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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.'"
Anyone else notice that glaringly absent from this poll is my employer Hewlett-Packard? Agilent Tech is on there, because they got spun off before the whole massive downslide. They still live the HP Way. Whereas the parent company, and developer of the damn thing, has totally abandoned it. Ask any employee who has been here for more than a few years and they'll tell you the same thing.
Carly is driving us directly into the ground... In my humble opinion. When I started 4 years ago everyone I told said "Oooo... I heard thats a good place to work!". I agreed. But it has slid down ever since.
*sigh*
Jason
He's totally creeping out the Great One, eh...
And Hewlett-Packard Company, once the proud purveyors of the HPWay, are nowhere to be found in the top 100. This is an accurate reflection of the state of affairs, but sad.
Another employee-centric company culture falls prey to the narrow-minded concepts tought in today's business schools.
Each of the companies employs >1000 people. I think it's best to work for a much smaller company, one when you know all coworkers and the CEO says hello to you everyday. I work for such a company and just smile at my friends telling horror stories from the Dilbert side of the reality.
On each of the pages, there are % Minorities and % Women for each company. Why?! Why should this matter. Is this not racist or sexist? Certainly if there was a % White, it would be considered so. Why should the color of a persons skin or their sex be considered over how well they perform their job?
-Vic
Microsoft's hiring process: .364% hiring rate, or one job for every 274 applicants, I'm not sure if I like my chances.
1,312 New Jobs this last year.
360,000 Applicants...
Uh, thats a
Also:
#63 LensCrafters, while not a tech company, this sounded pretty cool:
"Sunglass Hut, a new sister company, joined this year's Visionfest, where managers and execs donned white gloves, top hats, and bow ties to welcome employees, park their cars, and open doors. "
To be fair(er?) to Adobe:
About 5 years ago, when I was in college, I interviewed on-campus with Adobe. As part of moving to 2nd round interviews, they specifically asked for my resume in PDF and gave me a free fully copy of Acrobat with which to make a conversion. (it was a copy of Acrobat 3, Acrobat 4 was about to come out so they were dumping free copies of 3.x on students)
Next time you read something about the principles behind the Fair Trade (anti-globalization) movement -- specifically, The Race to the Bottom *THIS* is exactly what they are talking about.
Labour rights (like not having to work 90 hours straight time, not having to put your hand in a drillpress, unions etc) are things that you will have to GIVE-UP if you intened to be employed in the future... remember, there is always someone more desperate than those in the west... and your Employer would happily exploit them instead of treating you with diginity and respect.
Maybe instead of calling it a "union", we should call it an "employee-owned labor contractor" to deal with all that right-wing anti-union propoganda that's been going around for the past 100 years. After all, in the areas where unions are strong (like the construction trades) that's basically what a union is -- an employee-owned labor contractor, where employers drop by the union hall and say "I need 50 bricklayers for a commercial building at 5th and Dunlap" and voila. The workers are trained by the union through an apprenticeship program, and often the worker's pensions and benefits are administered by the union in this kind of setup, making it seem even more like an employee-owned labor contract organization.
So someone correct me if I'm wrong -- can we just call it an "employee-owned labor contractor" and get around that whole "union label" thing ("unions are for blue-collar workers or incompetents") that keeps unions out of the IT industry?
Regarding outsourcing IT to India -- that's already being done, both via the H1B program and directly. Don't believe that refusing to join a union (err, "employee-owned labor contractor") will preserve your job. It won't. Your employer right now, as you read this message, is investigating outsourcing your job to India. You can bank on it, unless you happen to be your own boss.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
The big gorilla attracts bright people to its bucolic campus, which includes softball fields, a basketball court, and locker rooms with showers. Or if you prefer, get a paid membership in an off-site gym. .... the big gorilla attracts bright people to its bucolic campus... :)
sounds very scary indeed.
just wondering what that huge, hairy gorilla do with those poor people
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
President Bush just put A76 on the Federal Register, meaning that between 425,000 and 850,000 Federal jobs will be outsourced in the next 10 years. Ten percent of those jobs will be outsourced in FY2003, including jobs that have access to your sensitive personal information.
Thanks, George.
I was wondering how EA even got on the list. I had a friend who was worked like a dog on a game until it was finished. Then the entire team minus some senior managers got the axe.
Maybe employee satisfaction does not count with them as they are no longer employees?
It makes sense that they could beat out 60% of the other companies, because he did say it was cool to be working on a game even if it was 70+ hours a week.
