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Why Quit? Because the other company has bigger monitors.

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Re: Why Quit? Because the other company has bigger monitors.

#81

Post by mkopinsky »

jsprinkles wrote: post #13
ajross wrote: post #4

I think the meta-point sort of makes sense. Places that don't skimp on resources which are a comparatively small fraction of salary (monitors, fancy coffee makers, catered food, etc...) are more likely to value their employees. That said: I use a single 15.6" laptop on a stand (or, of course, in my lap) for pretty much everything I do. I find the added productivity of always having everything I work on in front of me…

Speak for yourself. In operations, I have far too many graphs and widgets and knick-knacks, and I can really use all the real estate given to me (particularly when in command). I have duals and still don't have enough. At my last job, I even stuck a USB dongle on my iMac for a third, but it ended up being a painful experience and negatively impacted things like Exposé. You can never go too Star Trek when it comes to…

I am dying to hear what all your graphs and widgets and knick-knacks are. Maybe post a screenshot with mini-paragraphs of what each thing is and why you genuinely need it in a crisis?

Re: Why Quit? Because the other company has bigger monitors.

#82

Post by mark-r »

crazygringo wrote: post #8

The monitors, I totally understand and agree with. That's about actual productivity. But choosing your own e-mail address? There must be a thousand little details like that in my life, every day, that I have no control over, like the color of my desk, or the sound of a coworker's voice. By all means, try to find a workplace that suits you the best, but if a seemingly tiny detail like that bothers you so much, unless…

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2000-08-19/

Re: Why Quit? Because the other company has bigger monitors.

#83

Post by jack-r-abbit »

My first work email ever was first initial and last name. It made sense. I liked it. That is what I used when I got my own domain later. It is what I got @gmail. Interestingly, every job I have had since that first has also used the same format. If I was given the chance at my next job to pick my own email address.. it would probably be the same. :)

Re: Why Quit? Because the other company has bigger monitors.

#84

Post by steve8918 »

Valuing an employee's time is definitely something that should be considered.

But even taken a few steps further than "I need another monitor to increase productivity", and you're floating dangerously close to self-entitlement, and simple, pathetic whining.

At Yahoo, I distinctly remember a thread on devel-random where one employee, in a single post, complained about things like how ugly the color scheme of the walls were, the fact that buildings in Mercado had too many floors, so when he left work, he has to stop at all the floors, and that the parking lot had flies that would get stuck in his hair gel. He called Yahoo the "worst place in the world to work at" because of this. It was incredibly sickening how ridiculous the email was.

The employer-employee relationship is a balance. If it swings too far in one direction where the employees get their ass kissed every day, then you breed self-entitled spoiled brats that are intolerable to work with. If it swings too far towards the employer, you get a dictatorship. I've worked in both environments, and neither of them are any good.

But to quit because you think that monitors are a litmus test about the engineering culture is ridiculous and is more of a reflection on you than the engineering culture. If you have a problem, solve it like an adult. It sounds like the employee didn't even mention it to his boss until he left. (It also sounds like the boss didn't bother asking the employee at their 1:1's about what they thought needed changing, or maybe he was just unapproachable.) Maybe it was just an oversight, maybe they didn't have the money, who knows. Life in general is a lot easier if you're flexible and less of a prima donna and go with the flow. To keep quibbling over the minutiae and extrapolate that to mean something more than it is, to me, is more whining than anything else.

Re: Why Quit? Because the other company has bigger monitors.

#85

Post by pbreit »

joshu wrote: post #56
enneff wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Google your username appears everywhere. In mail, code reviews, chat, irc - everywhere. I know some of my colleagues by their username only, I don't even remember their real names. When we start we get to specify three usernames in order of preference. You are given the first one that is available. It means a lot to me to be adg@google.com.

do you really want your raw email available publically?

It's really not that big of a deal. More people should do it, especially constituent-friendly people.

Re: Why Quit? Because the other company has bigger monitors.

