It's true that it's not always about the money, but it's probably never about a ping pong table
Well, hypothetical speaking, if there were two completely absolutely identical jobs, but the one had a ping pong table. I might choose the one without and ask them to get a Foosball table, since I'm no good at ping pong.
It also depends on whether it's about a pingpong table in the office, or whether I get one for at home and we're talking a fully remote job.
Getting a free pingpong table isn't a bad bonus! I'd prefer a decent crokinole board though, tbh
It's a bad bonus if you don't have space for a ping pong table. Speaking from experience, I got a free ping pong table for Christmas once...
Shut up and sit down has a video where they rave about it. It's a dexterity game that uses a large board and sliding pieces.
It seems simplistic, but it is genuinely amazing to paly.
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If they put in any kind of clackball table, I’m demanding noise canceling headphones and my own office.
Most places that have HR like this work their employees too hard for them to have time to use a ping pong table anyway, so it's really just a hollow gesture.
A company I used to work for had a fucking arcade of all sorts of video games, I NEVER saw anyone playing them
Indeed.
It's telling that "basic dignity" or "managers who aren't dicks" didn't make the list.
Yeah. In my experience, "A manager who doesn't suck" is most of the list.
Source: I've been the manager who did suck, and the one who doesn't. I have some data points.
Ping pong tables are loud as fuck and disrupt the whole office. If they invest in a soundproof room to put it in, sure. Otherwise it just makes you feel like a massive douche.
My last job had a pingpong table. We'd even use it occasionally. That is, until people started getting pissy when they'd see us playing pingpong. Then management started bitching that we were playing pingpong instead of working. Eventually, nobody was allowed to use the pingpong table - it just sat there, in the middle of the room, with brand new paddles and packs of balls that we weren't allowed to use.
The money was okay - not great, but not terrible. After some management fuckery, I left for a $10000/yr raise and 100% work from home. I've gone up $20K since then, been promoted to senior, still have upward trajectory, and still work 100% from home. I have a desk in Memphis somewhere, but I've never actually seen it.
It’s always about autonomy, one way or another. People want to be able to control how they work and what they can get out of it. For some that does mean more money, for some it would mean less stress, for others it could means less meetings.
It’s pretty easy for management to address all of it by just giving people more power over what their work lives are like, but that could mean less control over their workforce. No “owner” wants that, to them, they own their employees’ time/work life.
My employer really covered their bases. We have ping-pong, pool, and foosball. That guarantees that everyone has something that will keep them from quitting.
I was at my last job for 10 years.
If I had been well paid and treated well I would not have ever started that job search. Further even just having one of those two thing might have kept me from looking.
At that job I hit the tipping point of both. It’s was getting shittier everyday and the pay wasn’t budging year after year. Finally mid-Covid the power flipped to the employee and jobs were much easier to get. I started looking and jumped shipped.
Eh. Toxic work culture can drive people away regardless of the pay. Obviously some people suck it up but not everyone. Ultimately the goal is to treat employees well all around. Good pay, benefits, and work culture will keep people happy.
As a professional in this field, top reasons would be...
- Dissatisfaction with pay
- Limited/No career progression
- Dissatisfaction with environment/culture
- Dissatisfaction with management
- Poor work-life balance
- Poor job design/expectations of role
- Poor taining quality/knowledge management
- Inadequate tools/systems
Edit: I should also point out we have about half a dozen ping-pong tables scattered around my work and our turnover figures were bang on average for annual benchmarking against the sector. I consider the average too high, though, and will be targeting better retention over this year. We'll need at least double the amount of ping-pong tables.
I don't see pizza party or ping pong table on that list so you're obviously not a professional.
A real professional knows employees want pizza parties instead of higher pay and they want more responsibilities with the same pay!
:P
But I have no money and lemons are expensive! If only there was a way we could acquire lemons without paying for them... Anyone know where I could find a lemon tree?
My top reasons for leaving a job:
- Too little pay
- Too many responsibilities
- The possibility of career progression
The three Big Nos. My optimal work-life balance is 0.1-99.9. If they trust me to be able to do even one thing, that pay better be huge.
