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Comment by yarou | Hacker News Reader

IBM is largely a relic from a bygone era. You know, the era where people of color didn't exist and women were largely relegated to secretarial roles.

I have it on good authority that you need to pay for snacks at IBM. When an executive was asked why this was so, they replied that: "the coffee is free, because it will make our engineers more productive."

IBM, not even once.

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> I have it on good authority that you need to pay for snacks at IBM.

I work for the State of Oregon. It's pretty much illegal to give employees free food without a business justification. Buying my own snacks and coffee is the default, and not a huge deal; I'd rather have money to spend as I deem fit than more calories. Complaining about not having a mini fridge full of Red Bull and a cabinet stocked with Doritos is a great way to make yourself look tone deaf and selfish when the vast, vast majority of American society doesn't have these fringe benefits.

Far, far worse is the series of things IBM's been doing to benefits. They've shifted the 401k match to the end of the year, so you have to survive any layoffs and stack ranking system to earn your contribution. Early retirement has been slashed from 6 months pay to 1 month.

IBM 401k did move matching to the end of the year. I was annoyed about that too until I realized that Google employees only get 50% matching on their contributions, capped at $8250. Meanwhile, IBM contributes 1% automatically and matches 100% of your contributions up to 5% of pay.

IBM's 401k benefit is easily verifiable: http://www-01.ibm.com/services/socomm/shared/pdf/IBM401PlusP...

Google no longer lists their 401k benefit publicly, but there is this: https://www.quora.com/What-exactly-is-Googles-employee-401k-...

I work for a large not-for-profit company. We don't get any free snacks or coffee free here either, but the other benefits outweigh that... like 10% 401a contribution, $30 per month commuter benefit, and $25k tuition reimbursement per year.

Coffee and snacks aren't everything. And honestly they're not much.

My history may be flawed, but doesn't IBM have a strong history of working for human rights from women to disabled to whatever race?

> I have it on good authority that you need to pay for snacks at IBM.

I suspect there is a large number of people who'd rather get paid more and buy their own snacks.

> I have it on good authority that you need to pay for snacks at IBM.

I'm not sure if your comment was a parody of HN/SV echo chamber thought bubble.

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