Apparently his current strategy is to just cut costs like craz-, I mean, like every CEO who was once a CFO. I know driver developers who work there and are stuck with old broken laptops of previous generations because there's no budget (they call it BTI) to upgrade. No dogfoodin for them. Even the previously free fruits are now just one per day per employee.
perks are very very hard to take away. THe lower morale, and in many cases cause the best employees to leave, not because of the actual perk, but because of what that means - That the company doesn't value its employees.
I agree, I've seen many companies cut perks and yet not save any money, they just reduce morale.
> but because of what that means - That the company doesn't value its employees.
reducing perks is also a danger sign that a company is in a death spiral. If the company is to the point where it's worrying about $200 a week in fruit across N thousands employees then that can be indicative of other internal problems
It's also very indicative at this time, during pandemic about those companies chopping regular employees pay versus not doing anything to top line C suite.
Many companies reduced pay by 10%-20% or stopped 401k match or even pay raise when C suite still made profits from recent stock moves.
If the lunchroom is like the orphanage in Oliver Twist, and you have 12 inch VGA monitors, well, that's just the way it is.
At another company, if one day you notice that the coffee in the break room is no longer organic, even if it's of good quality, and the string cheese is only restocked twice a day instead of three times, that's a bad sign. Somebody is trying to save money. That may not mean the company is in trouble but it's a sign something isn't as good as it once was.
I've always personally envisioned AMD's graphics driver team as a bunch of underdogs pulling off serious wizardry on a shoestring budget and still being criticized by the public for having any bugs at all.
Source: I know people who work there.