So ping pong table falls under the third point right? More ping pong = more fun = better culture? Right? /s just for clarity
Very correct. You can solve bad culture by throwing more money at the problem. Preferably all at once with zero maintenance budget or governance so that the amenities in question can become non-functional monuments to your superior culture. Future generations will find these and marvel at your ingenuity from the safety of the water cooler.
you really a pro, I'm looking for other jobs precisely because of 1 and 2, even though the rest are all great at my current job
Strategic Workforce Planning. It's a bit different to HR in that there's a lot of data analysis. Typically we would use data to identify retention issues (reasons, areas, seasonality, etc) and figure out how to improve it. We'd then hand that over to HR to implement fuck up.
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There’s some new research that shows raising pay is not great for retention. Studies say it’s better to take that money and put it into a long-term benefit line a pension, profit sharing, while life insurance with a cash out value, etc.
Raises and bonuses had about a 3-month effect.
That seems highly suspect.
Was this research sponsored by the association for research into golden parachuting out of a pillaged company?
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There is a bit of truth here. Toxic culture and out of touch management will make people walk as well.
Thing is, there might just be a wad of cash big enough to make me put up with that against my health interests.
Fuck ping pong tables though. No one left a company because they didn't have enough fucking table sports. If you think they are then you are the problem. Exit interview your own fucking arse.
One of the best bosses I ever had once told me that people will stay for the culture but leave for money. His philosophy was to try and ensure that money was not a factor in people's decision, then build as good a culture as he could.
And to be clear, by making money not a factor, I mean he paid well.
I had a meeting years ago with my company's CTO about my salary. He kicked off the meeting by saying "you care a lot more about what you make than I do" which prompted me to ask for 50% more than I had been planning to ask for. He agreed to it without argument. TBF he was a coke addict married to the daughter of the company's owner and within six months he'd been divorced and fired, but I got to keep my salary.
Phillip. Of course, we knew him better by the name his eventually ex-wife gave him on Facebook: "Ol' Three Inches Two Minutes".
- Buy arcade room
- Passively aggressively mention whenever someone uses the arcade room
- ????
- Profit.
"Mark, were you playing time crisis 3 in the arcade room again?"
"Ski safari, actually"
"You know that the big presentation is tomorrow right?"
"FUCK OFF DEBRA THIS IS MY PROCESS"
Only time these make sense is in sitcoms, and solely to show the workers interacting without doing something as boring as work. Better chances for cammradire if they're playing Brand Friendly Product Placement or Generic CGi Generated video game on the break room Xbox being played with PS2 controllers than if they're quietly dragging and dropping files until the new networking software recognizes the drive its in and starts
In real life, if you're playing Ping Pong on Company Time your ass is fired.
Gotta be sneaky about it, pretend your wireless earbuds are hearing aids and just pretend to mop the floor while you're playing Pokemon Go
I think it depends on the company, I work at a software company and you'll regularly see the big boss playing pool with staff at random times of the day. A bit of non work time during the work day can help the brain come up with solutions to problems.
Notice how they're always empty when they show them to you?
They don't even give employees time to play them...
Reminds me of this video of Huawei showing off its copy of Heidelberg at one of their campuses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGOlzkK_Bsw. The streets are almost completely empty, so relaxing. /s
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"Man, my job pays horribly and the benefits barely cover anything, but they have a ping-pong table so it's honestly a tough call."
I struggle to understand how someone could seriously write something like that question without a lack of self-awareness so dire that a walk to the kitchen would come with a near-death experience. It just can't be real.
I think the truth is that it assuming it's the latter may not be enough. But the first two are even less likely. Additional responsibilities WITHOUT a raise is very, very unlikely to be what anyone was waiting for to stick around.
This is what I came to say. Good management will make people stay for a long time with less pay.
But obviously HR doesn't get that lmao.
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This is it right here!
Last time a job tried to hire me from my current position, it was all about the money, my company was willing to compete. I stayed with the company.
This time where I'm throwing applications like campaign pamphlets, I'm willing to take a cut in pay.
It is shocking how a year can have a company go to the shitter.
