Wall Street Journal:
At companies hoping to be the next big thing and older ones trying to keep up, the role of office manager has transformed into a so-called workplace coordinator, who often leads a staff of aim-to-please specialists. Such employees function as concierges, responsible for everything from planning outings to memorizing favorite granola-bar flavors.
Chris Lavoie, a global event strategist at Adobe Systems Inc., is working on a planned whiskey tasting for employees next year. Talent programs manager Sue-Min Koh of Riot Games Inc., maker of the hit “League of Legends” videogame, hired a snow maker to pump 10 tons of snow on the company’s basketball court in Southern California for an employee celebration.
At online media provider Shutterstock Inc., Razia Ferdousi-Meyer says her responsibility “to know who likes the Kind bars, who likes the potato chips, who likes the coconut water” feels like her previous job as a guest-relations coordinator at a Ritz-Carlton hotel overlooking Manhattan’s Central Park.
Ahem. Let’s get with the program, Jim.
Compensate me fairly, show me respect in the workplace, and give me interesting work to do. I’ll fetch my own snacks and keep my out-of-office time to myself, thank you.
Agreed. But I also don’t mind a company that listens to requests for healthy snacks in the breakroom, sets up discounts at the local gym. Or, since I’m in LA, there’s nothing wrong with setting up a family day at say Disneyland where we get a nice fat discount on tickets every once in a while
But I also agree that some companies go way overboard with the fun stuff, the team building off hours stuff etc. sorry but my work is my work and my family is my family. I don’t want to feel like I’m in a cult that expects my time all the time
Exactly. Some of the more intrusive “perks” have been around for decades. I’ve heard stories of the old IBM, where one’s entire family was expected to attend regular weekend company events. It seemed an effective way to focus worker loyalty.
I’ve coded for exciting dot coms, and I’ve coded for boring banks and energy, all major corps. I can tell you for a fact that working someplace where they make the environment dynamic and exciting is much, much more enjoyable. I felt my time at the former was like working amongst friends and almost like family. I make twice as much now with the banks and energy, but I’d trade it for the dot com family in a heartbeat. While it certainly serves the interest of the employer as well, a place that invests in their workplace has people who want to be there as a result, myself included.
For me it has always depended upon what each company considers “dynamic and exciting,” and what time of your life I was currently in.
Office toys and candy are distractors, and less important than a management structure that recognizes how good work gets done.
If one is still young enough to not yet have lives—or family—outside the job, then it’s definitely in a dot-com’s interest to encourage you to think of the office as a dorm, and your coworkers as that family.
But some people move on, develop interests unrelated to work, become part of other social groups, and even start families of their own. That’s a point at which some employers’ expectations become less of a stimulus and more of a time-suck.