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

[Darkbreeze]

Redacted.

 

[Co BIY]

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.

Musk's past bonuses were recently validated by a vote of the shareholders directly. I don't think Musk can be the worst example when he has made his shareholders crazy amounts of money. His outrageously high pay is arguably well worth it.

Independence of boards is an important part of corporate governance.

 

[why_wolf]

Musk's past bonuses were recently validated by a vote of the shareholders directly. I don't think Musk can be the worst example when he has made his shareholders crazy amounts of money. His outrageously high pay is arguably well worth it.

Independence of boards is an important part of corporate governance.

Its a perfect example. The lawsuit about it proved the board didn't actually consider any metrics or other options. They just rubber stamped whatever Musk demanded without a 2nd thought. And it wasn't the first time either. Everyone always forgets that Musk used Tesla money to bail out his (and family) personal investment in the bankrupt SolarCity. Which Telsa then purchased at full value. Turning his worthless SolarCity shares into more Tesla shares.

The cultist behavior of the other stockholders is irrelevant.

 

[TheHerald]

Free coffee? That will certainly fix the gaming performance of core ultra, we just have to wait for the caffeine to kick in.

 

[bit_user]

I don't think Musk can be the worst example when he has made his shareholders crazy amounts of money. His outrageously high pay is arguably well worth it.

That's a backwards way of looking at it. Companies should pay their employees for retention and to incentivize them, not such extraordinary amounts as a sort of "thank you". The lawsuit alleged that the compensation package violated this basic logic. Well, I hope the shareholders get what they deserve.

It also feeds into the whole cult of personality thing. Elon isn't the one who did all of the work to design and build Tesla's products. I'm not saying he didn't deserve to be well-compensated, but that package is completely out of proportion to his actual contributions.

Independence of boards is an important part of corporate governance.

Which is why it'd be nice if actually existed.

 

[newtechldtech]

meh... they should give them 50% discount on intel consumer products. I worked in many places where they offered employees factory product for near cost value .

 

[USAFRet]

meh... they should give them 50% discount on intel consumer products. I worked in many places where they offered employees factory product for near cost value .

https://jobs.intel.com/en/benefits

 

[YSCCC]

Er... as an employee of some other companies, this is absolutely a big morale upping policy 😏

if they need to do so to boost morale, I bet it won't actually affect it..

 

[ohark]

As someone else has already done the math - a few dollars per day per employee is in no way an extravagant food benefit, especially since it was more than just drinks.

This gets no less true when you consider that the majority of these employees - probably 75% of them - will be in a manufacturing environment where, in many places in the world, it is fully the norm for there to be a free or heavily subsidized on site cafeteria.

And sure they can probably feed a factory worker in Thailand two full meals for the same cost as an engineer in Seattle having two cups of coffee and a banana, so a global average isn't a terrible way to do it.

 

[bit_user]

meh... they should give them 50% discount on intel consumer products. I worked in many places where they offered employees factory product for near cost value .

Several years ago, an AMD employee explained to me how their employee discount worked. They would actually buy AMD products through normal retailers and then submit the receipt to their company's accounting department, which would reimburse them for I think like 20% of the total purchase price of the AMD products.

20% doesn't seem terribly generous, but then the item being discussed was graphics cards, which have lots of other components and 3rd party markups. So, 20% probably did cover at least the profit AMD makes on the GPU chip, itself. I didn't ask if there was a different discount for CPUs. Also, AMD was still carrying a lot of debt, at the time.

 

[Ferlucio]

Are you seriously telling me spreading those 100 million a year by just increasing employee salary won't boost morale higher?
I call BS, most of that money probably ends in some higher up pocket.

 

[bit_user]

Are you seriously telling me spreading those 100 million a year by just increasing employee salary won't boost morale higher?

One problem could be that they might not have installed coffee vending machines to replace the free coffee machines, in which case you'd have employees wasting lots of time by traveling much farther to get tea and coffee. If you have someone that makes $100k/year and works 2000 hours, the company is paying them $50/hour + benefits. Leaving benefits aside, taking 20 minutes per day longer coffee breaks should cost $16.67, which is more than 4 times what this benefit cost Intel.

So, for them to spend an extra 20 minutes getting some caffeinated beverage to help them stay productive throughout the workday leaves the company with less productivity for the amount they're already paying people. Not to mention that drowsy employees are slower and make more mistakes, in the event they don't have time to make as many coffee runs.

Why do you think free coffee is such a popular benefit? The company gets a much bigger return on that expenditure than if they pay someone just 1% more.

Fun fact: one purported benefit for caffeine-producing plants is that it makes bees and other pollinators more productive.

 

[Steve Nord_]

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

So they ported Jeoson Hell to the US but not Ghost and AG1 on tap? Odd.

 

[Steve Nord_]

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.

Neat to think of $$10B as coffee gouging territory (over 120k ppl, annually) but it's still unclear why Gelsinger is disheartened etc. Maybe sticking AVX512 back into consumer chips hit a roadblock or his daily affirmations for all the SKUs stopped being fun.

 

[Li Ken-un]

ported Jeoson Hell to the US

…and the complementary Joseon Escape (탈조선). I’d love to know where the 🎵 chairs are in a few years.

 

[Co BIY]

That's a backwards way of looking at it. Companies should pay their employees for retention and to incentivize them, not such extraordinary amounts as a sort of "thank you". The lawsuit alleged that the compensation package violated this basic logic. Well, I hope the shareholders get what they deserve.

It also feeds into the whole cult of personality thing. Elon isn't the one who did all of the work to design and build Tesla's products. I'm not saying he didn't deserve to be well-compensated, but that package is completely out of proportion to his actual contributions.

His original incentive package was entirely performance based, That is entirely incentive and actually properly aligns interests. That it was rich is true but the shareholders made even more money. When a court threw it out the shareholders reinstated it.

One man's cult is another's charismatic leader. The brand value of Musk is a big benefit to the shareholders. Musk's contribution to the vision and image of Tesla, Starlink and SpaceX is much more than the average CEO or even founder CEO. Obviously he didn't do the key engineering himself anymore than Steve Jobs designed the radius curves of the iPhone.

(Note: Personally not invested in any of Musk's enterprises or that enamoured of those who make him a cult figure. )