Do Lipton employees take coffee breaks?
Many of the things we do at Basecamp would be considered unusual at most companies: paying for employees' hobbies, allowing our team to work from anywhere, even footing the bill for fresh fruits and veggies in our staff members' homes.
Go work at the post office or Starbucks if you want balance in your life.
One of the best parts of working at 'O' is that people just love to send us stuff.
Eric Schmidt looks innocent enough, with his watercolor blue eyes and his tiny office full of toys and his Google campus stocked with volleyball courts and unlocked bikes and wheat-grass shots and cereal dispensers and Haribo Gummi Bears and heated toilet seats and herb gardens and parking lots with cords hanging to plug in electric cars.
One of the great things about Ben & Jerry's for me is that not only is it delicious, but I get it for free.
The Bay Area definitely knows the pain of competing for, and retaining, top talent. Offering interesting perks has become a necessity, not a nice-to-have.
Anheuser-Busch gives two free cases of beer to its employees at all of its parks, like Busch Gardens. That's a comforting thought the next time you're getting ready to get on the roller coaster!
I've built employee perks programs before and it's impossible to manually build a program that makes everyone happy. I'd make a deal with one gym then hear about another gym an employee would prefer. As a small business owner, I didn't have the time or leverage to negotiate and manage dozens of vendor relationships.
