^^ well, to be fair, such perks were standard practice at Google from their earliest years. They got alot of flak, in the press, for their "lavish spending" on employee benefits and many people assumed it was just a symptom of the bubble. However, in the end they proved everyone wrong - by attracting outstanding people, and keeping them there and productive over the long-term, they really did gain huge advantage over many other competitors.
Admittedly, it's not going to work in every business. Margins need to be very high, and access to the top 0.1% of the employee pool needs to a key competitive factor. Given those structural prerequisites, it's hard to see how a company could not bend over backwards to attract and retain top technical talent!
Treating employees really well kind of got a bad rap after the "dot com bubble" deflated, which is really a shame. For all the ephemeral excesses of the time, there was a sea-change in how tech folks are perceived. Before that time, most tech people were treated like overpaid clerks or barely tolerated by buttoned-down corporate cultures right out of the 1950s. Nowadays, nobody bats an eye if top-notch coders work odd hours, steer clear of staff meetings, or whatnot - so long as they are productive. That's a big transformation, and I think an important one for both employees and technology innovation overall.
Peace,
Fausty
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
!
google forever