Just encountered a similar situation where the company is drastically lowering the max bankable paid time off hours to "encourage people to take PTO." Drastically = 75% reduction. What this will result in is everyone taking PTO in December to keep from losing it altogether...which is the end of the fiscal year when business demands and responsibilities are at their highest. Every time demands aren't met they do a round of layoffs, which of course never touches senior management, the board, or owners, who cause the failures in the first place with their "vision." Making the cut again doesn't sound as appealing each time it happens, but I love my work and the team I work with, so I stay but never feel a sense of security.
The flip side is if you can't be bothered to set aside some money for a ping pong table, as well have the sense to first ask around whether people would rather have foosball, or a proper pizza oven, or whatever the fuck, your company culture probably also sucks. A place for recreation means that you respect recreation and extend enough trust to have employees self-manage their need for it.
...of course, setting up that place only to have it be a hunting ground for micromanagers preying on unsuspecting workers is not what I'm talking about. If noone ever uses those areas, worry.
yeah, the "not necessarily pay is accurate, but the "right" answer being ping-pong table pivots things from "ok, they have some understanding" to "incredibly tone deaf".
I mean not enough ping-pong tables could be reason to leave for a PE teacher or something
It’s true, most people don’t care about money.
They care about what money can help them buy, like another day of survival.
It was never about the money. It was about maslovs heirarchy of needs; which, at the very bottom, is a foosball table.
There's two kinds of money: Enough money, and more than enough money.
If you don't have enough money, that's all that matters. A nicer day at work means very little.
Once you have enough money, more money matters very little. Now it's about enjoying work etc.
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Ah but what is enough money for you or I is not enough money for the bigwigs. And since they're obviously more important, as they're at the top, we have to have sure they get enough money even if that means you don't.
But they'll get you a ping pong table so you can stop thinking about how you don't know what you're going to feed your family tonight
This is brilliant!
Tangentially related, I heard another about enough money:
When you already have enough money, do you really need 2x enough money?
Your baseline can change.
You may be fine with $1000 a month. You have everything you need: food, bed, apartment, electricity, etc.
Now you get a new job and have $2000. You try out more expensive food options and realize you like them better. You move into a bigger apartment and start enjoying the freedom.
You may never wanted this if you didn't try it, but now that you have, you don't want to go back. You may not have noticed that your mental and physical health was degraded due to your previous living conditions until you get better after raising your standards.
I interpreted enough as really enough, when you are really well off and can afford the good stuff/vacations/good cars whatever.
But you are right. The definition of enough changes through ones lifetime quite a bit. I would have a really hard time going back to broke (student).
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I'm like mid-career and I can't afford vacations. There's always some other priority for the money and I would feel guilty for spending it on something that is by nature temporary and ephemeral.
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That question isn't the best way to frame it, because yeah... 2x "enough" is pretty reasonable. That's still well within the high returns of happiness phase.
Do you need 1000x enough, though? Or 1000x that? I'd love a high end espresso maker, or a nicer car, or to be able to afford to take more time off, but there comes a point where more is just pointless.
Yeah like, cmon, what do you think the pyramid sits on. On the floor??? No, on the holiest of of foosball tables!
Eh, I dunno. You can wipe your tears with money, light cigars with it, sew clothing from it. Many uses! :P
There's only been two reasons for me to quit a job: shitty pay and shitty people in charge.
Sounds like this company has both.
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None of these answers is correct, it's simply not a multiple choice question.
For some the pay is important, others need a bit of distraction like a ping pong table.
Everybody has their own needs, the biggest HR loser is the one that fits all employees in the same square.
others need a bit of distraction like a ping pong table.
That is never the answer. If your business isn't retaining people because the party culture isn't party enough...you've got way bigger problems...and it's probably leadership.
As I get older I begin to realize that people love to work.
However people hate being treated like shit.
Treating people like shit or building an environment that supports shitty behavior poisons the well and will absolutely make people leave, even for a pay cut.
If you just respect people and properly value them and their contributions to your organization, you'll never have trouble keeping them.
Think bigger, and rounder, and flatter, and then covered in cheese and maybe pepperoni. But no mushrooms, Dolores in accounting will pretend to vomit.
