The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas Are No Longer Free (2009)

Back in the original dot-com bubble, I worked at a place that had the most amazing coffee machine I've ever seen. It was the size of a Coke machine and made ten thousand varieties of boutique coffee, most of which I'd never even heard of, all made to your specifications. It was incredible. Then one day a guy came in with a hand cart, loaded the coffee machine on it, and rolled it away. A week later the layoffs started…

I never expected employers to provide snacks and beverages but it is demoralizing when executives take away such perks but continue to fly first-class for the same cost as buying a month of snacks for everyone.

My favorite story of "unintended consequences" of belt-tightening like this was when I worked at a startup about a dozen years ago. We did well for a few years, but it was clear to people we were reaching a point of market saturation. Nevertheless, the CEO kept agreeing to doubling of sales revenue year after year. Well, no surprise, the last year before big layoffs, we were way off on sales goals. The CEO announces we have to "put our…

As an accountant, I feel like employees are severely underpaid in highly-skilled markets (like tech, not accounting), and I think that companies don't actually capture the true cost of a single full time employee. Most see a salary, benefits, fringe costs (like hiring HR and finance teams), lunches, etc. Some of the better firms add in the cost of hiring employees with intangibles, like communication, poise, and professionalism, but the truly great see the largest potential cost - that they…