I am sure all of us have received emails with photographs of the wonderful facilities that top IT companies provide. And we have all heard the sighs and oohs and aahs that herald the arrival of these pictures.

Olympic size swimming pools, ultra modern gymnasiums, tennis and squash courts, fantasy land cafeteria, gargantuan plates overflowing with sumptuous helpings of free food, science fiction relaxation and game parlors, and almost every other luxurious amenity you can think of. Who wouldn't give an arm and a leg for a job there?

Really?

I mean, does it take all that for creative minds to work?

I mean, aren't we all supposed to work for eight hours? Or am I allowed to play a few video games, wallow in the swimming pool, wolf down a gigantic meal, snooze in one of those parlors and then saunter over to some walk-up terminal or gizmo for whatever creative work I wish to do?

Some of these great companies even have large white boards all over the place because it seems great ideas can hit you anywhere, anytime and you shouldn't have to search for a whiteboard to jot it down. Just imagine that — a whole company of absentminded geniuses wandering the hallways, deep in thought, hair unkempt and face stubbled (because they haven't yet visited the in-house five star salon), their brains feverishly generating idea after idea, lost to the world, but confident in the knowledge that they will have a whiteboard wherever they turn. What's next? An automatic wireless brain dump to an ideas database every fifteen minutes, so that they don't have to interrupt their thoughts to even write them down?

The owners or top brass of these companies are obviously people of extraordinary intelligence. I am sure they never were and never will be motivated by such wasteful luxury when they formed their company and then grew it to household name status. What then is the motivation for providing it to their employees? Is it just the good natured benevolence of the highly successful who have struggled every inch of their way up? Like rags-to-riches parents spoiling their kids. Yes, good natured, but perhaps unsuspecting too.

Think of it — if individual employees of organizations doing a single job just for themselves and maybe their families require such luxury to function to their full potential, how can you grudge the politicians, the congressmen, the prime ministers and presidents their penchant for extremely wasteful spending on their own comfort? They think they have whole constituencies and international problems to look after! How can you grudge the guy who spent more than a million dollars on his bathroom? And think of Saddam, his henchmen and his palaces — after all, he was responsible for twenty five million people or thought he was! I am sure he thought he was the King of Creativity and needed all those gold-trimmed palaces to function.

Do people really use these facilities, I wonder (except for the food)? Maybe they are not allowed to use them during the day - or would that be too much of a constraint on their creativity? Or maybe some people use them sometimes after hours? Is that worth the investment then? Is it fair to the shareholders? Is it what a company is mandated to do — invest so much in after-hours entertainment and recreation for its employees?

If these companies really are the fountainheads of creativity that they claim to be, shouldn't they be attracting genuine talent simply because of that fact? Do they really need these dressings to attract the truly intelligent? Do true geniuses need, look for or enjoy such luxury? The ones I have met have never seemed to be aware of their surroundings or even their own comfort. Give them unlimited freedom in their work and decent accommodation (by the way) and they are happy campers. But even if they imagine you remotely touching their freedom or creativity, they start becoming fidgety. That's all they need.

But I have also met the other type too —the ones who constantly use such facilities, take these pictures and post them on the web or email them to their friends, relatives and acquaintances. I have seen the difference between the two types too.

I can understand sane comfort; mindless luxury, I don't. I wouldn't quit one company and join another because it provides granite restrooms while this has only marble.

Whatever happened to all those stories of great minds flowering in adversity?

Frankly, I think if these are truly great companies, and you want to join any of these companies because of these pictures, then that itself disqualifies you. Maybe that's why you are looking at the pictures instead of starring in them.

Yeah, yeah, don't fret, me too.