Google's Best Benefits: The Top 7 Perks Google Offers Employees

How important are free haircuts to your work life? What about free food? Or eyebrow shaping just steps away from your office?

Google, the king of corporate perks, is banking on these and other "way beyond basic" benefits to lure top tech talent to its Mountain View headquarters. The company has already succeeded in distinguishing itself from the competition: earlier this month, Google took the top spot on Fortune's list of the 100 best companies to work for.

The 26-acre campus, or Googleplex, offers pretty much every amenity that even the choosiest employee could ask for. As executive chairman Eric Schmidt wrote in an explanation of Google's benefits, "The goal is to strip away everything that gets in our employees' way [...] Let's face it: programmers want to program, they don't want to do their laundry. So we make it easy for them to do both."

Some might say that the only perk you really need at a job is a paycheck, but not to worry, Googlers get that too. In fact, they probably make much more than most people. According to Dice Holdings, the average tech employee in Silicon Valley makes over $100,000 per year. To put that in perspective, consider that, according to Reuters, half of Americans earned less than $27,000 in 2010.

Even Google isn't immune to the extravagance of many Google perks. During a 2009 press conference, co-founder Sergey Brin talked about benefit cutbacks that were designed to "reset the culture" and keep employees from feeling entitled.

According to All Things D, Brin said that Google's inauspicious garage beginnings "grew up into everybody's expectation: 'Oh, they should have all the gourmet food they want, at any time.'"

Although, according to Venture Beat, in 2008 Google did significantly raise the cost its once cheap employee childcare, the company continues to offer some unprecedented goodies to its lucky workforce. Click through our slideshow to see what Googlers get, then drop by Quora to see what Googlers enjoy best about working at Google.

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Comments

[ware]

08:40 PM on 02/01/2012

I'd be more interested in how many vacation weeks per year they offer. Also do they work more than 40h/week ?

[theveggiedude]

03:29 PM on 02/01/2012

My wife's nephew works there. On day one, he was issued his own MacBook Pro to start programming Google TV.

[bobdylansgrandmother]

05:03 AM on 02/01/2012

work for an airline and get free flights and explore the world... to me that is the best perk of any job

[SoulOfDespair]

01:34 PM on 02/01/2012

Emotionally you would be lonely though? I read a while back that being an airline thing is one of the worst jobs to have due to the fact you move constantly.

[bobdylansgrandmother]

02:12 PM on 02/01/2012

With so much to see and so many people to meet and so much to do and experience... how could you get lonely. I know i certainly never did

[Max Imus]

03:22 AM on 02/01/2012

they have an in house diet counselor too.

[Crispaccio]

10:39 PM on 01/31/2012

I don't see what's wrong with this. Yeah, it's weird, but it makes for happier employees, who are less stressed, which lends itself to creativity and effective collaborative efforts. It's really no-brainer that corporations should take a lesson from, whether they are a mfr facility or tech biz.

[George Broadway]

07:52 PM on 01/31/2012

This could be like "See Jane Run" books that help kids read, except it could help corporation understand it is vital for any successful business to understand, pay attention to and properly invest in the three pillars of all business: the product, the customer and the employee.

See Google make billions, see Google wisely re-invest billions, see Google make even more money...

[jasonedward]

03:52 AM on 02/01/2012

It makes too much sense to treat employees well.

Instead, we funnel our children into awful "starter jobs", when in fact they're not "starter" at all. They're actually how the system works.

[firewired]

07:51 PM on 01/31/2012

What? No on-site put-putt golf? What about the new playground?

[robjh1]

07:50 PM on 01/31/2012

How can you write perks for Google employees when they are about to force a new privacy policy down users throats? A policy HP and others in the media have questioned. Ok.

[Myshkin57]

07:17 PM on 01/31/2012

They provide all those onsite perks so that people don't go home and have non-Google lives.

[martiniandabotoxchaser]

06:46 PM on 01/31/2012

The biggest perk is a job.

[dwill123]

06:43 PM on 01/31/2012

#8 A pay check.

[iridium53]

06:29 PM on 01/31/2012

A big step up from Foxconn and Apple.

[theveggiedude]

03:31 PM on 02/01/2012

And yet they design everything on a Mac, the machine of choice for 99.9% of Google employees.

[Charles Queen]

06:06 PM on 01/31/2012

I for one do not see Google as being anything pertaining to being evil at all.I use it all the time.I like the new search plus feature as well.I'v never had any problems with using google whatsoever.As far as any privacy concerns all of the tools are right there concerning privacy problems one might have using google

[sabela]

05:58 PM on 01/31/2012

Being dog friendly didn't make the cut but I do love that about them. And the rent goats to "mow" the lawn so to speak. But free, healthy food is really awesome. I used to get free meals at the golf club I worked at but it was fat laden and not very tasty either.

[zerovampire311]

05:53 PM on 01/31/2012

Dear Corporations,

Take note. Google's doing it right.