I remember working at a place that made employees buy their own pens, maybe as symbol of frugality. Nobody really got it - we just thought it was eccentric.
Some workspace amenities are basically just props - they don't cost anything once installed. People try it out a few times and go back to work. Day to day, it's about as significant as the junk on the walls at a theme restaurant, but it makes the space look "creative", and apparently that's more important than looking "frugal". Arcade games get used that way too - sure, you can play it, but who has time?
Meanwhile, important, recurring costs like improving data center efficiency do get a lot more attention.
If you want to cut datacenter costs, reward engineers for impact, and include cost savings under your definition of impact. Engineers are pretty rational people and will respond to incentives.
Ever heard of Gmail, Chrome, YouTube or Android?
The door desks are more of a tradition. You can request more expensive automatic standing desks easily. The soda/food is not subsidized day-to-day, but we do get coffee and tea (and if you stay late due to work you can get reimbursed for dinner depending on your team). The hardware is perfectly fine as well. I have 2x 1440p monitors and an i7 13" Retina MacBook Pro as well as a cloud desktop (courtesy of AWS) with scaling hardware as I need it for development.