Employees Live Better Than VCs at Zynga (But Do They Have Lives?)
By Whitney Phaneuf
On July 19, 2012
Personal chefs, acupuncture, massage, VIP parties, no vacation policy, never having to wait at home for Comcast again: Sounds like a dream job, right?
Even before Mark Pincus launched Zynga, he knew he wanted to live well and for his employees to live well, “better than the VCs,” he explained to Sarah Lacy tonight at PandoMonthly. It’s created a tight culture where Pincus and his team drink beer and write code on Friday nights. Later they go out and celebrate at a nice dinner.
“It’s not about perks,” he says. “It’s the environment you want to be in, but they need to work for it.”
And Pincus notices. He says he responds to every employee email he receives and even gives an “Atlas Award” to the unsung heroes who keep the company running but don’t have an acronym in their title. He encourages his employees to take vacations and for as long as they need, no questions asked.
But what about their lives outside Pincus’s fortress of fun? What if one of those engineers had a date that Friday night? Or what if that employee actually wanted to go home and wait for the cable guy because she didn’t want a personal assistant hanging out alone in her home? Those are the sacrifices employees make to be a part of Pincus’s mission.
We’re here at Madrone Studios with Mark Pincus, and you can watch a livestream of the event right here.
Whitney is an SF-based journalist who has written about tech, arts, and culture for a decade. She has a weakness for cat memes, which you'll discover if you follow her on Twitter.
