Fraser Speirs, developer of FlickrExport writes short piece on “your value” in a company.
One of the most interesting things I find, when going between my various circles in Britain and America, is the differing values placed on the time and productivity of people. Google is, of course, famous for their provision of services at work to their staff.
Investing in the happiness, comfort and productivity of people seems to be a rare attitude in Britain. I’m sure it’s not universal in the US either, but it does appear to be a little more common.
The issue was whether it was better to spend £2000 on a business class flight or £500 on an economy flight with the idea that the former would have you arriving better rested and ready to perform. Daniel Jalkut responds in the comments with:
A good compromise – instead of spending $4000 more on a plane ticket, would have been to pad your trip with two extra travel days. For an extra $1000 you could stay in a very nice hotel for two nights, and eat at fine restaurants. Even get a massage, if it would help.
When I was working for BIGCORP#1, I had the opportunity to fly business class all the time and stay in swanky hotels. I had, however, the choice to fly economy and stay in B&Bs for a fraction of the price with the thought that it would make the travel budget stretch further and, of course, help towards the bottom line of the company. I also refused every attempt to send me to Canada for a week or two simply to “see how they do things over there” because to my mind I had a fast network connection and could speak to these people in several different ways as well as read all of their PPT and Visio documents. Would a “press the flesh”-style meeting helped? Certainly in terms of consolidating cross-Atlantic relationships but it wouldn’t have helped my job any. Hindsight tells me I wasted my time and should have availed of every opportunity. My manager at the time only suggested these trips because he’d have an excuse to go with me…
When working under my own brief, for my own companies, I fly economy and stay in cheap hotels. My reasoning is simple – money is not infinite, unless you work for Google. Will I feel significantly refreshed if I travelled business class? I don’t think so. Will it seriously impact my performance? I don’t think so.
Now, when BIGCORP#2 asks me to travel, I put it off. I don’t feel I need to travel in order to do what I need to do. If something can be done remotely then I’d rather do that. Part of it is due to not wanting to travel overnights or on weekends because of my family commitments and part of it is simply not wanting to waste time or money. I spent the best part of a week doing a meet and greet in Frankfurt a few years back and with the exception of the hardware install I did at the same time, it was a waste of time and money. But, I got to see Frankfurt in the evenings (it’s a Ghost Town…) and sleep in a nice hotel. But the entire week of work was spent trying to hotdesk somewhere where there were no hotdesk facilities, having to find food in a building where I didn’t know the exits well, negotiate the building with my admittedly poor German and, to top it all, amuse myself while my “hosts” busied themselves with their daily work.
Think of this from the point of view of a Bedouin worker. What things do you want if you were truly migratory? Would you need the big double bed of the swish hotel? What about the processed meal of the Business Class airline seat? Do you need the peanuts and free drinks of the business class lounge?
My advice: Travel cheap, travel lots. Bring some computer games