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100 Best Companies To Work For
Misha writes "Fortune.com is publishing a list of 100 Best Companies to Work for. Quite a few tech companies, with a few semi-startups, like Xilinx, who 'protected its employees from a nasty downturn in the industry by refusing to abandon a no-layoff policy. Workers took a 6 percent pay cut, but the CEO led the way with a 20 percent cut.'"
If you have to cut back on essentials because you're making less than $50K, you need to learn some damn spending habits.
It depends on where you live. I went on vacation to SF this last October, and judging from the rents I saw you'd pretty much be homeless if you were making less than $50k.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
To be more accurate, over 1000 companies applied, and Fortune first chopped that list to 269.
p anies/artic les/0,15114,403820,00.html
This Top 100 is the final cut.
But don't take Carlos' word for it, see for yourself:
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/bestcom
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
"Got Linux?"
It might be a good idea to organize, but let's look at the folks who make the big bucks: MD's and lawyers. They have associations which act as gate keepers (AMA and ABA). If you don't get permission from the AMA, you won't practice medicine. For the state medical exams, and for the state bar exams, the relevant association sets the standards, and they keep them high enough to safeguard the incomes of the ones who've already made it through. Any ``protection'' which the public gets is is a happy accident.
Even engineers have something like this. In most states, you can't hang out your shingle to provide engineering services unless you are a licensed professional engineer. The professional societies have a lot of influence over what the license requirements are.
This doesn't help the guys who work at Intel, but if you are a civil or mechanical engineer, or if you do power or RF engineering, having that PE gives a bit more job security, and a bit more pay.
Plumbers and electricians have similar deals with state licensing authorities, and are also fairly well paid. The important thing isn't collective bargaining (MD's and lawyers don't have it, plumbers and electricians do), but keeping out the ravening hordes who would run the wage down to the subsistance level.
My point? It might be better to avoid the old-fashioned union model, and start an AMA/ABA/IEEE-style professional association, and lobby for compulsory state standards, examinations and licensing for professional coders.
See what I've been reading.
Yes, I expected to see Microsoft on the list. I am a former Microsoft employee and I have _never_, _ever_, worked for another company that cared so much for its employees.
Rant about the image of the leadership all you want; in the meantime, those who care about results can continue to interview what people _working_ there think.
> Thanks, George.
Ummm...
OMB Circular A-76 was put out in 1983 (That's 20 years and three presidents ago. The idea is that private competitive industry can do things far cheaper and more effectively than the government can, and that idea has changed little in 20 years. In fact the biggest federal workforce reduction since before the cold war was done in '94...
I am a federal employee myself (engineer for the Navy), and we pay certain companies X dollars a year to provide janitors, security guards, secretaries, and the guy that gets tapes for you in the tape library. In addition, we have a number of contract jobs that are highly skilled technical people that work with us on certain projects. Outsourced jobs that have access to sensitive information have to go through the same rigorous security screening as regular employees do. The services of sweeping floor or secretary-ing or what have you go through a competitive bidding process, so the job gets done for the best price.
The government works for the people, and privatizing federal jobs saves MONEY. Not to mention, if you privatize someone's job, sure, they lose their job...but someone else gains a job...so it all works out... and even if you make the argument that privatized gov't jobs are replaced by a lesser number of private industry jobs, then the point has been proven that the government was working inefficiently. Not to mention, in tight times, you can generally fire contract employees with no problem...not so great for them, but fine and dandy to the taxpayers that pay them.
The federal government is a great company to work for...virtually garaunteed raises, awesome job security, and (at least in my experience) very flexible work conditions. However, it's also grossly inefficient since as a general rule there isn't any competition. New competition rules for some sectors are starting to change that, but by and large it holds true, and in the government, when employees run out of stuff to do, they continued to get paid to do nothing...where I work, the labor rate is $160,000 per man-year, which is WELL above the average salary...
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."