>

Why didn't you work for companies that paid better instead of offering these perks? By choosing to work for these companies, you're revealing that you chose those positions over other positions you could have been hired for.
Whether or not benefits are a suitable alternative to wages depends on the extent to which they benefit you as an employee. 
One of the major reasons why benefits are offered as compensation is because they allow the employer to provide greater value at a lower price point. Consider something simple like shift meals at a restaurant. The employer can provide the employee with a convenient $20 meal at a cost of $5. The employee saves their own money as they don't have to buy lunch/ingredients and saves their own time because they don't have to prepare their own lunch. If cash were provided in lieu of benefits, the employer would spend the same ($5) but the value the employee gets would be reduced (-$15). 
Taxation is another thing to consider. Benefits are not always taxed while income virtually always is. In the United States a $5,000 tuition reimbursement - like the one offered at Fed Ex - wouldn't be taxed. You'll get hundreds if not thousands of dollars of additional value through the benefits than you would through cash simply because of the tax. >


Taxation is another thing to consider. Benefits are not always taxed while income virtually always is.

In the case of OPs JetBlue example, the benefits are taxed, however airlines price these flights at something like $10. Technically it's part of your pay, so the IRS wants their slice. That slice ends up being something like $3 tho so it doesn't really matter. >

Without knowing your position at those companies, I can't really say if that's a competitive wage or not.
Also, for an 18 year old, tuition reimbursement and 18 an hour may be more appealing than 20 an hour, especially if they live at home with their parents. >

They were customer service/warehouse roles. $18.25/hr is not competitive in HCOL areas. It’s the standard >


not competitive
It’s the standard

Just checking here, but are you saying that the wages they offered weren't competitive because they were "the standard"?
Because that's what competitive means in this context, as in "competitive with the wages offered by other companies as the standard". >

whos to say >

Honestly, it sounds like this is a "these weren't worth it for me" which is fine.  You are welcome to evaluate these things at however you evaluate them.  Yes, there is turnover with amazon.  Which is why they offer RSUs as it's a way to reward those who hang around.  If you are able to stick around, you can get a decent payout that way.
Similarly, you don't want to go to school, and that's ok.  But for people who do, that's an extra 5k. >

Amazon’s turnover is high due to the workload and low wages. Nobody is staying at Amazon for RSUs. >

Do you agree there is a point though where you might stay an extra week or month because by staying that long you will get an extra payout? >

Perhaps but your stock doesn’t vest completely until after four years. Their retention rate is like 1 of every 3 employees stays after 3 months. >

Yes, completely after four years...but there are partial points that are shorter than that, correct?  If I remember correctly, it starts either at 1 year, or 6 months, right?
So, if you are close to that vesting point, wouldn't you stay the extra week or month for that big extra bonus, and wouldn't it be worth it at that point? >

Stock options:
This one writes itself - most CEOs earn MOST of their income in stock options. Its clearly a good replacement that encourages people to stick to their job, and its cheaper to pay $20/hr in options than $20/hr in cash (probably cheaper to do $20/hr in options than $10/hr in cash)
Flight privledges:
Plane tickets are expensive and tons of people value travelling, if its cheaper to give $100 worth of tickets than $100 worth of cash, this results in increased total comp - net benifit to the employee
Tuition reimbursement:
I get $30k for free if I stay at my company for 7 years because they pay for my education. Again - keeps people at the company longer so the company is willing to pay more.
The issue with your argument is the assumption that these cost the same to the company as their equivilant value - they dont. You cant exchange $20/hr in stock for $20/hr in cash - negotiating it away would probably only get you $10/hr or so, because thats how much it costs the company to pay you. They arent going to bump the cost to employ you through negotiation - they will just change how they spread the pay over the various options. >

If your tuition reimbursement is 30k, your wages are likely not low. And yes, Google CEOs get great stock options on top of their 6-7 figure salary… >

Have you heard of the google secretaries? Some of the original ones became multi-millionaires by taking stock options as pay. >

so . . . they chose to gamble?
Because for every Google-level successful startup, there are . . . how many failures?
Genuinely asking because I don't know the figures and I'm not sure how to find them. I'd be surprised if it isn't a really high ratio, you know? Like, stock options can be a reasonable form of compensation for certain kinds of stocks or for certain industries, or if they're used to build up a retirement plan or something . . . but not every company can be like Google. >

Lmao…  If you believe in the company, team, vision - etc, that’s a calculated risk, not gambling.  It’s as much gambling as it is starting a business >

I used to believe in God, but that belief has no bearing on whether or not I have an eternal soul. Either I do or I don't.
Either a company is going to succeed or it isn't. And depending on how you define "success," means there's a lot of different ways to view stocks options in terms of compensation.
I'm merely observing that your confidence in your company's success has little bearing on its actual chances for success; ergo, yes, it is gambling. >

