6.4. Fuck Massages

“Getting benefits right is crucially important for your team and their families. You want to support the people you work with and make their lives better. Benefits allow your team and their families to stay healthy and happy and achieve their financial goals. This is where you should be spending your money.

Perks are a very different matter. In and of themselves, perks are not a bad thing. Surprising and delighting your team is wonderful and often necessary. But when perks are always free,

appear constantly, and are treated like benefits, your business will suffer. An oversupply of perks hurts a company’s bottom line and, contrary to popular belief, employee morale. Some people can become obsessed with what they can get rather than what they can do—believing perks to be a right, not a privilege. Then when times get tough or when the perks don’t scale, they become outraged that their “rights” are being taken away.

And if the primary way you’re attracting talent is through perks, then times will absolutely get tough.

When Google gave us new, gorgeous, high-end office space after the acquisition, I thanked Larry Page. I said it was very beautiful. And I told him—and our team—that we didn’t deserve it.

It felt wrong. We hadn’t earned it yet. That building was meant for a profitable company that had already proven itself. It was meant for people who could relax and spend their time arguing about who was going to get the window seat, who’d get the best view. But that’s not what Nest was about. We were focused on our mission, on staying late and solving problems and working hard and fighting through and over and around every obstacle in our path.

This means we don’t just obsess upon our financial results; we look at our long-term impact on the communities we serve and we adapt policies and programs to be a positive force. And, given there’s much less cofounders’ drama than most other companies, our employees can focus on how this start-up, which became one of the world’s most valuable hospitality companies nearly overnight, can live its mission helping our customers ‘belong anywhere.

The relationships with others essential to activities such as parenthood, education and research are valued for themselves, not just for their consequences. Most humans are good at detecting instrumentality – the false bonhomie of the used car salesman, the cynical hypocrisy of the vote-seeking politician – and are repelled by it. There is a difference between the firm that promotes the welfare of its employees because its executives care, and the firm that promotes the welfare of its employees because its finance department has calculated the net present value of reduced staff turnover. And employees can usually tell which is which.

That transformation has enhanced many aspects of our lives, but too many companies have left the human behind. They’ve been so focused on products, they’ve forgotten about people. And while it may be impossible to quantify in financial terms the impact of making someone feel good, don’t think for a second that it doesn’t matter. In fact, it matters more.