This person is completely delusional. What? No more dry cleaning for free at the workplace? You must not value employees.
My main takeaway wasn't that perks define how Google values employees. It's more about a different hiring process and changing smooth re-org into fire&hire policy. He even said that these perks are 'no big deal'. quoterel: "You begin by trimming the more superficial perks: less fancy food, limiting travel budgets, no more swag, smaller and fewer internal parties and events, no more onsite dry cleaning or daycare. But again, these things weren't the reasons Googlers came to work. No big deal."
Yeah, well, he says that, but just by denying that this wasn't a reason for working there doesn't inform about whether that is the truth. E.g. in an earlier post, the author spends 5 minutes talking about the amazing food choices and conveniences of being on the Google Campus and how amazing that feels: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories?index=0x65b3a3dc892876b21cc007aa12babf9e4a6433c312c67f5b4d07e213bb84b66087afeb64 > But again, these things weren't the reasons Googlers came to work. This is in contrast to everything else that was said. So I think actually they came in to work precisely because of those perks. In fact, to even having to mention that there is now no more dry cleaning gives it away
If he posted that in 2024, I'd agree. But in 2005, everyone talked about Google's culture, 20% for pet projects and free food. And if the guy loves food (as he states he does), it's not that strange that he mentions that. He also spends a non-trivial part of the essay to expand on the great engineering culture. When I got friends working at Google in the early 2010s, they also spoke a lot about free food. If they were to write a blog post, it'd probably start with more or less the same description. But they didn't go through the daunting interview & US Visa process to eat some free sushi - they joined Google because they had the best AI team.