Imagine thinking that the entirety of the entire stock market is summarized as just 'gambling'.
At the time these companies financials, their goals & everyones understanding of the future of ad revenue were an extremely foreseeable & public. Just because you weren't smart enough to realize a companies financial potential doesn't mean its just random YOLO guessing for every other human on the planet. >

I will say that I work for a low wage company but I get a 15% stock discount. I put a percent of my part time yearly pay into that fund and it really makes working here worth it. If I just saved I’d have an extra 1,240.77 in the bank for the last 6 months but my last purchase is worth $1693.86. This makes it more valuable than just paying me my yearly wage. >

Your job title at jet blue was customer service, yes?
BLS data shows the mean salary for a customer service rep was $18.79, meaning JetBlue's $18.25 was very much competitive.
Free domestic flights can be more or less valuable depending on the employee in question, though most would say it's a significant perk.
JetBlue may be looking for employees who value travel and therefore have more of a connection to the work they're doing, 
What you're describing with RSUs is literally a designed feature of them.
The vesting schedule is designed to provide benefits and additional compensation to loyal, long term employees looking for a career.
It prevents employees who churn through quickly from accumulating equity in the company.
As for your FedEx example, you're misunderstanding the purpose of the tuition reimbursement benefit.
They aren't looking to pay their lowest earning employees more, they're looking to provide benefits to longer term employees seeking to improve their value through a college education and become both more loyal to FedEx and a more valuable employee. >

Came here to say this about RSUs.
My employer gives good RSUs. You gotta be patient with it, but RSUs can be a great incentive. And occasionally the RSUs are better than cash if the company stock does well. >

Rsus are never better than the equivalent value in cash because you can use the cash to buy the same stocks. But I get what you mean, rsus can be surprisingly lucrative. >

Sure but nobody is ever going to give you the equivalent in cash. Literally ever. 
The entire point of time restricted incentive comp like this is to reward those who stick around and to avoid paying high comp to people who then immediately churn at great expense to companies. >

I think the biggest counterpoint to your view is that other's fully disagree.  In most startups people take a far smaller salary than they could get at a Google or Microsoft and take stock options in its place.
Not everyone needs to think this way but more than enough people do, then that either changes your mind or you have to move the goal posts here to a slightly different argument. >

I'll argue one case where stock options can be a substitute for low wages: startups.
Many startups are strapped for cash, and can't afford to pay wages that are competitive with larger and more established companies. One way to entice workers to sign on regardless of the low pay, higher risk, and often poor work life balance is with large equity grants. Now, this is obviously a risk, as the options will likely be diluted through further fundraising and there's a significant chance the startup may fail and your equity will be worthless. But the potential upside can also be quite high if the company ends up going public or getting acquired.
So it's high risk high reward, but depending on the company, your specific role, and your personal situation, equity grants can definitely be used to compensate for low wages.
I'd also note that the substitution for low wages should be temporary. Once (if) the startup begins to mature, wages should increase to match market rates. >


I’ve also worked at Amazon, which offers RSUs, which are also seen as a “perk” or a substitute for lower wages. RSUs are essentially useless for Amazon warehouse/driver employees, as their turnover rate is high, and hardly anyone reached the vested time for the stock to become yours. Once again, I’d rather a raise over RSUs.

You should make your own decisions for sure, but there are pros and cons to this, and I think it's weird to even contemplate RSUs as a "perk" or as a substitute for wages. Once they vest, they literally show up as income on your tax returns. So I think it's weird to frame it this way. They are literally a part of your financial compensation for tax purposes.
As far as preferring RSUs vs base salary, if you don't have stability at the role or your financial situation really needs the money up front, I absolutely get why you'd prefer normal salary. But in a lot of cases they have a lot of financial upside that is a lot more "real" than flights or tuition stuff. Even if you sell them immediately on vesting, depending on how the stock performed since your hire, it can end up being worth a lot more than what a realistic comparable salary bump would have been. And with the exception of the past 2 years or so, Amazon RSUs have been a great deal if you can get them to vest. But there's risk and a requirement of staying for a period of time. 
Again, if you'd prefer salary, that's fine, and there's good reasons for that. But you shouldn't put RSUs in the same bucket as "perks". They are just a different form of compensation that has an element of risk/reward to it. But unlike "perks" at the end of the day it's just money. >