I wouldn't say party culture - it is what you make of it! You're normally at work for a significant portion of your day. Something like a table tennis table can help to break up the day and is just a bit of fun. For example, we had a table tennis tournament at work, which people got really into - it was fun and people bonded over it. I'd take that over working somewhere where you don't even know your colleagues.
This was at a tech company where culture was a big part of why almost everyone worked there. Definitely wasn't a party culture, but it was collaborative, where people worked closely together. There was never an expectation to work outside of working hours, or to do anything social - it was purely optional.
Obviously pay is a big factor, but it isn't everything. I'm lucky enough to be in a sector where I can afford to get paid less and have a better work (definitely not party!) culture and work-life balance.
I shrug...I like WFH...it's me vs the machine and that's that. I hated the forced corporate fun when I was still in that environment. It's "collaborative"...no...no it's not.
Sure...having Little John spin the company party was a neat story...getting paid 50k more and working in quiet peace is a better one.
Totally understand - each to their own! And we agree on forced fun!
I WFH since COVID, and I definitely wouldn't go back to the office (we go in once every two months which everyone really enjoys). Personally, I'd swap the 50k for working in an environment that I enjoy, and that for me means working closely and collaboratively with my teammates, who I get along with. Everyone is different though, so what I want from a job is probably other people's idea of hell.
seriously，who has time to use a ping pong table at work? It's like a decoration to remind you you're not having fun.
You can only enjoy the perks during your 45 minute lunch break. Food or fun, your choice ..
Where do you live, where taking breakes is frowned upon? That's crazy.
Here in Denmark, I'm being reminded to take breakes and go home. I have been asked if I'm sure it's not hurting my work/life balance, before getting overtime approved.
It's also common to stay at work after hours to hang out, if there's a nice place to do that.
Come over to America! A magical place where you are only worth the money you make for your corporate overlords, and despite being told by your boss that they are SO glad that they hired you, your performance review is a 3/5 because they don't want you getting too comfortable and "there's always room for improvement!"
Ah, here it's very different. In multiple companies I've gotten consistent 5/5 and told by my own manager that I should really get a promotion, but they can't give me promotion or even a raise. Just the 1-2% salary adjustment everybody gets.
Feels so good... 🙄
At least for me in IT, everybody usually gets an adjustment that's on average above inflation. So if you work the same place for ten years without ever getting a raise, you still keep up with inflation.
I think my lowest was 0% and my highest almost 3%. Some years slightly below inflation, but in any 3 year period I think I've been above inflation.
Then any raise is on top of that.
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Same in my office in the UK, I got asked if I was not taking enough breaks or doing work outside of work hours as I was doing more than they expected and my manager was worried about me burning out, but having a chill atmosphere and a nice place to hang out and chill in the office just means that I can be more productive and happier at work so it's a win-win... A lot of HR types don't realise that it takes a nice office in both material and culture to make people productive and just go for the former which has the lower effect of the two when used alone.
Ok, calm down there, commie. Maybe you'd better go check in with your "family" and your "adequate housing". The rest of us are here to make money.... For other people.
I know that the American capitalism thing is a meme at this point, but working in software, every company I've worked for isn't against you taking breaks or doing whatever as long as things get done. I've played foosball with my VP during normal hours before, and it was slightly awkward but good fun.
The usual issue I see in my industry is that you constantly accumulate more responsibilities without any corresponding increase in pay. It's especially bad for morale when you see someone leave, and their responsibilities get distributed to the team, but no one gets any part of the old person's salary as a raise to make up for the added responsibilities even when the higher ups refuse to hire a replacement since you're all clearly handling it fine.
Listen, speaking as an American, we know Danes have better quality of life, but we’ll be damned if we will sacrifice capitalism to get there! Our motto is “if you’re not working, you’re losing money!” That only applies to the lower ranks, of course.
Seriously tho, I would love to live in a society that expects companies to hold the well-being of their employees over profits (not that these two are mutually exclusive), and the culture is changing slowly, but we’re not there yet.
