I find this legalistic perspective horrifying. It's as if you think every aspect of the relationship between you and your employer has to be written down as part of a contract and endlessly scrutinized.
For me, and I expect for most humans, the ideal employer-employee relationship is much more tacit. It's like being part of a sports team. There are bounds of duty and privilege that are mutual, acceptable to all parties, and do not have to be written down.
If everything was written down, it would make work intolerable. Every action would have to be catalogued, defined, and priced. In an effort to create a "better workplace," you would be destroying the things that makes work tolerable.
I think that's an exaggeration of what OP is saying. It's fuzzy, but there's a definitive distinction between "every aspect of your relationship" and benefits that impact someone's bottom line like free food.
OP did not say, and I wouldn't either, that every aspect of a employer-employee relationship should be documented and tracked like a PnL. But no one should pretend that it's not a debate over "unwritten compensation", and the value the employer gets from the employee. If employers didn't want to quantify that, there wouldn't be demand for corporate spyware and monitoring of employees. Yes, the Microsoft 365 option was shut down, but it's an arms race, and that's one battle in a war.
Why shouldn't employees want to extract the most value they can for their labor, and push back when the terms of that agreement change? If cost cutting or taking a loss necessitated a firing, would that "tacit relationship" prevent someone from being fired? My guess is no. Business is business, not personal.
I extended the previous poster's argument. He said food should be priced in, my point is that work is only tolerable because we stop pricing things in at a certain point. I agree with you: that line is fuzzy, but we have to place it somewhere (and amenities should not be priced in).
> Why shouldn't employees want to extract the most value they can for their labor, and push back when the terms of that agreement change? If cost cutting or taking a loss necessitated a firing, would that "tacit relationship" prevent someone from being fired? My guess is no. Business is business, not personal.
One conception of employment involves voluntarily adopted shared goals. Another conception is that employees rent themselves in exchange for money.
I suppose I think we need to find the happy medium between those conceptions. Too much of the latter perspective leads to alienation (because you conceive of yourself as a wage slave) whereas the former can lead to exploitation.
The article is arguing that Google is too far into the latter conception. It should towards the former, not all the way, but at least a little.
You just pulled that argument out of your ass. I wasn't implying that everything needs to be written down in a legal document.
Also I can't help but feel that your perspective is coming from a place of privilege. If I had to guess I'd say you either A) Haven't been screwed by an employer before or B) Are the employer.
I guarantee that if your employer fucked you over you'd be paying a lot more attention in the future.
For me, and I expect for most humans, the ideal employer-employee relationship is much more tacit. It's like being part of a sports team. There are bounds of duty and privilege that are mutual, acceptable to all parties, and do not have to be written down.
If everything was written down, it would make work intolerable. Every action would have to be catalogued, defined, and priced. In an effort to create a "better workplace," you would be destroying the things that makes work tolerable.