Market price in a talent acquisition for a productive software engineer is $1M to $1.5M locked in over four years. That means that the annualized cost for talented engineering is $250k to $350k per year.

Paying for laundry, dinners, etc... to keep those employees productive and happy is a rounding error.

I've worked for years in an industry where a certain class of employees get paid at least $150k, up to $800k per year. These people get their laundry done for free. They walk around in clothing that is remarkably similar to pajamas, and these people often sleep on in special rooms dedicated to letting them sleep. Indeed, these people often put on their pajama uniforms when they walk into the building, sleep in them, and then change and go home.

These people get special parking permits, they get free food in the cafeteria. They have entire staff's devoted to making them as productive as possible. In fact, there are entire occupational disciplines devoted to making this class of employees as productive as possible, and make sure they have to do as little menial work as possible.

These people are doctors. And, there are entire disciplines devoted to making different specialties as productive as possible. Cardiac Cath Lab tech's and Cath lab nurses are on call 24/7, and their job is to make sure that _everything_ aside from patient care is taken care of for the doctor. Often, the Interventional Cardiologist walks in, talks to the patient on a gurney, looks at an EKG, and then goes and dictates a chart while a team of 3 nurses and tech's set up the patient, get the Flouroscopy machine ready, and call the physician back into the room to perform the procedure for 45 minutes.

No one blinks twice that the cardiologist gets to wear hospital provided scrubs, has a call room where they can sleep in, gets fed for free in the cafeteria, has special parking spots, has a physician lounge with free newspapers, deluxe coffee and snacks stocked 24/7/365. Why?

Because a busy Cardiologist in a single day, might place 10 pacemakers $30k a piece in 10 different patients. The hospital can bill $80k to 100k a piece for the procedure, and make enough money to care for the uninsured hoards in the Emergency Department.

Why then, do we balk at an engineer getting laundry done, wearing comfy clothes to work, or being able to wear a fake mustache once a week? The engineer :: user ratio at Yelp is about 1 :: 2 Million last I heard. It's about the same at Facebook and Reddit.

The only other industries where the employee to revenue ratio is comparable or better are the oil industries and the finance industries. Pay for software engineers is only now starting to catch up to the revenue that they are able to generate for a company.

Also, the software industry, and in particular the startup industry is built from "creatives".

What perks do other "creative" industries enjoy? No one thinks twice about playful, creatively colored rooms, toys laying around at a design or advertising agency in Amsterdam or New York City. If I were lead writer for a television show in Los Angeles and I had a bull pen of 12 writers that got together and wrote scripts for TV shows every week, I'd make sure that those writers had anything and everything they needed to spur creativity and focus on writing great copy.

Why should software startups be any different? Perks are cheap. Engineers are _really expensive. Keep those engineers happy. If you're doing anything less than that, you're not spending your money well.