I concluded this post with the comment that ‘there is nothing new’ - but of course there is … a new twist.
Rowntree and others like him were of course trying to build environments for people in their employ that only had slums to live in as an alternative. The tech giants seem to be more focused on ensuring that their staff don’t ‘wander off' … think of it as an extension to the ‘free lunch’ that morphed into ‘on campus gourmet restaurants’ .. the problem is that staff then get to go home at night. This fixes that issue.
Of course people working, living and sleeping in one environment mirrors that old world of servitude, that on the face of it works, but actually covers a raft of moral and legal issues, not to mention how it makes it very difficult to move on … want to leave the company? Then find a new place to live at the same time.