Yes but IMHO the point about the original story is that, all this does not matter, mostly. Like to go to the Cirque du Soleil? Fine, plan a great weekend with your friends or partner. At work you need to find other things, and in my case those things are:
1) Work at things that you actually like, and not just technically. You should think the final product you are building if of some use, is well designed, you would use it, otherwise I would get frustrated (a lot).
2) Be able to make a difference, instead of working to a sub project of a sub project at the point it is not clear to you if you are seriously providing something worthwhile to the big picture. Usually complex organizations tend to fail in this regard, but some big orgs are organized in a way that splits people into small sub-groups handling their own project, so that individuals still can see their scope.
3) Have free time, that is, work for a reasonable amount of hours. You need free hours to have a life, to learn new things unrelated to your work (even if they are still about Computer Science it does not matter), to rest and preserve your health.
4) A friendly environment, where everybody is focused on exploiting the best potentials of co-workers. No envy, no power games, ability to recognize coworkers good accomplishments, and so forth.
I think that meals or other accessorial stuff are not enoguh to compensate the lack of one of the above.
1) Work at things that you actually like, and not just technically. You should think the final product you are building if of some use, is well designed, you would use it, otherwise I would get frustrated (a lot).
2) Be able to make a difference, instead of working to a sub project of a sub project at the point it is not clear to you if you are seriously providing something worthwhile to the big picture. Usually complex organizations tend to fail in this regard, but some big orgs are organized in a way that splits people into small sub-groups handling their own project, so that individuals still can see their scope.
3) Have free time, that is, work for a reasonable amount of hours. You need free hours to have a life, to learn new things unrelated to your work (even if they are still about Computer Science it does not matter), to rest and preserve your health.
4) A friendly environment, where everybody is focused on exploiting the best potentials of co-workers. No envy, no power games, ability to recognize coworkers good accomplishments, and so forth.
I think that meals or other accessorial stuff are not enoguh to compensate the lack of one of the above.