Back during the Internet tech boom of 1999, in what seems like a lifetime ago, I worked at a well known San Francisco dotcom that couldn’t help avoid the big crash that was to come.
Like the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, the bursting of the dotcom bubble (and the drying up of the venture capital and equity markets) was fairly indiscriminate in that it wiped out a great many Internet companies both good and bad.
But somehow, my dotcom — Pets.com — got held up as a poster child for the excesses of the the Internet bubble era.
The funny thing is, my company exhibited virtually none of the well-publicized (and crazy) dotcom behavior that the sector was known for. We were a modestly run and pretty sober company, for the most part, and we closed our doors with tens of millions of dollars in the bank that was returned to investors.
I found myself thinking of this again today when reading a Wall Street Journal story about how The Perk Bubble is Growing as Tech Booms Again. It sounds like 1999 all over again:
Here in the capital of the latest tech boom, engineers and product developers work late into the night creating the next big thing. But they take office culture just as seriously, fueling behavior that is reaching a level of froth not seen in a decade.
Some Web start-ups are partying like it’s 1999. Airbnb’s housewarming later this month is to include a visit by rapper and occasional tech investor M.C. Hammer. The party room at reviews site Yelp Inc. has three beer kegs with built-in iPads to offer information about what’s on tap. Last month, start-ups Peanut Labs Inc. and AdParlor Inc. sponsored the sold-out “Pirates of Silicon Valley Cruise,” a $600-per-person seafaring party.
Companies say the fierce competition for talent among start-ups has necessitated extraordinary perks meant to attract and retain employees.”
As someone who lived through the last round of excessive technology industry perks, I’m amused by the tenor and tone in the Journal story from company executives defending the crazy, costly, and (some might say) silly benefits that they lavish upon employees.
At Airbnb, which was founded in 2008 … institutionalized fun is a philosophy. “You can’t take the day too seriously if you’re in a meeting with somebody wearing a fake mustache,” says (29-year-old company co-founder Joe) Gebbia, who often participates in the company’s Mustache Monday.
He says creating a space where people feel comfortable spurs innovation: “We’re going to work hard and play hard.”
Well, maybe going a little crazy at work DOES spur some to be more innovative, but pardon me if I’m skeptical, because this sounds like a replay of what so many other Internet companies were saying back in 1999 and 2000 — before the bubble burst and the employee perks proved to be an unsustainable and costly excess.
Take it from me: you don’t want your company to be held up as an example of excess anything, unless perhaps an excess of success due to a great company culture — like Southwest Airlines.
Very few companies seem to be able to consistently offer these kinds of perks and be successful — Google is one such company, as I have noted before — and my guess is that these kooky benefits the Journal is writing about won’t last too long either. Why? Because there is usually something wrong if you have to offer crazy perks and goodies to attract and keep good people working for you.
Of course, there’s more than crazy perks from technology companies in the news this week. Here are some other HR and workplace-related items you may have missed this week. This is TLNT’s weekly round-up of news, trends, and insights from the world of HR and talent management. Yes, I do it so you don’t have to.