The reason these perks exist and work is because there is a value mismatch between employer and employee, which can make the overall offer MORE attractive to certain employees at a lower cost; in other words, it creates a win win if the employer can offer somebody $1 of value for $0.50 in cost. 
Free travel: cost to employer zero, but can be valued highly by employee. 
Tuition reimbursement and RSU: these require tenure, as you note; they’re only valuable to people that plan to stay. Employees that stay are more valuable than those that leave, so you only have to pay it to people that meet that criteria, and you’re happy to do it. You don’t know who is likely to stay vs jump ship when you hire, so this is a good way of sorting those that value long term perks as well as rewarding employees that stay thru training and have experience. 
In other words, these things are working exactly as they should and rewarding the people that they are intended to reward. If you don’t value them, then you aren’t the kind of employee they want, unless you’re cheap. >

Why does it feel like OP just came to argue >

You need to provide details, otherwise this argument is pointless.
What was the vesting schedule for RSUs? I’ve generally seen one quarter of the RSU grant vest after the first year then more frequently over the next 2 or 3 years. So as long as you last a year, you get some equity. Obviously the point of the vesting schedule is to provide a retention incentive.
Maybe the amount of the incentive just wasn’t enough in your case? Again, without the numbers this is pointless. For Amazon employees working as software engineers the stock which vests after their first year is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, possibly greater than their salary, especially if the value of the stock has grown in that year from time of initial grant to time of initial vest.
Stock options can have a major financial upside that a fixed salary or wage won’t have, can be preferable over wages/salary from a tax perspective if you hold out for long term capital gains taxation to kick in, and doesn’t cost the employer cash (which they may not have as much of), merely costs them equity (which they should have a lot of) so it can be win-win. It also gives the employee some actual ownership over the company (means of production) and thus a share in the wealth without the risk of having to put their own capital up to buy said shares. That’s how many people get wealthy, why shouldn’t employers share in that? >

I feel like your confusing perks with compensation. Perks are just that...perks. They are not meant to be a part of your compensation package. Compensation should only really consist of wage, insurance, 401k match, and bonuses.....maybe stock options depending on how it's structured.
To me it sounds like you're upset over low wages and that's fair, but the whole point of perks is to be little things that keep you around longer whereas money you can just take with you. So if you don't intend to stick around long enough then you shouldn't benefit from the perks.
Their thinking may be wrong and just paying higher wages would be better for employee retention, but it's a riskier move on their part and you may move on anyways. They only have to pay out perks when they're used, wage increases are permanent. >

My whole point is that $18.25/hr is not justified by free flights. It’s not about what’s risky for them or not, it’s about them pushing tuition reimbursement over higher wages because the former is a tax write off >

What do you mean it isn't justified? All of the jobs you've listed are entry level and don't require qualifications, right? 36K USD a year for an entry level job is pretty damn good. You'd get travel allowances and hotels etc paid for too. Overtime bumps it up even more, and it can only ever go up from there. >

No job should pay a non liveable wage >

Your post doesn't have anything to do with a non-livable wage.  Your post is about $18.25/hr. >

I live in the second most expensive city in America, $18.35 is not a high wage, it’s low >

No one said that it is a high wage, it is well bellow average. >

Benefits like those aren't substitutes for low wages because they give those to you in addition to low wages not instead of. The definition of substitute is "use or add in place of." >

Six of one, half dozen of the other. All those perks cost money that could just as easily be reallocated to compensation. Businesses decided internally what looks most attractive to recruits. 
It's like 'free food' for waitstaff at a restaurant. Generally, employees get a free meal or item on shift, which is cool - it saves them $10. But for the restaurant, they're really only out the food cost, so maybe $2-3. It's about perceived value.
So free flights seems like a cool perk - but like the free food, it doesn't cost the business much of anything because they're already running that flight. And obviously, employees aren't bumping paying customers from a seat. It's just time (labor) for people that are already on the clock. 
The issue is when the company uses these perks as a means to sell a low-wage position in the first place. I agree that these aren't substitutions for compensation - but they become that when the companies simply don't raise their minimum compensation rates. >

The thing is, in the case of the free flights, the company could pay OP an extra $50/year or whatever it comes out to (these flights are valued at something like $10), or they could continue to offer this perk which is worth thousands to the employee. Same with free food at restaurants. Instead of spending $3 on food per shift, they could give it to the employee to go buy their own food. However, that would result in a loss of value to the employee since those $3 won't actually cover a meal anywhere. >

I mean, don't take the job if you don't feel that compensation is worthwhile for you, but I stuck around with a tech company long enough that my RSUs were effectively almost doubling my salary. They would not have given me double my salary instead, though. >

Hmm yeah most jobs with those perks are tech or executive jobs. Often they say pay is low but its like $100k base with potential for RSUs to be 2-10x that annually. Agree an $18/hr amazon worker 9 times out of 10 is better getting more pay than RSUs but it makes sense for high paid positions (which is where they used to only be found) >

