried giving the employee softball team (and corporate image) an advantage by paying Barry Bonds to play with the team. Yahoo still won a matchup.

Google declined to comment, and Salesforce and Meta did not respond to requests for comment.

For Google employees, cuts have taken many forms. Off-site meetings in exotic locations are rarer, in favour of gatherings on campus, said a current and a former employee, who both spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of violating employer agreements. It has shuttered some microkitchens and begun offering fewer – and cheaper – snacks. Artisanal chocolate was swopped out for Twix, two current employees said.

“They seem small, but they’re representative of a larger cultural shift,” said Ms Suzie Reider, who joined Google in 2006 as YouTube’s chief marketing officer and left in April.

Professor Daniel Keum from the Columbia Business School said companies now have more leeway to cut jobs and other costs without repercussions. A hybrid-work arrangement, he argues, had been one of the top tech perks.

In September, Amazon declared that its corporate employees must return to the office five days a week starting in 2025. Amazon said it made the change to strengthen its culture and that it offered elder care options and pet sitters to employees.

The tech industry laid off more than 264,000 employees in 2023, 100,000 more than the year before, according to Layoffs.fyi, which serves as a reminder that tech workers may have lost their greatest perk of all: job security. NYTIMES


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Thanks for sharing!