A Glassdoor review of a former employer includes these two bits: Pro: You can get lost in the masses with over 90,000 employees. Great for under-achievers.
Con: Lots of dead wood.
C'mon, pick a side. :-) Originally posted at http://cellio.dreamwidth.org/1994519.html.
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As I gather is increasingly common in larger US companies, my employer tries to entice people to actually get annual bloodwork by offering a discount on insurance to people who cough up some basic stats -- cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, and a couple other things. (Assurances of confidentiality are made; cost-benefit analysis is left to ( Read more... )

Our director of engineering paid a visit to our local office today. The meetings were productive and didn't have too much growling and snarling.
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My employer provides free drinks, including soft drinks, but because ours is a small office we have to do our own buying. When supplies get low somebody goes to the store, which requires carrying cases of pop a couple blocks. Particularly during the winter this sometimes broke down, so that got us to look at options.

It feels wrong that it is ( Read more... )

One day last week on my way out of the office, I encountered a pair of college-age women who looked a little lost. One politely asked if they could ask me something, so I said sure. (Cue ominous music ( Read more... )

Message from landlord: "In accordance with city ordinance blah blah, we will be conducting a mandatory evacuation drill on $date at 10AM."

Implied message from landlord: "Unless you particularly want to walk down 43 flights of stairs, that might be a good day to make other plans ( Read more... )

Two items seen in rapid succession today:

• Here's why you're not hiring the best and brightest: (Jeff Atwood) talks about making telecommuting work so that you really can hire the best employees, as opposed to the best employees willing to live in a particular location. I once applied for a telecommuting position at a company that seems to get it ( Read more... )

I haven't really prepared a "year in review" post, but here are some random notes and thoughts.
On the job front there have been ups and downs but the year ended on an ( Read more... )

Today at my software-development job I learned that if an active shooter in your building is throwing grenades you should hit the ground flat, but if he's shooting bullets you should instead crouch down, because grenade shrapnel goes up but bullets ricochet off the floor. Who knew? (Cover is also recommended if available, of course ( Read more... )

Today I attended a day-long class on web-service technologies. (Yeah, late to the party.) Being a programmer was not a prerequisite (though it helped), and most people there weren't. This wasn't so much about programming and software design as about getting from WSDLs (web-service specifications) to code and vice-versa, and about understanding ( Read more... )