News Intel resumes free coffee and tea for its employees — $100-million-per-year program partly reinstated to boost employee morale

[Admin]

Intel is reinstating free coffee and tea for its employees months after it suspended the beverage benefit to save on costs.

Intel resumes free coffee and tea for its employees — $100-million-per-year program partly reinstated to boost employee morale : Read more

 

[Li Ken-un]

Having had work days with coffee and work days with no coffee/tea… easy to understand the drain to worker productivity (and thus, company profits) of the latter.

 

[ekio]

100 millions per year for coffee tea ????

Now I understand why they’re broke.

Even for 100k employees, that’s 1000 per employee per year. If they have their own baristas, they can make high quality coffee and tea much for less than a dollar per cup, so either their employee drink 40 cups a day, or they order overpriced coffees from starbucks via uber eats each time.

 

[Ogotai]

and what if you dont drink tea or coffee ??? 🤣🤣🤣🤣

 

[DBCMX]

100 millions per year for coffee tea ????

Now I understand why they’re broke.

Even for 100k employees, that’s 1000 per employee per year. If they have their own baristas, they can make high quality coffee and tea much for less than a dollar per cup, so either their employee drink 40 cups a day, or they order overpriced coffees from starbucks via uber eats each time.

Or they hire their buddies company that overcharges them a <Mod Edit> lot.

 

[TechieTwo]

I wonder if they get a free cup of coffee with their pink slip?

 

[Giroro]

100 millions per year for coffee tea ????

No, $100 Million for the old food benefit, which was was more than just coffee.

And apparently Intel realized they were still being gouged, which is part of why they shut it down.

 

[DS426]

This is hilarious. $100M a year in employee benefits? I feel like the problem isn't even that watercoolers and coffee is available for free but employees are getting way too much of this, lol, i.e. lacking some modesty.

I'm a believer in small employee perks, but this is just a reflection of Intel's crazy overhead that they should have began addressing a few years ago instead of waiting and having to get this aggressive.

What would a $100M/yr equally divided per person raise look like??

 

[hotaru251]

Wanna know what would boost morale?

If gelsinger took a pay cut.

share in the pain that those on bottom of totem pole suffer when they dont know if/when they will lose their jobs due to stuff outside their control.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

Granted it was a way smaller Fortune 500 company but we had free whatever we wanted drinks and some small snacks.

And despite being able to request the fridges be stocked with whatever, there was always that one pig that pilfered one particular item, as @DS426 pointed out, ie lacking some medesty.

So with my all access IT pass I'd pilfer (within reason 1 or 2 said drinks) from the executive floor that was always more than stocked and stick in the computer cart.

My personal story aside, it is a morale booster for sure and absolutely demotivating when a perk like that goes away.

 

[why_wolf]

At its peak in 2022 Intel had around 131,900 employees. So 100 mil / 131k = $758.15 per employee

758.15 / 260 work days a year = $2.92 per person per work day.

From that perspective it's a very reasonable amount.

However I think we all know that not all 131k employees actually got access to this free food/drink perk. So its likely the $ per employee was much, much higher.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

Wanna know what would boost morale?

If gelsinger took a pay cut.

share in the pain that those on bottom of totem pole suffer when they dont know if/when they will lose their jobs due to stuff outside their control.

That's unfortunately the corporate world. The people up top making decisions they don't understand that benefits the company financially and them by extension most, not the workers. That will only get worse and has been.

(Maybe youre old enough) Remember when employees were valued, taken care of and had advancement opportunities? Those days are long gone. We might as well be wearing numbered jackets like in Squid Game

 

[why_wolf]

Granted it was a way smaller Fortune 500 company but we had free whatever we wanted drinks and some small snacks.

And despite being able to request the fridges be stocked with whatever, there was always that one pig that pilfered one particular item, as @DS426 pointed out, ie lacking some medesty.

So with my all access IT pass I'd pilfer (within reason 1 or 2 said drinks) from the executive floor that was always more than stocked and stick in the computer cart.

My personal story aside, it is a morale booster for sure and absolutely demotivating when a perk like that goes away.

Yes the one greedy a**hole who ruins it for everyone else.

At my job we stock our own vending machines but charge essentially a break even price. Its an employee convenience, not a revenue center. A can pop still costs $.50 under my watch.

 

[joeer77]

They used to get free soda too. No mention of it here?

 

[bit_user]

This is hilarious. $100M a year in employee benefits? I feel like the problem isn't even that watercoolers and coffee is available for free but employees are getting way too much of this, lol, i.e. lacking some modesty.

It's only about $4 per employee per workday. For a tech company, that's not a lot. Some companies provide free snacks, energy drinks, even free lunches, and free catered dinners for those working late. Google is pretty famous for this, and I think the food & chefs were also top notch.

However, I'm pretty sure most of Intel's employees are manufacturing-related, and those would indeed be usual benefits for factory workers. So, either the free food benefits are mainly for the office workers, or it's pretty standard stuff and more broadly-based.

My employer gives us free tea & coffee and subsidizes our on-site cafeteria. This helps keeps employees from leaving the office, during the day, which would be a drain on productivity equal to much more than what the company spends on these things.

What would a $100M/yr equally divided per person raise look like??

$1k. For tech workers, especially senior ones, the convenience of having on-site snacks and beverages might be worth more to them than an extra $1k (pre-tax).

 

[bit_user]

At my job we stock our own vending machines but charge essentially a break even price. Its an employee convenience, not a revenue center. A can pop still costs $.50 under my watch.

