It cannot be to feed their starving employees. If that was the case they would just stop catering and pay their employees more. They're certainly not feeding homeless people in their office.
This food is not a necessity, most certainly not the snacks. These are creature comforts, pieces of corporate flair for recruiters to lure recruits. They're lotuses, to help you feel more comfortable in a place that is not innately comfortable.
Starting your own company is hard and you need industry experience first. Here, the work-life balance is good, the pay is good, the culture is good. What more could you ask for? Plus, have you tried the queijo?
- employees stay on site and so they take shorter lunch breaks
- they are likely to eat with other employees and talk shop
- it does help recruit and keep good employees. If the firm you are thinking of moving to doesn't provide lunch, that's one more friction point: new commute, possibly new schedule, now you have to figure out what you will do for lunch after you have grown accustomed to such an easy solution.
Note how that last point seems to resonate closely with the author's point since his Ithaca is apparently about leaving your job and starting a startup... or something? It's not clear what his Ithaca is.
His skipping lunch is an exercise in asceticism that I think he is hoping will serve some higher purpose later. But at the end of the day I think he's just not satisfied where he is and would rather work somewhere else. Other than "moving to San Francisco" he doesn't mention any job changes. So I think that's his problem. And if you're not happy somewhere, free lunch is not going to stop you from leaving.
What is the purpose of this free food?
It cannot be to feed their starving employees. If that was the case they would just stop catering and pay their employees more. They're certainly not feeding homeless people in their office.
This food is not a necessity, most certainly not the snacks. These are creature comforts, pieces of corporate flair for recruiters to lure recruits. They're lotuses, to help you feel more comfortable in a place that is not innately comfortable.
Starting your own company is hard and you need industry experience first. Here, the work-life balance is good, the pay is good, the culture is good. What more could you ask for? Plus, have you tried the queijo?