In addition to quirky workspace bonuses like this Chrome-themed ball pit, futuristic sleep pods and high-tech toilets, Google also spoils its employees with more practical perks, including on-site childcare, free laundry machines, haircuts and catered meals.
The search giant also caters to its employees' every health and fitness need with on-site medical care, a fitness center, running trails, lap pools, free yoga classes and subsidized massages, not to mention those colorful bicycles for commuting from one part of the Googleplex campus to another.
Not to be outdone, Google's tech compatriots Facebook, Twitter, Tagged and LinkedIn all provide ample space for employees to get their sweat on with fully stocked gyms and, in some cases, complimentary yoga classes and fitness boot camps.
Facebook's Silicon Valley campus houses many of the same amenities enjoyed by Google employees: dry cleaners, a fitness center, coffee shops, gourmet meals, and, of course, row upon row of communal bicycles. But its village-like HQ also has an on-site arcade and candy shop -- pretty sweet. Luckily there's a dentist's office nearby.
Facebook's campus also stocks computer accessories such as USB adapters and headphones in a vending machine. Employees only need to swipe their security badge for free tech swag.
Google employees can outsource errands like picking up dry cleaning or dashing down to the ATM courtesy of a handy concierge service available at the company's Mountain View headquarters. Employees from Mercedes-Benz, Shell Oil and Campbell's Soup enjoy similar services.
Zynga's employee lounge is a gamer's paradise, with arcade games and Nintendo, Xbox and Playstation consoles at the ready. If the geek factor alone weren't enough to entice job-seekers, the game developer also provides employees with massages, acupuncture and reflexology treatments.
All Evernote employees have their houses cleaned twice a month for free, in keeping with Silicon Valley's growing effort to move employee perks from the office to the home. Another new tech company tactic: unlimited vacation days. Companies like Evernote don't bother monitoring their employees' time off, even providing a cash incentive to force overzealous workers to take a vacation -- so long as they don't slack off when there's actual work to be done.
Blogging platform Weebly nurtures its employees' inner Indiana Jones with a secret room housed behind a moveable bookcase. As a visual bonus, one common area features a bricked-over entrance to a set of underground tunnels used by smugglers during the Prohibition era. Not exactly a perk, but it is cool; suddenly the on-site massage chair and the free pair of noise-canceling Bose headphones that every employee receives seem mundane by comparison.
And you were grateful for the free coffee at your office.
For tech giants such as Google, Twitter and Facebook, free meals, bring-your-pet-to-work days and office happy hours are so commonplace that they barely even register as job perks. Enterprising startups have hopped on the quirky-benefits bandwagon, too, in an effort to entice the best and brightest to their HQs.
See also: 6 Companies With Awesome Employee Perks
Since competitive compensation, medical benefits and 401(k)s are mostly givens in the expanding technology job market, these companies reel in their rising stars with practical benefits such as childcare, laundry services and free meals, plus off-the-wall perks like gaming centers, on-site fitness centers and unlimited vacation days.
If you're lucky enough to enjoy one or more of these eight outrageous job perks, we hereby grant you your bragging rights — maybe we can tour your top-secret meeting room someday?
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Image: Flickr, Fotinakis