Twitter spends $13M/year on food service for SF HQ

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1591935035367723008

by mfiguiere • 4 years ago

22 22 4 years ago

Elon needs to message whoever is in charge of his food service and ask them to cut back. The guy is morbidly obese.

That being said, $13 million divided across 7,500 employees is approximately $1700 per employee. I’m curious what the cost per employee in the office was. At first glance $140 per month per employee does not seem outrageous.

musicale• 4 years ago

I'm sure employees could easily grab a $20 sandwich near Twitter HQ. ;-)

xqcgrek2• 4 years ago

Assuming an occupancy of 20% with 5000 employees, that's around 1000 lunches per day or around 2*10^5 lunches per year.

Works out to about $65 per lunch. How did Elon calculate >$400 per lunch?

harveywi• 4 years ago

Works out to about $65 per lunch. How did Elon calculate >$400 per lunch?

Probably the olive tapenade [1].

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/moiravetter/2015/06/04/the-4000...

justsomehnguy• 4 years ago

Twitter's San Francisco headquarters houses about 2,500 employees [0]

2500 * 0.10 = 250 * 20 workdays/m * 12m = 60000 "meals"/year or 13000/60 = $216.66 per meal.

[0] https://www.builtinsf.com/2020/02/18/twitter-office-san-fran...

usednet• 4 years ago

This is peak private equity mentality stupidity. Why is he even thinking about a problem where he can at most save a few million a year? Twitter is losing $4m a day and is bleeding talent. Providing food is one of the highest benefit to cost ratio expenses for employee satisfaction. At a time when employee morale is at an all time low and Elon is forcing a return to office, I can legitimately see charging for meals as the last straw for any remaining talent at Twitter.

mikkergp• 4 years ago

Also it probably pays for itself not having your staff have to wait in line at local restaurants and taking longer for lunch, but I imagine his fanbase loving the stories of the efficient business savvy hero coming in and cleaning out SV of the lazy fat cats.

Also, if his solution is to charge for meals… the meals costing $400 a person and people not paying for their meals are two different problems. One is an efficiency problem and one is an expense problem. Charging people for their meals doesn’t solve the efficiency problem(if it exists)

fzeroracer• 4 years ago

Not only does the cost he quotes not add up (given that he's an outright liar this does not surprise me) but even in the extreme example like you said this is a drop in the bucket compared to the millions burning each day. And since Elon decided to force everyone back into the office, he expects them to work but also offer zero perks to working in office.

It's all so incredibly stupid.

inferiorhuman• 4 years ago

He's going about it in an awkward way but Musk wants the employees gone as cheaply as possible. Everything he's done so far is just means to an end. Asking laid off workers to return to work (refuse = fired for cause + no severance), demanding everyone else to return to the office (quit = no severance or UI), killing office perks (quit = no severance or UI).

zen21• 4 years ago

Worth noting that around $3M a day of twitter’s losses exist only to pay the debt Elon himself took on. Why would Twitter employees be working to pay for Elon to be CEO rather than for their own lunches?

joegahona• 4 years ago

Is he cutting snacks too? Or just full-fledged meals?

Meals seems like something an excessively profitable company would offer as a perk, but that ain’t Twitter right now. I don’t think Microsoft or Amazon provide free meals to their employees.

ravenstine• 4 years ago

How much talent does Twitter really need? It's still online. Is talent only available when lunches are free and swanky, and work is remote?

Believe it or not, there's talent outside Twitter and even SV. Twitter employees aren't special.

jurassic• 4 years ago

The pettiness is the point. Elon is working hard to dismantle everything and anything that employees enjoy to drive them to leave without severance.

superchroma2• 4 years ago

Elon about to make one of the classic blunders, next to starting a land war in asia.

Kon-Peki• 4 years ago

Instead of assuming that he is making mistake after mistake after mistake, it might be worth examining how he might benefit in a quick Twitter bankruptcy. I wonder what the terms of that debt look like.

pschuegr2• 4 years ago

This seems like a question that helps people preserve internal just-world thinking and protect against the feeling that the idiots are in charge. Why would he personally need to oversee running the company into the ground? in a universe where there is some theoretical payout for bankrupting the company (which may be this one) wouldn't it would be much easier to keep his reputation as a genius intact and let somebody else crash it? Occam's razor says he just doesn't know what he's doing.

pyuser583• 4 years ago

Twitter holds talks and meet up style events for area developers. They provide food, and their offerings are among the nicest.

My data is a few years old, but I always loved the Twitter meetups for this reason, and I remember the food more than I remember the talks.

random314• 4 years ago

People expected Musk to solve hunger. Turns out he is unwilling to solve even the employee hunger!

kqr2• 4 years ago

Reminds me of The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas Are No Longer Free

https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...

Twitter spends $13M/year on food service for SF HQ

Related Stories