the ( 4 was supposed to be 1 / 8 inches thick... urgh...

your first and last pics... they are using re-bar... the second and third pics, are the thin ( 4 inches thick, or is supporting a lot of weight, or in the case of the first pic, providing support over a pipe or other such that you want to be protected, you'll use re-bar. thickness dependent on the use case. all other cases for sidewalks, (and even most concrete driveways in the U.S.) is to just use the mesh. -- ex-laborer who did a lot of commercial concrete work while going through college.

seriously. It is hard to find an IT based company run like this. I would definitely be willing to work in a place like this. It comes down to taking pride in yourself and the work you do; being able to say you are proud of the work you do with and for the company you work for without getting a big head doing so. I felt that when i worked construction, but since graduating from college and going full time IT (sysadmin, network admin, apps admin, and now full time developer) i have rarely seen or felt the same. The place i am now has a little bit of this feeling but not quite complete. The pay isn't so hot, but knowing that everyone here is here for the long haul and is trying to produce a quality product for the customer almost makes up for that.

i agree with this, and i've only been on both sides of the fence for about 2 years now. I've mostly done network/system admin for the last 5 years with some scripting/programming. The company i'm working for now almost seems to have it right; hire the programmers right out of college and try to teach them the correct way to work together as a team to produce quality code (it ...mostly... works) vs fighting older-ish (mid 30s) programmers who think they know it all.
Personally, i prefer the old timers (40's and older) because they know a LOT and most don't have chips on their shoulder because they have been around and seen the ups and downs of this buisiness.

That being said, i prefer network/system admin to programming, mostly due to being an "okay" programmer (otherwise known as "brute force"). I can get the job done, it will work, and hopefully work well, but it won't be pretty. where-as i feel (yea, my 2c) that i excel at network/system admin (more sys than network) as i can picture all the parts coming together into a whole in my mind even at the begining. and hopefully in a clean, efficient, (hopefully cheapish) setup.