Fringe Benefits

This week I'm consulting at a start up in Santa Clara. Engineers work late, so they cater dinner every night. Besides that there are also free bagels and donuts on Friday morning. Free soda and water (bubbled and no bubble). If you don't feel like dealing with the bottles, there is a regular water dispenser as well, for hot and cold bottled water -- unlike some more environmentally friendly big companies that only provide filtered water, which also happens to be cheaper. The grounds in this business park is very very nice, and the buildings are small since most companies are very small, so you get to park the car right outside the entrance. There is no big garage that's a mile from your office. I don't drink coffee, but since some of my friends do, I learned that Peet's is much superior to Starbucks. Netflix has Peets, and a small competitor of BEA called Tibco in Palo Alto. Netflix has free soda and bottled water, but for hot tea you have to settle with the filtered stuff. They have free hot and cold cereals as well, pump up the sugar. Free popcorn in the first floor breakroom, but you have to make it yourself in the big machine. Cisco has or had free popcorn in individual bags, along with free soda and bottled water. Not to mention the nice (not free) day care facility on site and free gym. Cisco has been sponsoring the Vasona Christmas light show for the past couple of years and they let Cisco badge holders (employees and contractors) go in for free one weekend in the early December. Octel used to have free popcorns as well, and had someone make them in the afternoon in the big machine. They also had a free subscription of Mercury News for each floor, but Lucent cancelled the subscription for second and third floor in my building to cut cost. They did let us keep our Friday morning bagels and donuts. Veritas Mountain View campus has espresso machines in the break room. Just a fraction of the super nice campus.