#86

Post by pbreit »

joshu wrote: post #76
dangrossman wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been posting my e-mail addresses in plaintext all over the web for a good decade and a half. I still use those same addresses. I see no spam. Spam filters work. Why are people afraid of having their e-mail address out there without obfuscation?

I get a boatload of spam daily. On gmail.

Did you turn off or otherwise adjust spam filtering? Otherwise, I don't believe you.

At my last job (large, successful startup) I got the wildcard mail and got close to zero spam. Gmail spam filtering definitely works very well.

Re: Why Quit? Because the other company has bigger monitors.

#87

Post by jrockway »

damoncali wrote: post #32

Just a thought I'm not sure I actually believe myself: Does catering to every trivial whim (email address? really?) of your employees create a culture of entitled whiners? I've never worked at such a place, so I wouldn't know.

Yes. But what's the point of spending all that money on employees if they aren't 100% happy?

Re: Why Quit? Because the other company has bigger monitors.

#88

Post by rwg »

rdl wrote: post #45

Of all the "big companies" I've seen, Facebook has the best internal IT. A lot of those policies were set by Yishan Wong; basically, if something can be done more efficiently by an individual employee than by using IT, the process is broken. ( http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/ ) Facebook IT is basically a cache, but if something is faster to get from the Apple Store or whatever, that's how they did it -- not sure how it…

If you think corporate IT is dysfunctional, try working at a government agency or a public university.

Something as simple as buying a new desktop computer to replace a ten year old, dying computer turns into a multi-week affair where every step of the purchase is stymied by some layer of bureaucracy. (Inevitably, one of those layers of bureaucracy is on vacation this week and won't get around to rejecting your purchase requisition until next Monday.)

If your purchase exceeds some magic dollar amount and has to go out for bids, ${DEITY} help you. You might put out an RFP for a toaster and end up with Purchasing selecting a bidder offering a lawnmower because they're a small business, woman-owned business, or minority-owned business, and that fact gave them enough extra points in the selection matrix to beat all of the bidders offering a toaster.

Re: Why Quit? Because the other company has bigger monitors.

#89

Post by rdl »

rwg wrote: post #88
rdl wrote: post #45

Of all the "big companies" I've seen, Facebook has the best internal IT. A lot of those policies were set by Yishan Wong; basically, if something can be done more efficiently by an individual employee than by using IT, the process is broken. ( http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/ ) Facebook IT is basically a cache, but if something is faster to get from the Apple Store or whatever, that's how they did it -- not sure how it…

If you think corporate IT is dysfunctional, try working at a government agency or a public university. Something as simple as buying a new desktop computer to replace a ten year old, dying computer turns into a multi-week affair where every step of the purchase is stymied by some layer of bureaucracy. (Inevitably, one of those layers of bureaucracy is on vacation this week and won't get around to rejecting your purch…

I spent most of 2004-2010 working on government/military (including NATO and Iraqi and Afghan government, which were the worst) IT contracting.

For instance, it took me 5 months and a 3-star general's approval needed to make a (trivial) firewall change, between two lobes of a network all at the same accreditation level. It only happened THAT fast because making the change had a measurable impact on trauma care (i.e. it probably saved >1 life).

Re: Why Quit? Because the other company has bigger monitors.

#90

Post by eshvk »

steve8918 wrote: post #84

Valuing an employee's time is definitely something that should be considered. But even taken a few steps further than "I need another monitor to increase productivity", and you're floating dangerously close to self-entitlement, and simple, pathetic whining. At Yahoo, I distinctly remember a thread on devel-random where one employee, in a single post, complained about things like how ugly the color scheme of the walls…

I am not so sure that the situation is as simple as that. My perception is that these tiny issues are usually symptoms of an underlying reason why there is no longer (if there ever was) a fit between the company and a person. I think what happens is that once a person consciously or not realizes that this underlying reason has come up, all these tiny things start becoming more and more irritating, until the person explodes.
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