I'll just point out that publically-chartered corporations are collectivist systems, whereby a large number of owners appoint a small number of board members to oversee their interests. It seems that you are engaged in more than a little hypocricy to blast one collectivist system without blasting the other. As Enron shows, the fact that it's called a "corporation" rather than a "labor contractor" or "union" does not render it immune to corruption -- any organization where a few people are selected to defend the interests of the many tends to turn into a system where those few people defend their own interests, and to [bleep] with the many.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Protectionism is a refuge of the selfish. Why should you deny Indians (or whoever else they decide to outsource programming to) jobs? Are they somehow inferior to the citizens of your own country?
If Microsoft decided to outsource half their workforce to India, what would happen? A few thousand programmers would go on the job market-- highly qualified programmers, whatever you say about Microsoft. The average programmer's wage would probably go down some, and, after a while, the numbers of new coders coming out of college would decrease to compensate. The programmers that lost their jobs would hardly be starving in the streets-- IT workers are generally adaptable people-- they could go back to school, become teachers, or something else that's needed.
However, for the 3rd world worker, an IT job seems far more important than to a (relatively) wealthy American. For them, a job programming could mean the difference between food on the table, and the gutter.
There are other, more tangible, disadvantages to protectionism. If the US is taxing Indian Software, India will probably return fire. Trade wars like these could be devastating to all sides.
Well, I am a manager at Adobe Systems, and I won't accept resumes in anything except PDF. If you want to get in the door, show me that you can figure out how to use our tools to reach me. And for those that don't have a full copy of Acrobat, we have an online service (free for sample use) that allows you to create a PDF. And I have been know to give copies of Acrobat to high-quality candidates to see what they would do with it. Think of it as an aptitude test.
There are some striking firemen in the UK that might disagree with you.
...and some unemployed people who used to work in the coal industry.
...and some unemployed people who used to be in the ship building industry.
...and some unemployed people who used to work in the automobile industry.
...and some disabled ex-soldiers.
...etc.
L.
Training is one arena where a tech union might really make a diffence. Why?
1). For the most part, US employers no longer invest in training. They expect workers to be responsible for their own skills upgrades and maintenance.
2). 100% responsibility (freelance or FT employee) for your own training can be expensive, time-consuming, and (sometimes) almost obsolete before you finish it.
3). By banding together, workers can build their own training programs that are high-quality, evolve rapidly to meet industry demand, and are cheaper (for members) than similar offerings at a community college or university.
Case in point: WashTech/CWA in Seattle WA has built its own IT union training program from scratch. It now offers ASP.NET, XML, Java, Flash, Perl and more. Members get significant course discounts. No other local union in the country is offering such training. Member dues help to subsidize discounted training for everyone. If you take one WashTech class in the course of a year, the savings compared to non-members course fees can equal or surpass one year's dues.
Details:
http://www.washtech.org/wt/training/
Lots of electrical engineering and non-technical companies. No pure software engineering once again. In fact I've never seen a software engineering firm listed in this study. Of the hardware/software companies, the reason they get on this list is probably their hardware side. I wonder why software is so hard to manage effectively. Is it because you don't have a reliable measurement of employee productivity? Is is because software is hard to modularize?
I guess you can class it as propoganda, but I term what I write as merely open promotion of a viewpoint,and I usually provide at least *some* background that leads to the reasoning. Best I'm gonna do on short internet forum posts.
---I "save and invest" but not in the usual manner, not really. Zero stocks or bonds, etc, none.Not even close to being classed as wealthy in any sort of traditional dollar figure way.
I "invest" in things differently, I always strive to eliminate middleman steps and costs for my goods and services, like I bought solar power, so I have a guaranteed minimum electric supply paid off now for years and years. Long term food,open pollinated heirloom seeds,etc, etc what is considered "normal" in the survival and preparedness community but not what is considered normal in "mainstream" joe six pack everything "just in time" community. All of my wealth is (well more or less) in tangibles assets of some form or another. As to money for money's sake, nope, never been a real high interest of mine, and yes, I know that's considered weird but other's opinions of that are not really my concern. Different strokes and all.
Umm, economically your data might need to be rechecked. Just a few thoughts here. We went from the world's largest creditor nation to the world's largest debtor nation in roughly 25 years. If that isn't considered "going down the crapper" I don't know what is. It's not all the way flushed yet, and the swirling around is contributing to the razzle dazzle, but she's been flushed. Check-just for a few-the top ten US banks derivatives exposure, the fortune 500 pension funds exposure, and re-run the social security ponzi scam projected numbers. Check population demographics in the US again. Just look at those, now add in true governmental borrowing/debt as opposed to them calling a reduction in spending once in awhile as a "surplus". Now look at international balance of trade figures. Now look at successful new business starts as opposed to closings and bankruptces and off-shore moves. If you want even more go back and uncook wall street historical indices by re-including the companies they pull off the bottom of the lists when they tank. That little *gem* of a misdirection is used to keep the numbers artifically inflated, it's a great shill.
