Tech office shuts down its free cocktail bar for employees, CEO says “The office is dead” — An experiment in 2020s, incentivizing the workplace as a dot-com-era adult playground where work also occ...

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 261 points –
Downtown Tech Office Shuts Down Its Free Cocktail Bar For Employees, CEO Says 'The Office Is Dead'
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Tech office shuts down its free cocktail bar for employees, CEO says “The office is dead” — An experiment in 2020s, incentivizing the workplace as a dot-com-era adult playground where work also occ...::An experiment in 2020s incentivizing the workplace as a dot-com-era adult playground where work also occurs has ended with a whimper in downtown SF. Tech company Expensify is shutting down its bar, which it opened earlier this year, after six months.

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Imagine thinking I'd like to travel to work 2-3 hours a day for a fucking cocktail.

I mean depending on if there was a drink limit or it's just open bar I'd head in for Friday's at least for unlimited drinks, but don't expect too much out of me after lunch

Tech workers are well paid, they can afford their own cocktails.

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Let's turn offices into apartments and all work from home.

If we make these huge towers, we can have recreation, work and living all under one roof!

Mixed use zone urbanism?, well that sounds a lot like communism to me!

/s

"High Rise" was a good book/film, is all I'm saying :)

Easier said than done. They commonly don't have adequate plumbing.

"But it's haaaaaard" - the response to every minor challenge in America since landing on the fucking Moon

Pretty sure at this point it'd be more of a "But I don't wanna spend an extra penny on this prooooojeeeeeect" kinda deal. I know people who would definitely do it, but the bigger problem is getting people in power to actually pay to have it done.

Though I do agree there are so many people here in America who would complain that it's too hard.

I think the current problem is more "it's risky and hasn't been tested much"

And yes, it's obviously still hard.

Good thing they have suspended ceilings so it's easier to install anything needed from below then!

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So people would get champagne after drinking cocktails all day and then hop into their car and drive home? Is it the 50s again or something?

It's SF, most of them probably take public transportation or Uber

Drive home? Tech job?

Most people who work for tech will never drive to or from work in their life. (I legit wish I had the opportunity where it made sense vs sitting in an hour of traffic)

No true anymore. Many tech jobs are returning to office, including my own. Slowly went from 1 to 2 to now 3 days a week. Sucks

Yes but most tech jobs are in cities where commuting by vehicle is not preferable. Maybe some Seattle or Bellevue offices break the norm but the majority are in NYC Manhattan or some part of San Fran or Palo Alto. Driving in those are a bit nuts.

Example I'm in NYC and even pre pandemic it was way faster for me to commute by train than car.

Funny because all the people I know who work in tech have to go to the office a couple of times a week 🤷

Public transport exists. Even for some (lucky) USians.

Yeah but even pre pandemic most the tech jobs were in cities where car was not the preferable commute option.

I can get into work in 45 minutes by train. If I drive in it'll take me an hour and 20 or so during rush hour.

This was a cool this 20 years ago. The OGs don't care anymore because we want to spend our free time doing other things, not spending extra time at the office. Your booze and foos tables aren't the draw you think they are.

Speak for yourself. Lol I would partake in this activity but (maybe you're half right) on a hybrid basis.

This post is a disaster.

It says "An experiment in 2020s incentivizing the workplace as a dot-com-era adult playground where work also" three times.

I get that it's embedded or whatever, but reading this post was like having a stroke.

This bot always does this. It takes the opening blurb and copy pastes it, without realizing that the crawler returns the blurb as part of the blurb, and that Lemmy also displays a preview of the first few lines which is, you guessed it, the blurb.

It’s so insane to think of this being an office perk. Just there for you to use… My office has a kitchen…

This is one of the more baller ones for sure.

I work for a rapidly growing startup in a different industry and the most we have currently is a beer vending machine at one site that was inherited and P-Cards with the biggest limits I’ve ever seen. The only requirement with those is, “please don’t screw me.”

What are P-Cards?

They are company "Purchase" cards. They are often used for purchases for the office like supplies or other one off perks (i.e. food). In some companies they are separate from travel cards which can only be used for travel.

That p-card policy is a financial fraud disaster waiting to happen. It's only a matter of when, not if.

And I've got an ice maker and a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label. Who needs the expense and time of a commute when their perk is right downstairs for me?

I'm not enough of an alcoholic to be enticed by free alcohol.

Ok, can you remind me why people should work from the office? At this point a company requesting I work from the office is just a huge red flag

I miss the unofficial office pinball tournaments. The CEO, a guy from QA, a sr. support person, and I traded high scores on Deadpool pinball for the better part of a year.

You know, I got a full cocktail bar at home as well

Mine keeps shrinking though, it's really annoying!

This one is a bit frivolous, but generally all of these things share a common tone, "We're performatively punishing labor to send a message. We know Amazon/Starbucks unionized and the auto workers/writers/actors/health care workers went on strike, but you need to shut up and do more work until I no longer feel threatened like you might do the same"

Again, this is a more frivolous example, but tech workers need to unionize. The only downside I can identify about remote work is that the company owns the "town square" or "lunch room" - don't really have opportunities for the kind of quiet conversations where these things typically build momentum when they are indexing and have keyword alerts on your "private messages" with colleagues.

Went into my office on Friday to pick up a shipment, middle of the day, there were 5 people there. Everyone else working from home.