I'm doing contract work right now... no perks and I take care of my own health insurance. (Though I do work from home, which is nice.) I'll be hiding from the real world in grad skool for the next 5-7 years, and hopefully by the time I emerge 1)the job market won't suck 2)I'll be badass enough to be worth wooing.

But you know what? I'm not going to particularly care about free beer (though I do like beer), or a foosball table, or free dinner. The kind of "perk" I want is not having to have my dinner there. Good maternity (and paternity) leave. Flexible hours. Maybe day care. I want to work at the kind of place where it's OK for me to bring well-behaved kids into the office if I need to. Where it's OK for me to be part-time for a year. I don't want my career to suffer unduly if I think my family is important. I don't want to work long hours until I burn out.

And as I'm writing this, I wonder what the hell is wrong that I regard this sort of basic sanity and moderation as a "perk". The perks of the dot-com boom were great fun for self-absorbed twenty-somethings... which is what I am now, but I won't be forever.

stealing someone's indentity, which he then used to launch his spam messages

How long until we find out that the real spammer used Howard Carmak's identity to spam and is still on the loose?!?