“I don’t think perks will be completely closed off in the future office,” says Berndt. Without a traditional office environment to offer workers and prospective recruits, Covid-19 is forcing employers to think about crafting perks that align better with an online community, says Dave Berndt, senior human resources advisor at HR outsourcing firm G&A Partners, citing telemedicine as an example. “I guess if there were no perks then I would probably think more seriously about switching jobs.”Īlready, companies with industry-leading perks, such as Facebook and Google, have made the call that employees can work from home until at least the end of 2020. “It’s really comfortable to be in the office,” says Li. If perks are no longer part of the attraction, Covid-19 could also level the playing field for tech companies when it comes to finding talent. The China-Africa relationship is being reset for a post-Covid worldīut in a post-pandemic world, the Silicon Valley standard office perks of all-you-can-eat buffets and high-tech gyms are no longer very workable-not with social-distancing in place. Since the dot-com boom, trendy tech companies have been known for providing not only big paychecks but also lucrative perks to lure the talent needed to fill an expanding set of roles in emerging fields. These days she is doing more of her own meal-prep and feels fortunate to have roommates “who are really good at cooking.”

“You don’t want to leave, because they take away a lot of the things that normal adult humans have to worry about,” she says. Having access to ready-made meals and snacks without stepping outside of the office was both a privilege and, as she describes it, a set of “golden handcuffs” that allowed her to focus even more on work without much context switching, she says.

Linda Li, meanwhile, misses the free food at Facebook, where she’s a software engineer. “It just does not quite help build a long-term relationship with that culture bonding that you’re probably hoping for.”Īir travel in India is risky during the pandemic, but it’s still the safest For about a week and a half into his new job as an art director at Sonos, a smart speaker brand, Randall Parrish got a taste of the California company’s headquarters office in Santa Barbara, which came with kombucha, cold brew, gaming, rental bikes, shower rooms, and catered lunches every Friday.īut when the 1,500 employees of Sonos went fully remote amid the coronavirus lockdowns, getting acclimated to a new corporate culture came down to “this energy that you only know through your sofa and Slack,” he says.

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