Considering the ungodly amount of money running through the tech industry this year, one might imagine that its holiday parties would be extravagant. And yet, this year’s parties are modest affairs — if they happen at all.
At one time, the holidays were a chance for the ultimate flex. Like endless snacks and ping-pong tables, the year-end rager was the sort of perk that got East Coast Ivy Leaguers to drop out of school and buy their first Northface quarter zip. In 2006, Google threw a Greek myth-themed party at Pier 48 dubbed “Googlympus” for a reported 10,000 guests. Pier 48 also played host to Yahoo’s 2015 Great Gatsby-themed holiday party that reportedly cost $7 million. In 2014, Facebook took over AT&T Park (now called Oracle Park) for its massive baseball-themed party.
But this year, apropos of the coldest winter San Francisco has seen in years, holiday party fever has cooled across the industry. Tech companies produced a slew of indistinct events at the same tired venues and recycling entertainment programs from previous years.
Airbnb and YouTube both rented out the de Young Museum last Friday and Saturday, respectively, and one Airbnb employee reported that “the food was lacking” at Friday’s fête.
Meta, which slashed thousands of jobs this year as it sank billions into its murky AI strategy, canceled the festivities all together.
One software engineer at Meta, who spoke anonymously with Gazetteer SF due to prohibitive company policies on speaking to the media, said this is in line with the trend he has seen since the pandemic. “My experience is that the companies I’ve worked for post-COVID have not been doing them,” they said.
Most Google employees were lucky enough to get some sort of celebration this year, but for such a bloated behemoth, a true company-wide gathering is no longer feasible.
Using a party-planning strategy that’s spreading across Silicon Valley giants, Google outsourced its corporate party planning duties to individual teams.
Five of them hired the same magician.
That magician is Jay Alexander, per his website, one of the country’s “top corporate and society entertainers.” This month, Alexander said he had 35 corporate shows lined up, “about 60 percent of them tech,” including Notion, Adobe, and semiconductor design firm Jasper.
“Corporate events are the new vaudeville,” Alexander said. “That’s how a performer can make a living these days. If you had enough of an inside track, you could make a living just performing for Google.”
This year, Alexander said, companies seem to want to keep it simple: card tricks, standard mentalism, nothing too flashy.
Alexander remembers a time in the 2000s and early 2010s when tech was dripping in decadence. He couldn’t name the company (nondisclosure agreements a standard procedure), but Alexander once led six VC executives and their spouses around the city in limos occupied by cigar-smoking little people “being nasty” (“It wouldn’t be politically correct now”), down secret alleyways to see firebreathers, and finally to dinner for Alexander’s magic show.
At another tech company in the 2010s, he even made five sets of car keys appear: Five lucky employees left the party, each with a brand new Mercedes.
“The trend I’m seeing now is smaller team events,” Alexander said.
Boswick the Clown, another frequent performer at tech company holiday parties, echoed the sentiment.
“There were crazy events for tech,” Boswick (also known as David Magidson) wrote in an email. “Yahoo had a ferris wheel in their parking lot. I once played a fake reporter for some company that doesn’t exist anymore. I went to a party where they actually had an elephant.”
Now, things are different, tamer. “Tech parties are pretty much the same as a party for a law office.”
Still, some embers of the industry’s fiery past still smolder at today’s up-and-coming startups, especially the ones with founders fresh out of college (or, freshly dropped out of college).
There was modest buzz in tech circles over the holiday party at Ulysses, an marine autonomous vehicles startup, which rented a mechanical shark for its company event last Friday. (Its logo is a shark.) “I just really like sharks,” Ulysses CEO and cofounder, Will O’Brien said.
Boswick also wondered if he would be hired for a holiday gig at the unicorn-status data labeling company Mercor, whose 22-year-old founders have now booked him twice in what appeared to be a running gag between one founder and the office manager. (As of Monday, Mercor had not called Boswick.)
The clown theorized that Mercor, whose three cofounders are now the youngest self-made billionaires in history, throw parties like it’s still the startups of the bygone era because its team is young, rich, and excitable. The whole industry used to be like that, he said, but now it’s largely grown-up.
“In the old days everyone was 23,” Boswick wrote. “Tech companies are older now. Lots of grey hair. I think [the employees] are just happy being out, away from their kids, being with their coworkers.”
With the AI bubble looming over the industry like a storm cloud, it’s possible that tech companies are scrimping on celebrations to prepare themselves from the inevitable burst.
One mechanical engineer at Zoox told Gazetteer SF that the autonomous vehicle company used to throw lavish, black tie holiday parties. Of course, that was pre-COVID, when the economy was more stable, the Amazon-owned company was smaller, and its culture was more coherent. “Now we’re just too big to get everyone in the same space,” the engineer said.
The engineer explained that, like Google, Zoox delegated party planning to the managers of individual teams. That strategy can create a mismatch in skills; a technically-minded middle manager isn’t always the natural choice to organize a rager.
The engineer said their manager opted for a simple team dinner this year, but they wouldn’t call it a “holiday party.” They said the underlying feeling is that Zoox doesn’t reward something as predictable as making it to the end of the year. These days, they said, “company milestones” are becoming the only legitimate reason for employees to celebrate on company time.
“The holidays happen every year,” the engineer said. “Now, it’s like, did we actually accomplish something? Then we can celebrate.”
