I can't tell if this is satire or not. Office "cultures" that involve inane things like alcoholic drinks, free boutique meals, or dog-friendliness have absolutely nothing to do with getting work done. They are things you have to roll your eyes about and put up with. You can't openly explain how unproductive it is, or you'll be labeled as "not a good culture fit" even if you're great at your job and get along with everyone.

So instead, you have to let your frustrations silently brew under the surface, always wishing your company cared more about employees and gave them adequately quiet and private space to get work done, or gave everyone a raise instead of spending the money on video games, gourmet coffee, etc.

Many engineers, especially experienced ones, are fully aware that all of these fringe "culture benefits" are just utter bullshit, and that they exist to try to hoodwink younger engineers into accepting worthless equity, criminally insane working environments, and exasperating, oppressive work culture that doesn't really permit good work life balance.

They aren't fooled or enticed by them. They simply have to put up with them because it's what everyone is doing. And they have to act like yes-men when people ask if you like the new foosball table or that killer company party. And HR thinks it's really working.

Your employees can't really afford recreation or adequate living space or decent meals based on what they are paid, so instead bring the recreation to work, bring the meals to work, and just have people stay at work all the time.

We're aware of this, and unfortunately until people start telling shitty companies 'no' and insisting on being treated better (or software unionizes) it's not going to improve, and everyone's going to continue having insane shitty working conditions, but paper over it with all smiles about how cool Whisky Thursday is or whatever other bullshit none of us actually care about at all.

You don't appreciate office cultures involving alcohol or dog-friendliness, and you roll your eyes and put up with them. Some people do value those things, and they also value having coworkers who value those things, which isn't a surprise because most humans value community (though of course different humans have different ideas about what constitutes community). So when you flat-out lie to your coworkers about your feelings, you're undermining the social fabric, for your pecuniary gain (e.g. because you don't want to be correctly labelled a "bad culture fit", because you like the salary). That deceit is straight-up unethical.

It's also disrespectful to assume that your coworkers don't know what's actually valuable to them. Some people prefer an extra $5k in salary, some people prefer $4k of free meals. Or $6k of free meals that costs the company $3k because of scale. Or whatever. Some people are investing in their long-term growth by deeply immersing themselves in their careers (and perhaps working non-long-term-sustainable hours), and if the company provide some cheap bennies that make that easier to do, so much the better. Yes, the company profits, and no the employee isn't maximizing short-term earnings, but maybe it's still win-win.

If employees really can't afford recreating or adequate living space, then of course that's a problem. I'm skeptical that's a real problem in software, though. And if that problem does exist, btw, then I think the best solution is those employees going and finding careers/lifestyles that fit better.

I want to add that I found this comment particularly startling because most of the comments I most agreed with on this page were also by you, p4wnc6.

> You don't appreciate office cultures involving alcohol or dog-friendliness, and you roll your eyes and put up with them.

I think the OP is complaining about this "culture" being used as a weapon to trick, mislead, and bully people.

> So when you flat-out lie to your coworkers about your feelings, you're undermining the social fabric, for your pecuniary gain

Any company that forces you to lie about your personal non-work related opinions in order to keep your job is incredibly toxic.

> It's also disrespectful to assume that your coworkers don't know what's actually valuable to them.

The problem is non-monetary benefits are misleadingly marketed to prospective employees and are thus very hard to evaluate.

For example I've worked at companies that provide free dinner to employees. In reality if you took advantage of these "free" dinners you were expected to work late.

Likewise I've worked at a couple of places that advertise unlimited vacation days. At all of my previous jobs in tech I have had 4-5 weeks vacation per year. So naturally I'm assuming that unlimited is at least as good. In other words taking 5 weeks off over the year shouldn't be a problem at all. Bzzzzt! Wrong.

Likewise many companies say they offer great career progression and training and very few deliver.

It is false advertising. Plain and simple.

Actual free dinner is easily worth $5k/year to me. The ability to take extra vacation days here and there when I feel I need a break is easily worth $10k/year to me. A serious focus on career progression and a focus on training is worth another $10k/year to me.

Naive sheepmullet used to get tricked into giving up $15k in salary thinking he was going to get $25k in benefits (that only cost the company $5k) and everybody would win.

Jaded sheepmullet realises there is a huge asterisk next to most of these benefits and refuses to compromise on salary unless the benefits are written into his contract.

For example I'd love to take a lower salary for a job that offered serious training and skills development. Lets write into my contract that you will provide me 20 days off work for self-study + 100 hours of 1 on 1 mentoring by my manager + a conference budget + a 10% pay increase at the end of each year.

I like good food, so I wouldn't mind the free boutique meals, but I'm not willing to sacrifice salary for them. Plus, I'm pretty picky so if they get their boutique meals from some over-hyped restaurant that doesn't have anything on the menu that I want (like some weird vegan place), then suddenly that benefit is completely worthless to me.

Alcoholic drinks at work sounds like a recipe for disaster, and a good way to get sexual harassment lawsuits on your hands.

And dogs at work sounds like a horrible idea. The last thing I want to deal with at work is dog barking and dog smells. What a pain in the ass. And what about employees who are allergic to dogs?

As for people telling shitty companies 'no', what really happens IMO is that people leave. Just look at the turnover rates in software. I left a job once mainly because of the lousy work environment; I can't be the only one.

No. That's not what office 'culture' is, that's 'employee perks'.

Employee perks may be a part of the culture, as they famously are in Google. But there are more considerations. E.g. the architecture, the history (important), the campus, (most importantly imo) the staff, knowledge networks, energy, etc. It's hard to imagine what a company like Microsoft would be like without Redmond, or Apple without Cupertino, etc. They're just bricks and mortar, but they've grown to define companies. The culture that surrounds HQs are attractive for potential employees and current employees. Many of these companies effectively have cult-like status, and their office spaces are central to this.

"Office "cultures" that involve inane things like alcoholic drinks, free boutique meals, or dog-friendliness have absolutely nothing to do with getting work done."

Lots of things have nothing to do with getting work done. It's because we're not robots; we're people.

Seriously, if you're that upset with the "fringe benefits", then DON'T WORK THERE. There are lots of places to work that don't have any of these.

Benefits are fine and you should choose where to work partly because you like the benefits.

But when benefits become venerated to the status of "part of the culture" and good employees are labeled as "not a team player" if they don't visibly celebrate the benefits, then it's a problem.

I'm saying the problem is that these benefits are inane when they are marketed as part of the culture and not merely benefits.

Sitting in an open office layout gives me a sense of disloyalty to my employer because it's just plain disrespectful to not see daylight the whole day and sit in a noisy and dull environment.

I have worked with a purely remote company for a few years and I would have stayed with them forever if the business had actually worked out. Interestingly I collaborated and talked to my remote colleagues much more than I do now in the open office.

Obviously, to each his own. Some people like the office and some people like remote.

I would go farther saying being in person is by its very nature, old school. It predates technology. The more real things become via remote, the less it makes any sense at all to argue the contrary.

In my experience, the "open layout" is more likely to be near windows than the offices are.

I can't say I much care. "Loyalty" should not even come into the conversation when talking about work.

Well I can tell you that it must, from the organisation's point of view. Hiring/training/maintaining a work-force isn't free, and the tacit knowledge the employees gain has value, so a high churn rate is bad. Again, from an organisation's point of view.