Haunting the Trader Joe’s pre-mixed salad section. Hustling to slap sandwiches together before the bus lurches off without you. Feeling guilty as you hand over a sizeable chunk of your pay at some downtown lunch spot because you forgot to go shopping.
We’ve all been there. But there are some employers out there who pay for their employees’ meals, and they deserve a special place in heaven. For the lucky ones who work for such companies, the dystopias mentioned above become sunny visions of paradise: Your weekday lunches — a full 24 percent of your weekly meals (we did the math) — are taken care of.
Truth be told, there are many tech companies enlightened enough to see the value in providing this daily ray of sunshine in their employees’ lives. Here are a handful of tech companies who offer their employees free daily meals — and they’re all hiring in Seattle.
Founded: 2009
Located: Belltown
Besides eating free meals: Hearsay Systems’ Advisor Cloud platform helps sales teams attract prospects, retain clients and thereby grow their businesses. The company aims to bridge gaps between the tools and platforms built in Silicon Valley and the needs of enterprise businesses. Hearsay’s headquarters are in San Francisco, where it was co-founded by a pair of Stanford graduates. And they know what they’re talking about — in 2011, co-founder Clara Shih literally wrote the book on using social media to grow business.
Founded: 2011
Located: Pike Place Market
Besides eating free meals: Employees at Snap’s local engineering office work on a range of the company’s products, the most famous of which is a primary mode of communication for millions of teenagers worldwide. Aside from the ‘chat, the company’s Seattle employees also work with Placed, a Seattle consumer location analytics platform which Snap acquired for $125 million last year. Snap describes itself as a camera company, aspiring to take on what it sees as “our greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate.”
Founded: 2010
Located: Downtown Seattle
Besides eating free meals: Stripe employees are on a mission to “increase the GDP of the internet.” How? The company builds a platform that allows businesses to accept payments online and also provides applications for managing revenue, expanding internationally and preventing fraud. Founded in San Francisco, the company has raised over $400 million in funding, acquired seven different companies and employs teams across 11 countries. Its Seattle office opened last year.
Founded: 2011
Located: Pioneer Square
Besides eating free meals: Bizible works to connect marketing with revenue, helping businesses figure out what strategies are working — and where they should invest their budgets. The company completed Techstars Seattle in 2012, and was acquired by Silicon Valley marketing automation giant Marketo in April this year. Marketo used the acquisition — the biggest in its history — to establish a presence in Seattle. Among its extensive customer list, Bizible works with companies like Verizon, Dell, Eventbrite, Groupon and Expedia.
Founded: 2009
Located: Downtown Seattle
Besides eating free meals: Mixpanel’s employees help build and maintain one of the most thorough analytics platforms available. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company helps businesses analyze the behavior of their customers on the web. At one point, Mixpanel was valued at around $800 million, having raised $77 million in five funding rounds since its founding. However, former CEO Suhail Doshi — who founded the company when he was 20 years old — told CNBC in March that most of those funds raised remain in the bank. The company opened its downtown Seattle office in 2016.
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