Steve Jobs died for our sins. Is Jobs why free food at Google now sucks?

This is just some ex-Google employee, possibly with an axe to grind, possibly not telling the truth. But it did make me chuckle:

The point is, they deliberately inserted the food as a part of the bigger picture in lieu of more money. They set it up so that you would be placated by it somehow.

At that point, I was still buying the hype of the early days, and I now regret to say that it worked on me. I took it hook, line and sinker and accepted their offer. My effective salary was some amount of cash plus the food as it was right then and there.

For a while, this worked. I was able to get a decent meal at regular intervals without having to hunt for it. There was a certain amount of consistency if you knew where to look for it. One cafe in particular was actually an import of a local chain of taquerias called Andale. You could be sure of finding certain foods there every single day, and not surprisingly, they saw me a lot.

Then something changed. It all seems to coincide with a certain new CFO coming on board, but I can't prove that's what happened. All I know is that certain things started being cut. Entire meals were eliminated from certain cafes. Some that were open for breakfast and dinner in addition to lunch were now lunch-only. Others slid their hours back. Still more wound up being underprovisioned so that even though they might have been open, they ran out of food well before closing time.

I don't know...

I can certainly understand Google HR setting a (too high) value to all the food and other services they offer, and suggesting that be part of any discussion of pay package. (Even if it does come with the obligation of never exiting the Google office.)

But cutting back on food and food hours?

Google has so much money that if it's true they've cut back on food, food quality, hours of service, than I suspect it's part of a larger decision to become less, well, pussy-like.

I think it's in that new Adam Lashinsky book about Apple where I read that Steve Jobs didn't want work to be fun but rather be hard. Hard, not fun, is what drove greatness.

For all Google's money, for all their well-fed, happy employees, I ask you:

what have they done in the past ten years? what have they *innovated* this century?

Not shit, that's what. (I wasn't really asking you.)

Perhaps the days of the coddled, babied, everyone is a star platinum-plated perks offered at Silicon Valley's richest companies are in their final days? 

Perhaps this is still another *business management* decision the iconoclastic 'marketer' Steve Jobs got right.