Then go work someplace else. If enough people agree Jet Blue will either raise the pay or go out of business. >

Idk, that pizza party is going to lift me outta poverty >

ITT: people explain what perks are, and OP says "but I don't value these particular perks!" >

Stock option and college reimbursement can very much be better than a raise. They are an investment: the stocks are an investment into a portfolio that down the line will pay you much more than the raise, especially since they are often given at a discount. Furthermore they may be taxed differently than a wage, both for the employer and the employee. The college reimbursement is a bit more indirect but it will help you get better paying job down the line if done correctly and may be very interesting if you would have an issue getting a loan. Both are very interesting things to get early in your career and the college reimbursement is something that can be useful mid career if you want to go into management. 
The thing is here I think there is a big misunderstanding on your part. HR creates a wage policy tailored to the kind of people they want working for them, depending on the job market and such. For instance college reimbursement will get you young adults still living with their parents who want to have a career that they wouldn’t have access to because of their financial situation. That’s exactly the type of people you could then pick to get on a mid management track. I think your main issue with this is that you are not in the target demographic of those policies and as such are not incentivized properly by them. But that’s by design: it’s not something that’s not working, it’s something that’s not working for you. >

Honestly I doubt any person disagrees with this. It’s the companies. And they know what they’re doing. It’s like a coupon. You get a discount sheet in the mail from a store and ur like sure I’ll go, then not use any of the discount’s because they didn’t apply to anything you actually did need. And thatt chances you do use them, they’re likely for stuff you didn’t need ultimately wasting more money than saving.  It’s offered as a perk but makes the company richer so obviously we’re getting the short end of the stick. It sucks but ima need you to be grateful because minimum wage here is $7.50 and Ik ppl work for 9 an hour at subway still >

While true perks aren’t a substitute for low pay the problem is a company can never pay enough according to a worker. Everybody wants to be earning more and what ends up happening is cost of goods and services are priced accordingly depending on labour cost. 
Another thing to note is trying to compete purely on wage is an endless battle. If an employer paid 20 bucks an hour today people would want 22 shortly after, Laszlo Bock talks about this phenomena when he was at Google and found the more effective way to retain staff and attract new talent was by giving alternate rewards and experiences other than money. >


If an employer paid 20 bucks an hour today people would want 22 shortly after

Exactly. >

It seems they are in a lot of cases.  Doesn't JetBlue do that, for example? >

I’d your pay is in the teens per hour 
You need to learn some more marketable skills >

well these things will cutout a lot of the spending you'll have to do won't they. Also, by having these perks the companies will be spending as much as money as they would giving someone a higher wage >

This is only in regards to what has value for you. If you don’t want to go to college, find a place with a higher wage and no tuition assistance. I used the hell out of mine at a job, which raised my effective earnings quite a bit.
Don’t get a job that replaces wages with stock if you don’t want to invest your time in the company. Stock is an incentive to stick around for a long time, and it can effectively raise your income by quite a bit. I also got a job with stock and stayed there for many years. It effectively added a whole lot of money to my earnings over that time. >

Then don’t work for those companies. >

Stock options are better than wages, provided there's no waiting period to sell them.
Equities are the greatest inflation hedge mankind has ever contrived. >

If you want high wages you need to be in a highly specialized field you could potentially make more money in the skilled trades then you will in a job where human resources might be receiving 100 job applications a month or more. The more everybody gets in pay/compensation the more companies raise prices. there comes a point where sales decline and then people get laid off. >

it's not always possible for companies to offer higher wages, especially if they're operating in a competitive market or facing financial constraints. In these situations, offering additional perks or benefits can be a way for companies to attract and retain talented employees without necessarily increasing their base pay. These perks can also be seen as a way for companies to support their employees' professional development and career growth. I know higher pay is always the goal, but it's not the only factor that matters. Offering a variety of perks and benefits can help create a positive work environment for employees. >

Stock options certainly can be.  They are a lower tax alternative to regular wages. Capital gains are tax free until you hit $85k total income or $170k if your married. >

I made $20,000 in stock a few years ago. I make $70,000 a year in cash.
Stocks are absolutely part of your compensation, it's literally part of your wages.
Tuition reimbursement is unlimited at my job. I'm looking into pursuing a 4 year degree worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and not having to pay anything for it.
Flight privileges are a perk, free food is a perk. But publicly traded stocks and tuition are literally just non-cash wages. >

Stock options are often the only way smaller/start up companies can afford talent since they can't pay competitive market rate wages. >

I think you mean they are not substitutes for higher wages. Perhaps a better grasp of business English could land you one of those higher paying jobs. >

In almost every case, they literally are.  The things you mention have a monetary value to you.