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Denmark is capitalist. High investment rates are literally their biggest internal economic driver.
from Wikipedia:
The labour market is traditionally characterized by a high degree of union membership rates and collective agreement coverage.
Well, there's the problem. Our capitalists say that's stupid, they'll just lose money!
Exactly, that's the thing. Here in Denmark, many (most?) companies think that happy workers are more productive.
I might be colored by mostly working in places where it's very expensive to replace an employee, but then again, for Americans I mostly talk with people in a similar kind of job.
My guess is USA or UK
Source: live in USA. Taking breaks is seen as being lazy. As is taking days off when your sick.
I've been told multiple times to take more sick leave.
Usually when I come back from sick leave, I've been told I should have taken a day more to recover fully. But after days in bed, I just really want to start doing something, even if I'm tired.
That's nice and all, but staying after hours to hang out sounds awful. I don't want to befriend those losers, I want to get on with my life. They can all rot in hell for all I care, I'd sell them out in a heartbeat.
That's fine, I can't expect everybody to like that kind of stuff.
But it's still important to have that for those that do. And of course that people more like you, get what you want.
I always tell people the easiest way to get a raise is to find a new job. Nobody is keeping up with inflation anymore, it's pretty much required to job hop to break even anymore.
I like my job, but I'd leave for the right position/compensation.
I try to interview once per quarter, at least.
I've started adding some tough questions, like asking how the average annual increases compare with inflation and COLA. Most interviewers turn into a 13 year old telling a girl they have a crush on them -- all of the sudden 0 confidence.
That's when I tell them that for the circumstance, my compensation ask is going to be quite high.
I also tell local employers that my "in office" ask is literally 5x pay. They always balk and say somethi g like "yeah that's not gonna happen," to which I say "Tell me about it!"
Everyone should interview more. Declining a good offer because you like your situation more feels like doing cocaine.
I often get ask about my salary expectation in the very first 10 minute interview with the HR person, before even getting the chance to talk to the team. Being sincere, I wouldn't get to follow-up interviews if I told them my expectation that they would definitely see as too high.
How do you deal with that situation?
Make sure you have a job while interviewing for a new one, that way you aren't desperate, and hold your ground!
You're applying to and weeding out jobs that don't suit you.
Your price is your price. They don't have to like it and you don't have to work with them.
I've told $50K jobs I wouldn't do it for less than 5x, 250K, lol. Yeah, I didn't get a follow up. Oh well. These are my terms. You want me in office for a 50k/yr role? I'll do it for 250k. This ensures I don't end up with a role not suited for me.
If the company doesn't want to match your salary expectation, then why interview? Are you hoping that meeting with the team will change their mind? I don't have enough experience to know if that happens, but I suspect it's unlikely.
If salary range says 40 to 80 and they offer 40, counter with 100.
Don't settle for less than 80 assuming your credentials fit the position.
Have them tell you no. Don't decide it based on intuition.
If they stay at 40 tell them you'll continue to look for employment that values your work where you think it should be valued, wish them well, and walk.
True enough. Yes, I would expect them to move towards my expectation once they got to know me better and once they see that I might fit into the team quite nice. At least I believe it more likely than weeding me out based on numbers in the very first call. I too don't have enough experience to know whether this is realistic. I just know that my current employer would lean into that way of thinking.
But, it seems that many companies can still afford to weed out candidates by numbers, at least here in Germany. So, I just have to do me as long as I have a secure position and otherwise, otherwise.
Especially if you know exactly that your employer most likely has zero loyalty to you either.
If there was a way to get the same work for 20% less, my employer would happily do that.
I never understood that logic, tbh. It can't be good for a business to lose half the staff every few years. Bringing in fresh blood once in a while is good, but you shouldn't need constant transfusions.
A company offered me a million dollars to work for them, but then I remembered the ping pong table at my current employer and said no way. Totally worth it.
I interviewed once for a part-time job at a potential startup, and the two people running it spent 75% of the time talking about how they had a pingpong table and how that meant it was a fun company...
The job wouldn't be in the office tho, so for my position (and pretty much every employee) would only be able to use it off the clock.
