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Best Places To Work In IT
jcatcw writes "Computerworld's annual summary of the best places to work in IT lists companies that excel in five areas of employment: career development, retention, benefits, diversity, and training. According to the scorecard, the top five retention methods are: competitive benefits; competitive salaries; work/life balance; flexible work hours; and tuition reimbursement. Of the top 100 companies, 64 expect the number of U.S.-based IT staffers to increase in 2007, on average by 7%. Here is the whole list. The top three are Quicken Loans, University of Miami, and Sharp HealthCare."
My company is on the list, top 20 even, and I'm sorry but it's a joke. This is a miserable place to work, with most people answering these things positively because if they don't they get subjected to even worse "morale improvement" exercises.
I was expecting to see Computerworld in that list.
Frankly, I've always enjoyed in smaller companies, because the beauracracy is far less annoying and you can be more personable with the people in the company. They never really include those companies, because if they actually tried, they'd have thousands of companies to interview and it would take too much time. But if they really wanted a list that made sense they'd include smaller businesses. Expand the definition a little more and stop making such a big deal about being a huge corporation.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
From TFA:
Why it's the best
"Celebration galas at this online loan company are star-studded: Kid Rock performed at the 2006 holiday gala and The Black Eyed Peas were featured performers at the company's 20th anniversary party."
Judging by that line-up of artists I wouldn't even want to work in an adjacent area!
On the beach, with my laptop, sipping a Corona, watching the babes.
And then I woke up.
Maybe my standards are different, but the companies on that list don't seem very interesting.
It reminds me many years ago ('97) when I and a coworker decided we had had enough of the company we were working for, and decided to make a top ten list of companies we wanted to work for. Both of us landed jobs with our number one choice, but our top ten lists were very different. Mine was a list of coolest companies to work for, and mostly startups (Cygnus Solutions being at the top of my list), and his were more "nicest" companies to work for (SAS being at the top of his list, they have a 35 hour work week, pianist in the cafeteria, gyms, etc).
Perks are great and all, but if the work is not intellectually challenging, or just patience-challenging, and I'm not pushing the envelope, I'm going to be bored out of my skull and not improving my skills, which is a terrible way to spend almost one third of your life.
Exactly what groundbreaking technologies are being developed at a loan website, besides finding new ways to get past my spam filters?
They were for real. My ass was saved by a 2600 reader who knew I was into code.
Your name was not required on the form, but the teachers issued specific instructions about how to hand the forms forward, but only *after* we had finished filling them out (my school had seating charts for every class). All of the forms were to be handed forward with the student in front placing their form on top of the student in back. Why should that have mattered if the results were to be anonymous?
I thought I was fucked after I heard that. Then I got a whap on the back of the head in the hallway after class. It was the kid who sat in front of me. He called me a fuck-wad and told me he had scratched the shit out of my form.
Other kids got expelled for telling the truth.
After word got around they discontinued the surveys and just brought in drug sniffing dogs. Yes, I was in one of *those* school districts. Too much cash and too little brains.
Regards.
"...top five retention methods are: competitive benefits; competitive salaries; work/life balance; flexible work hours; and tuition reimbursement"
Free World of Warcraft gold is conspicuously missing from the list.
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
I work for Google, and I gotta tell you, it's a pain to have to research an answer and type up a page of results within 0.17 seconds of a user hitting the Search button. Someone help!