Salesforce is known to treat customers who attend its Dreamforce event to A-list perfomances, like Alicia Keys in 2019
On any other year, the festive season will see the streets of San Francisco jammed with Uber cars ferrying 20-something tech workers and their plus ones to various lavish Christmas parties thrown by some of the wealthiest companies in the world.
For those without an all access employee credential, the quest to find a spot on the guestlist for Facebook, Pinterest or SpaceX’s soiree had become something of a winter sport.
But with most offices across Silicon Valley still empty — and many of its workforce scattered in different parts of the country — office parties are off the cards.
Melanie Zelnick, chief executive at Glow Events, a San Francisco event company that counts Salesforce, Slack, Coinbase and Okta among its clients, has been “crazy busy” in the last three weeks preparing virtual events.
This week they have thrown a 2,000 person, two-day virtual event for one of its tech clients, who she declined to name. Workers were treated to virtual classes like gingerbread, spiked hot chocolate and wreath making, with equipment kits sent out ahead of time.
Another tech client requested a live streamed DJ session, musical performances, a magician and a livestream from the Shedd Aquarium, “so the employees can watch the penguins”. The employees were sent a kit with snacks, drinks and company “swag” to enjoy while tuning in.
Apple and Google, on the other hand, are opting for smaller departmental virtual affairs.
In previous years, themes for Google’s Christmas parties (typically thrown for its Mountain View, California and Dublin, Ireland headquarters) have included Alice in Wonderland, James Bond and Harry Potter. Aside from the usual bands, free bar and piles of food, parties have included teddy bear pits for workers to cuddle and lounge around in, live snakes, cigar bars and hidden speakeasies.
This year, Googlers will have to put up with letting their hair loose in their living rooms.
“Each team has done many different team activities,” says Lois Kim, Director, International Storytelling in Google’s communication team.
“My team of ten has a Brazilian truffle chocolate making class two weeks ago, and we also had a flower wreath making class together.”
In 2019, Facebook’s events team transformed a warehouse in San Francisco for a two-day Game of Thrones extravaganza, with green screens and props to make workers feel like they had entered Westeros. White Walkers entertained guests who could try their hand at archery or recreate the famous Red Wedding scene for a photo opportunity.
The year before it created an entire winter village in the city, including a ski-lift gondola and chainsaw ice-sculpting. This time, Facebook workers could expect optional departmental gatherings online.
Uber founder Travis Kalanick is known to enjoy a good party
Pinterest has also vetoed any physical partying, and is saving the budget to give would-be partygoers $100 to donate to one of 11 chosen charities. Ben Silbermann, Pinterest’s co-founder and chief executive, has agreed to personally give $200 dollars on top of every donation. Some tech companies are sending out coupon codes for UberEats or Grubhub so workers can order food and cocktails to have while at their laptop while streaming Christmas films.
So great is the demand for the perfect virtual party, industries are already appearing to supply the demand for virtual office socialising. Hoppier, a stipend management system used by Unity and Shopify, which has switched to offering virtual Christmas party experience, including a multi-person conference call and digital credit cards so employees have simulataenous steak dinner parties in their homes.
Virtual events startup Hubilo which offers the conferencing technology that Hoppier uses, says it has seen “a ton” of customers in recent weeks.
Despite the transition to the web, companies can expect to pay high costs for their workers to get a little merry.
Google was famously chastised in the Irish press for throwing a €300,000 party for its European headquarters in 2014 while the city was still recovering from the recession. But this year they could be forking out similar amounts, Glow’s Zelnick says. Kits range from $60 to $150 per person, and employees are allowed to request a “plus one”. Then there is the additional cost of the technical infrastructure keeping every single employee online at the same time to consider.
Costs aside, executives are breathing a sigh of relief. The Silicon Valley Christmas party has become a massive liability for the mammoth corporations, many of whom are a stone’s throw from being cancelled for serving inappropriate dishes in the canteen, or donating to the wrong charity.
Employees at Airbnb recall a bizarre 2015 Christmas party, thrown at The Armory, the home of a BDSM pornography studio. According to some attendees, some engineers were unclear what to do with the whips scattered like props for a photobooth. It is hard to imagine such a theme going down well in 2020.
Five years ago today, Airbnb held a holiday party at a BDSM porn studio. The photo booth had a 12ft leather whip as a prop.
Can you *imagine* if they tried that today?
Say what you will about “cancel culture” but it’s effective at changing behavior and leads to better outcomes.
— Jorge Ortiz (@JorgeO) December 6, 2020
Uber founder Travis Kalanick famously emailed his entire workforce to remind them not to have sex with each other (unless both parties had consented) ahead of a party in 2013, an apparent mocking of his company’s own sexual harassment workplace policies.
“Do not have sex with another employee UNLESS a) you have asked that person for that privilege and they have responded with an emphatic "YES! I will have sex with you" AND b) the two (or more) of you do not work in the same chain of command. Yes, that means that Travis will be celibate on this trip. #CEOLife #FML [f*** my life]”, he wrote.
Tinder’s chief executive Greg Blatt has been locked in a legal battle with the dating app’s former marketing executive Rosette Pambakian, who accused him of groping and sexually harassing her after a 2016 christmas party. Blatt has countersued for defamation and claims Pambakian is using the allegations to bolster a separate, wider suit brought by the former chief executive and others against Tinder’s parent company, Match, in which they claim they were not given proper compensation. Pambakian is suing for sexual assault and wrongful termination.
A series of high profile sexual assault cases coming from the valley, which has had something of a #MeToo moment in recent years make entertainment from parties of the past sound like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
A room dedicated to rolling around in a ball pool at a SpaceX party or the reported artificial insertion of models (for between $50-200 an hour per model) in several corporate bashes, seem outrageous in hindsight.
Glow events’ Zelnick says she is “heartbroken” every time she receives an email from partners like caterers and rental companies who have gone bust in the pandemic. She is banking on normal parties returning — colleagues’ desire to have a drink with their workmates is just too strong — but she has hired a full time virtual party planner who will work past the pandemic, to focus on the remote companies that have popped up this year and want to give their international employee base a way to socialise.
The pandemic has accelerated the death of many industries whose existence in modern life were already on the cards. The ostentatious technology christmas party may be another one.
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