They were very excited about the ping pong table tho, because their job was in office and they played a lot.
I didn't take the job.
And the startup never opened.
I've worked in at a smaller startup with a ping pong table and my anecdote is we were all obsessed with ping pong. So their excitement could really be genuine. It's not always a ruse.
I had this argument with a boomer HR consultant and she just doubled down, even though I explained that neither I nor my colleagues, give two hoots about fussball or team building. Our position is a resounding "fuck you pay me" but oh no - boomer knows best.
My then gf now wife moved in with me and my employer wouldn't cover her under the insurance. I made it clear that this was important. They wouldn't back down. So got a new job. During the exit interview I repeated what I told them. It was only about the health insurance. HR tried to get me to talk smack about my manager, a guy I actually liked. I praised him and again told them that this was only about insurance.
Told my manager about what they did on the way out the door.
Questions like these make me wonder if large capitalists actually live in an alternate universe but through some time and space shenanigans they are still here. There's just no way they can make this type of shit up (assuming it's a real question) without being delusional or sadistic.
There’s just no way they can make this type of shit up (assuming it’s a real question) without being delusional or sadistic.
Of course there is: they want to implement doublethink. It's a deliberate attempt to make workers not to pursue their own rational interest when it conflicts with corporate profits.
You gotta have hr (the worker who defends the bosses interests) on your side if you wanna drop $300 on a ping pong table rather than raises.
I'm sorry to say but psychopaths walk among us every day, you just need to play the game, until you find a better gig
They are either people in advantageous positions that benefit from this or people that are stupid enough to think they will one day be the rich benefiters of this so why should they shoot their future self in the foot right? Goes hand in hand with people that are stupid enough to keep voting right because they advocate for the poor so at some point surely something will change.
These people live in the future where automatons make money for them for nothing. It's why uber is pushing for automated cars. They don't care about the present.
When I worked at a soul-crushing insurance job, we were given an event where the bosses served us pancakes. That was right after we were forced to celebrate bosses' day and watch our bosses open gifts that the suck-ups got them. I was able to quit without notice shortly after and it felt so goddamn good.
I've never left a company because of money. I have left because the bullshit they put me through wasn't worth the money. That's not just being funny either. I'm okay with being under-compensated if the environment is positive, managers are friendly and flexible, and it actually feels like our sister teams have similar goals and we're not working against each other.
It is pretty simple. Respect your employees and they will respect you. Respect starts with valuing the employee's contributions by paying them a fair wage. It continues with treating them well. A way of treating them well might be a point ping table, but that comes on top of a fair wage, not instead of.
A good manager might recognise a hard working team needs a way to relax and gets a pool table or something. The employees are happy and tell their friends they've got a pool table at work, everyone is jealous. It seems like the pool table is the reason but it is just a symptom of them being generally treated well.
I wonder if this is how this whole trend started: some decent manager recognized their hard working well-paid and taken care of team deserved some extra something, got them a pool table or whatnot, then other shittier companies copied this thinking it was a solution in itself without understanding why the thing was installed in the first place
Ping Pong table ? Are they serious ?!? We had a PS5 in the meeting room for ~4 month an no one ever touched it. I don't go to work to have a fun time, I go to do my job, then leave and have a fun somewhere else. More correct answers for retaining employees:
- give them tasks they are interested in
- give them perspective for developement (promotions, raise, mobility, etc)
- value their contributions and support them moraly (you want to know your managers and colleages got your back)
- of course more money ! Or alternatively more freetime !
Unless of course your job is to be a ping pong ball tester, in which case you may not be getting supported with the necessary tools to perform your job successfully.
They didn't even take themselves seriously when making the "ping pong table" as the correct answer. HR is a bad joke
It could be technically correct (the best kind of correct). An employee could leave because they weren't getting paid for all the extra responsibilities they were forced to take on. I've seen it often enough in the "tales from" subreddits (/r/talesfromretail, /r/talesfromtechsupport).
This is true but still not the right answer... it's not always about the money
IT'S ABOUT THE METS BABY, LET'S GO METS, GONNA GET A HOMERUN, LOVE THE METS! LET'S GO METS!