100 Best Companies To Work For 534
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.'"
The Real Skinny... (Score:3, Informative)
Electronic Arts? (Score:2, Informative)
You don't believe me? Do a web-search. Nearly every Game-Industry Horror Story you're likely to find comes from someone who once worked for EA.
Re:The Container Store is #2? (Score:2, Informative)
I like the Container Store. I've purchased various containers there on numerous occasions, and on those occasions when I've had to consult the staff for assistance they've always been quite friendly and helpful.
But the fact is that I pretty much always end up there because I find the very concept of its existence to be extremely silly and novel. It's certainly not particularly convenient -- most if not all of their products could be purchased at supermarkets or office supply stores that are much closer to where I live, and if I actually have something that isn't a container on my list I'd have to go to a second store anyway.
So what I'm really trying to say is that I'm surprised to learn that they're doing so well, and more power to them. :)
Re:Where's HP? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:hm (Score:3, Informative)
Unions are a way to participate to a company from a social point of view in a much more structured manner than a few unexperimented individuals could do.
Re:Hewlett Packard? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:20% pay cut... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
CORRECTION:Who really cares? (Score:5, Informative)
This Top 100 is the final cut.
But don't take Carlos' word for it, see for yourself:
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/bestcom
Companies on this list use it to hype themselves (Score:3, Informative)
Since almost 40% of the companies who try to get on this thing do, I really view it as "pay Fortune Magazine some money, and we'll give you a nice-sounding list we'll put you on that you can use as a recruiting bullet item."
And yes, oh yes, we DO use it as a selling point in recruiting. A LOT. We even have one of those nice velcro signs we stick onto the recruiting booth at career fairs for this thing.
Re:I think a programmers union would be good... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Corporation is collectivist system (Score:2, Informative)
You're right. I ran into a fellow who teaches corporate law at a U. So I asked him about this. And his answer was that it allows lots of owners (stockholders) while pooling responsibility. IOW, the owners aren't responsible when the company gets sued, beyond any financial risk they have by owning stock. And that flat out stinks, too. Maybe I'm being idealistic, but I tend towards a Distributist view of things: distributed ownership, small companies, small farms. Hey, I think Tolkein did, too!
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.
In Enron's case, the owners _did_ pay: their stock tanked. But they willingly (albeitly stupidly) gave up decision making to someone else. What really sucks is most of us aren't willing to run our own businesses, but just want to melt into the warm embrace of the State or a Large Company that will take care of us.
Here's 10 (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2002/02dece
That list is an eye-opener!
Ali
Re:Microsoft is #20???? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Number 5 is great! (Score:2, Informative)
Ok, so it is patting myself (and my company on the back), but Adobe is truly a great place to work. It is a challenging, highly ethical environment, which provides a great place to create fantastic products. I have been in the industry for 20+ years and worked for a number of "icon" companies, and I have to say Adobe is the best place at which i have worked.
As for being a semi-startup, I can say that is only in spirit. In terms of employees (almost 3K), revenues (1.2 billion, second largest desktop software company), longevity (20 years and counting), and presence("Everywhere you look", refers to the fact that every piece of media you see has been touched by one or more Adobe products), we are a well established company.
It is a great company and we owe that fact to the culture established by John and Chuck when they founded the company. Think about the kind of company that has someone like Bob Sedgewick on its Board of Directors.
Re:I find this ranking pretty useless (Score:2, Informative)
One such example was when they actually told me that they couldn't perform my six month review (which was to include a raise as agreed upon when I was hired). Their reasoning being that the reviews were now being done by the accountant - and he had just started, so had no knowledge of my performance. I think the turnover rate started drastically increasing around that same time.
I knew all my co-workers though... still talk to plenty of them as well.
Re:Forgot one... (Score:5, Informative)
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...
I'd re-check the maths... (Score:2, Informative)
Where do I sign up??
Re:Hewlett Packard? (Score:3, Informative)
One day someone with a strong memory will write the whole story of how one of the greatest companies in America went completely off the track.
What goes UP must come DOWN!!!!! (Score:1, Informative)
There have been newspaper articles whereby a company burned down and therefore the employees are out of a job. But, the owner/CEO took money he had and kept every employee on with pay until the company was rebuilt. This was in a town where the only employer was him. Thus, in doing this he got deep employee loyalty to the company and this will be remembered for a long time. A town in New England.
There was another story whereby during the 1930's depression a local company which built the town and owned by a local tycoon business man who grew up there was told by his foreman about a new invention -- the steam shovel. The foreman told him it could replace 40 men and save money. He told the foreman forget about the steam shovel and put the 40 men to work! This was remembered and when the union came knocking at the door a few years later, it was the employees themselves who rose up, supported this man and forced the union out of town. This company was the HERSHEY CHOCOLATE COMPANY in HERSHEY,PA. USA. It worth about $5 billion today.
In the end it's all about people!!!