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.
