Bonkers

[David Cantrell]

On Sun, May 06, 2007 at 11:48:04PM +0100, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> On 5/6/07, David Cantrell <david at cantrell.org.uk> wrote:
> >Perhaps you could enlighten us as to what a "proper compensation
> >package" is then.  Cos almost all the "perks" that I've been offered at
> >all kinds of places have been worth nothing TO ME.
> Unlimited (free) bacon sarnies?

That doesn't show much regard for employees' waistlines :-)

> Paying your motorcycle insurance?

I don't ride a bike, but what on earth would a company want to pay for
my car insurance for?  Sure, they could do it as a random freebie, but
I'd rather have the money cos then I don't have to go to the hassle of
explaining to the morons at the insurance company what the hell is going
on.

At which point you might as well roll it into the base salary.

> Sending you to YAPC with an expense account?

I require that any employer send me to relevant conferences.  And while
expense accounts are great, you still have to justify your use of them,
which basically limits them to travel to and from the
airport/conference, food, and ... umm, that's it.  No hookers, no coke,
no fairground rides.

> Having you work on open source projects?

Why, isn't your proprietary code interesting enough?  If you mean that
you might open source some of my work - that's nice, but I still have to
write it, which takes time and effort.

> Paying your home broadband?

No thanks.  Been bitten by that before.  I'll turn down free hosting as
well.  Now if you want to throw me an extra few quid a month that I can
spend myself on my home broadband that's great, but then, why not just
add it onto my salary, as it has the same effect.

> Free beer?

No thanks.  I don't drink much outside the pub, and I very much doubt
that an employer is going to give me a magic card I can use to buy beer
with at any pub.  If they did, it would be bad for me and bad for them.

I honestly can't think of any sensible freebies on top of salary and
holiday time that I would care much about.

-- 
David Cantrell | Reality Engineer, Ministry of Information

  For every vengeance, there is an equal and opposite revengeance.
                                            -- Cartoon Law X