I don't consider "accumulated debt combined with offers of more credit" to equate "produced accumulated wealth", although, again, I realise most people think they are the same or similar.
Now I don't think it's hopeless, but I do think that there seems to be an agenda or two out there to make things "bad" for awhile and to do it on purpose. You may ponder what that purpose might be for. I have some theories on it. I will term it a "controlled socio/economic implosion with some good plausible deniability" leading to yet another term which is "technofeudalism". Hope I'm wrong, not seeing a lot of evidence to dissuade me, look as I might.
Economically I'm a neo-bear right now if I can coin a term, socially for the US with politics as it is and some other factors I am a hardcore pessimist. Hardcore and not trying to dodge it whatsoever. I don't want to be but I am. The term used is "dragged kicking and screaming" to that position. I make provisions accordingly, and any friendly advice I give people is based on that, same as anyone else comes to conclusions and might offer a view or some advice. I know during the bubble I kept telling friends who were heavily "into" the market to take the profits while they could and not try to ride it to ridiculous heights that were so far out into implausible-land as to be laughable. Some did, some didn't, oh well. What I DO do is change my viewpoint occassionally based on new input and better data and changing current events,and I consider nothing man does as "carved in stone".
Microsoft is inherently competitive, and performance is transposed to a bell curve directly opposite your peers.
:-)
That being said, I work for MS and attended a top engineering school. Both required me to work my hardest, and both measured my performance against my peers. It's the kind of atmosphere I live for and strive for. I love the cool technology I get to work with, and I know if I try my hardest and create results then I'll always have a job with a ton of great perks.
In the end, MS has happy employees. They work hard, and are compensated for their efforts like any good company should. If your friend finds himself falling behind, then maybe this isn't the right industry for him- we're all destined to burn out in 8 years (and he seems far ahead of pace
I know quite a few people in the medical field, either doctors or management...
Yes, actually it is true. The AMA artificially restricts the number of doctors in the market to insure wages are kept high. Doctors also have the power to keep clinics from hiring additional doctors because it means sharing another piece of the pie. Doctors would rather see 3 month waiting lists than having another doctor on staff.
It's not that doctors don't care about their patients, but keeping their pockets lined with green is pretty high up on the priority lists. Now obviously there are groups such as Doctors without Borders that are exceptions.
As a former female intern (please female intern jokes aside), I can say that Microsoft, as good as it is in some aspects to its employees, is not flawless. I encountered a not insignificant amount of prejudice against women. I also encountered a lot of really irritating desperate come-ons. I have had a total of 6 internships at 4 various technology companies and never experienced these problems anywhere else.
For these, and a number of other reasons (the morality of the business plan is an important issue to me when accepting a job) I will never work for Microsoft again.
Feed this, muther fucker
This idea that the CEO is trying to be mister nice guy by taking a 20% pay cut is ridiculous.
A quick financial look shows that the Xilinx CEO Roelandts has over 4 million options worth $122 million. 20% of his $580k salary is NOTHING to him. What is important is stock price. A round of layoffs could deflate his options by $60 million or more if the stock price fell as a result.
No, the focus of the US government should be to protect the civil rights of US citizens. When government is applied to social "problems", the solution benefits only some at the expense of all others. In this scenario, you can expect waste, inefficiency, corruption, and oppression -- just like we have today in the US.
Ummmm, I ride a Harley full time ( including in the rain) and I'm a programmer. I like tweeking on my Linux systems, and I like tweeking on my motorcycles. There is a lot of simularity between Harleys and Linux. Harleys are designed to be massivley customisable, like Linux based computers. Harley riders tend to be more involved with understanding the internals of their ride, just as Linux users tend to be more familiar with their systems. Things don't always go right with a Harley, which ussualy means some whrenching time. Things don't always go right with Linux ( like trying to get a HP Scanjet 5300 working), which usualy means some coding time. And lastly, once you've owned a Harley, all other "bikes" just seem kinda lame, just like once you start using Linux/Unix, some other OSs seem kina lame. Of course both are predicated on the owner/user spending enough time to get familiar with the product. And lastly, the perseption of both,. by the uninitiated is clouded with FUD and misunderstanding. Harleys have not had outstanding quality issues for 17 years. Most Linux distros have been user friendly, easy to install, and able to support most hardware for at least 3 years.
Some of us like things with a few rough edges. How those rough edges are handeled is what gives them character.
Some of my code is like a Sportster. Simplisity and quickness is optimised.
Some of my code is like a Road King. Built to work all day and all night under heavy load.
Some of my code is like an FXDX. It looks hot, and performs even hotter, for cruising about in public.