At the last startup I worked at, I was the soda fridge person. The CEO was a big coffee drinker, so that was free, but it was pot-brewed coffee and not the pricey k-cups or similar.

The way I ran the soda fridge was to leave a notepad next to it. You'd write down your name and add a tick for each can. I asked people to restock it with whatever they drank the most of, which would cancel out the equivalent number of credits. I would periodically stock up whenever we ran low, and try to settle up with people every couple months. I probably lost a small amount of money on it, but only something trivial.

 

[hotaru251]

That's unfortunately the corporate world. The people up top making decisions they don't understand that benefits the company financially and them by extension most, not the workers. That will only get worse and has been.

(Maybe youre old enough) Remember when employees were valued, taken care of and had advancement opportunities? Those days are long gone. We might as well be wearing numbered jackets like in Squid Game

Nintendo did it right. Wii U flopped and instead of blaming bottom CEO cut his pay so it owuldnt harm the lower workers.

 

[bit_user]

Nintendo did it right. Wii U flopped and instead of blaming bottom CEO cut his pay so it owuldnt harm the lower workers.

Japanese CEOs get much lower compensation than at US-based companies, which makes me a little skeptical his paycut was more than symbolic.

In the US, I think the CEO nominates at least some of the board members, which creates a conflict of interest when it comes time for them to take votes on CEO compensation. This is probably one of the main reasons they make so much more than in most other countries.

 

[Darkbreeze]

It's great that they get a few perks again, however, I cannot for the life of me figure out how or why this ought to warrant an article from a site that's supposed to be a leader in the online tech editorial industry.

 

[why_wolf]

Japanese CEOs get much lower compensation than at US-based companies, which makes me a little skeptical his paycut was more than symbolic.

In the US, I think the CEO nominates at least some of the board members, which creates a conflict of interest when it comes time for them to take votes on CEO compensation. This is probably one of the main reasons they make so much more than in most other countries.

CEO and board member pay is a self dealing situation. The worst example is the Tesla board which is full of Musk's actual family and friends. Which is why his bonus package is so outrageous.

Board members are supposed to be independent and represent the will of the shareholders. But more often than not they have personal connections to each other outside of the company. Its how so many bad executives fail upwards.

 

[GoofyOne]

Free coffee and snacks for the win.

I remember working at a factory, they had a canteen where all the employees went for morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner etc. (24hr factory). They had cooks providing hot food as well as sandwiches and snacks. It wasn't free but was low cost.

Good job Intel.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

CEO and board member pay is a self dealing situation. The worst example is the Tesla board which is full of Musk's actual family and friends. Which is why his bonus package is so outrageous.

Board members are supposed to be independent and represent the will of the shareholders. But more often than not they have personal connections to each other outside of the company. Its how so many bad executives fail upwards.

Been there. Why I left my last job. Unqualified friends and family, often not even being employed there prior would get the higher paying and not often open positions.
I had the upper hand though because I saw the day coming and didn't document anything prior to or during the system transition and my ticket numbers were triple that of my "coworker"
When they wanted to suddenly stick to policy and prevent me from leaving quickly by not paying out vacation I unloaded basically saying everything you said above and told them, we can leave on good terms or bad ones. I can just quit tomorrow if you won't pay out my vacation or I'll give you two weeks of training the HD to pick up what I was doing (not qualified but also not my problem) and pay the vacation out and we leave on good terms.

My boss who was one of those family backscratchers gave me the most work acceptable insult to the proposal while her boss not on the take spoke over her and said deal. Ohh the look on her face lmao.

But that's the problem when you have conflicts of interest especially at the board level, they make decisions based on what maintains favor vs those few that aren't and speak against it. They outed the CISO because he would not agree to change a policy that was dangerous for the business because he wasn't the department that wanted the change who were the money makers. So the board had their way, money over network security. And maybe 1-2 years as things started to crumble after he and I were gone they got ransomwared with nobody qualified to deal with it.


This world is so messed up. Can the movie "Don't Look Up" just be a documentary sent to us from the future? I'd welcome I giant meteor resetting the natural course of things.

 

[bit_user]

CEO and board member pay is a self dealing situation. The worst example is the Tesla board which is full of Musk's actual family and friends. Which is why his bonus package is so outrageous.

Well, after some shareholders sued over the matter, it was put to a shareholder vote. IIRC, something like 57% voted to award him that ridiculous stock package, which I'm sure is far and away the most generous in history, for any publicly-traded company. I didn't agree that retaining him is worth that much to the company, but I guess if he can now directly manipulate the levers of the federal government to benefit Tesla and hurt his competitors, then maybe?

Board members are supposed to be independent and represent the will of the shareholders. But more often than not they have personal connections to each other outside of the company.

Yeah, we desperately need corporate governance reform, but I'm not optimistic about the prospects of it happening.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yes, yes. We've all been there or something similar. Why is it a story here though? Makes absolutely zero sense. Honestly, do people coming to tech sites ACTUALLY CARE about the amenities provided to people who work at Intel? Because, if so, I would suggest that maybe a different site dedicated to that sort of thing might be in order. But I'm very doubtful that more than three or four people who don't work for Intel or a subsidiary, care. Just sayin'.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, yes. We've all been there or something similar. Why is it a story here though? Makes absolutely zero sense. Honestly, do people coming to tech sites ACTUALLY CARE about the amenities provided to people who work at Intel? Because, if so, I would suggest that maybe a different site dedicated to that sort of thing might be in order. But I'm very doubtful that more than three or four people who don't work for Intel or a subsidiary, care. Just sayin'.

Naaa...

More like - Lets give a false FailPoint to complain about BigCorp.