Philip writes about how small cost saving policies at Microsoft irritated him as an employee:
We used to get Dove Bars and beers all the time. It felt like free food was on offer at least once a week, usually with a pretense of some small milestone to celebrate. Why did we cut stuff like this? (I know the boring fiscal reasons why. I’m asking the deeper why, as in, “Was it worth the savings? Is Microsoft better now that we’ve cut these costs?”)
One day, a sign appeared on a soda fridge in RedWest saying something to the effect of, “Did you know that drinks cost Microsoft [ed: millions of dollars] a year? Sodas are your perk at work. Don’t bring them home.” This depressed me on too many levels to enumerate, but I’ll toss out a few:
- Someone had enough time to get these signs professionally printed and affixed to our fridges.
- It was someone’s salaried, 40-hour-a-week job to do things like this.
- Someone thought soda smuggling was a big enough “problem” at Microsoft to draw attention to it.
How much soda can a person steal? How much does that same person cost the company per hour in salary and benefits? Our most interesting profits will come from capitalizing on huge opportunities, not from micromanaging costs.