Do lavish perks actually improve job satisfaction?
I’ve been to the Google campus. They have mint flavored water.
The stories of tech company largesse and their endless perks are the stuff of legend. Free gourmet lunches, access to gyms, biking around campus, private shuttle busses with wifi and cushy seats. It all makes working in tech sound like paradise from the outside. But The Economist cites a survey that maybe all the free snacks and massages only go so far.
A survey last year of 5,000 such workers at both tech and non-tech firms, by TINYPulse, a specialist in monitoring employee satisfaction, found that many of them feel alienated, trapped, under-appreciated and otherwise discombobulated. Only 19% of tech employees said they were happy in their jobs and only 17% said they felt valued in their work. In many areas they were even more discontented than non-tech workers: 36% of techies felt they had a clear career path compared with 50% of workers in areas such as marketing and finance; 28% of techies said they understand their companies’ vision compared with 43% of non-techies; and 47% of techies said they had good relations with their work colleagues compared with 56% of non-techies.
If free candy can’t make a person happy with their job (to the point of being DISCOMBOBULATED, no less!), then I ask you: WHAT CAN?
Would the lavish perks of the tech sector make you like your job more?
Which perks actually improve life vs sounding good from the outside?
If not, what is the real key to being happy at a job?