Office Perks Are Dumb
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Or Apple in the 1980s. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story... describes it as "In the center of Macintosh work area in Bandley 3 we had a ping pong table, a nice stereo system, and a Defender video game machine. We found that competitive play gave us a jolt of adrenaline, and a refreshed mind-set when we resumed work. We also learned a lot about our coworkers and how they excel during competition."
> "and defined their workplace cultures with the help of beanbag chairs"
Sorry, I meant PARC in the 1970s. Here's a picture of PARC's "famous" beanbag chairs from 1971 - https://hightechhistory.com/2011/06/02/a-brief-early-history... .
> "Perks have since proliferated at startups"
See, problem is, now that I've shown that these sorts of office perks have been around for at least 45 years, it's hard to really agree with a timeline which starts with Google and grows from there.
The references to millennials is gratuitous. It's not that they are millennials but that they are young. Twenty-something Gen X'ers in the dot-com era had their own set of perks, and turnover rate. Here's an InfoWorld article from 2000 https://books.google.com/books?id=QD0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA75&dq=si... which talks about extended vacation time, laundry services, and on-site doctors as perks.
Stick in 'Silicon Valley perk' into a Google Book search for books before 1990 and out pops, "The chip war: the battle for the world of tomorrow" (1989) which says "Salaries, stock options, bonuses, and perks grew to astounding proportions, leading demographers to dub Silicon Valley workers "gold collar" workers." There's also "Book of perks" (1984) which talks about sabbatical leaves for Silicon Valley engineers.