There is a classic text [1] about exactly this, the free soda.
In short, when a company starts to pay attention to such petty details as the cost of soda, which must be a rounding error in the cost of running an office of a decent engineering company, it's a signal that the culture has changed. With that change, best engineering talent often leaves towards places where priorities are still aligned with lofty goals, not bean-counting.
(Disclaimer: of last 10 companies I've worked for, only two did not offer free soda, due to being 100% remote.)
I worked at the KFC/YUM! headquarters for 10 years. When I started, we had free soda in the lobby of the building. It was great for those late afternoon doldrums and a group of us would often walk down 5 flights of stairs to get a pick-me-up.
About 3 years before I left they removed the soda machines. My understanding was that it only cost about $30k / year and most of that was for cups & lids. We even had an executive that was willing to pay for it out of their budget. No go.
It turns out that the catering company that supplied food to the building didn't like losing out on the soda money. So they told KFC/YUM! to remove the free soda option, and they did. It really was the beginning of the end.
It's not so much that the soda was gone it was the thought of it. That free soda actually solved quite a few programming problems, or at least allowed us to solve them on our way downstairs. It also let us work harder/later than we normally would by giving us that afternoon journey. It's positive effect was much greater than it's financial cost.
Thanks for the explanation. It makes sense, but is entirely foreign to me (at least for soda). In my history of 20 years of software/DBA in the Australian mining/construction industry, most have had free coffee but none have had free soda. Though two did free Friday-afternoon beer and pizza.
My current place has free instant coffee (until it runs out) and everyone who wants to push for more than that is viewed with 'tall poppy syndrome'.
Yes, free basic cheap commodity drinks and snacks are bare minimum for a FAANG-class employer, and every other FAANG-class employer I'm familiar with goes well above and beyond that.
Even my first job out of college as a boilerroom MSP sysadmin earning $40k in manhattan gave us free soda (the only benefit lol)
I mean, even if you work as a mechanic at a body shop, there is often free coffee in an old pot in the break room, it's not that crazy.
But outside of that context, no of course I don't expect/care if my employer provides me with free soda. I don't even drink it.
It just seems weirdly cheapskate for a supposed FAANG-class employer.
I actually kind of agree as I am not even a soda drinker, but that was not the point. The point is the message it sends. And it really doesn't cost that much on a per-employee basis -- I would guess some employees might consume a six pack per day, valued at $5, and some others might consume nothing, valued at $0, so average that to maybe say $3 or $4. This is less than that employee already paid out of pocket to commute themselves to work. And having some basic food/drink taken care of centrally is more efficient in terms of saving time stocking up, going and buying more during break, etc.
But most of all, it's just the message. All the other "nice" employers do it, even some pretty "basic" employers do (not surprising, this is a very cheap perk, only a little more expensive than breakroom coffee), so if you don't, it you look like a cheapskate. Like what else are you cheaping out on?
I also don't drink much coffee, but would see it as a red flag if they cut costs by getting rid of the coffee in the break room, and that's a red flag that would hold even if I was working as a retail cashier (that's not an industry where free break room coffee is standard, but it's not unusual, so while I wouldn't care if a company never offered it, if I was a cashier at a company that had it, and then they took it away, the message would be obvious -- we are preparing to cut costs at the expense of your work life, our company is no longer growing, jump ship if you can)
Sure, you could cap the expense per-employee so its a non-issue. I was thinking about benefits in general that nobody cares about or uses. But even if they use it, snacks/food can get expensive real quick.
