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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.

#161

Post by [deleted] »

gnarizard wrote: post #69
jroseattle wrote: post #37

For the engineers I've hired onto my team, I insist they be provided the very things that I want as an engineer: - Two big monitors - New dev machine/laptop, running latest bits - A top-of-the-line chair - Some natural light (not to be confused with *natty light*) These are the non-negotiable items, and having taken a few senior mgmt positions, it's now something I state upfront: this is how we roll, no exceptions. T…

Natural light can't be emphasized enough. I just moved to a window-less fluorescent fishbowl shared by three analysts/developers, and I've never had so many headaches.

[deleted]

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

#162

Post by mgkimsal »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #80
fishtoaster wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I spend at least 8 hours of every weekday- often 60% of my waking day (more if you skip commuting/eating/etc). Salary generally improves my life outside of work, but niceties at the office improve the chunk of my life that money can't. A $900 chair that lasts for 5 years is negligible next to my salary in terms of actual cost to the company, but it huge in terms of the impact on my life.

They're not mutually exclusive. The pay difference is often substantially more than the cost of the benefits disbursed, i.e. if salaries were normalised you could more than buy all the benefits on your own. Salary can improve your life at work as well, e.g. I got sick of waiting for my seventh monitor and so just bought one while procurement did its 6 days for a line of code routine.

I got yelled at once for adding 512meg of ram to my corporate desktop out of my own pocket. Went from either 256 or 512 to 768 or 1gig - can't remember. Either way, I was transitioning in to some Java/Eclipse work, and the current RAM wasn't cutting it, so after waiting for a couple weeks, I just went to the store and bought some. Apparently, that's not good. :/

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

#163

Post by ticks »

If someone's complaining about the size of a monitor as a reason for leaving then there's a good chance that it isn't the monitors! People don't like burning bridges when they leave a job, so they are highly unlikely to say the real reason - especially when the person that's asking for the reason is the actual problem.

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

#164

Post by brown9-2 »

mattmanser wrote: post #154
IgorPartola wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this new obsession with "let's just put everyone in a giant room so they can collaborate". I think it's a cop-out to not get bigger/better laid out offices. Developers need to write code either alone or in pairs. Large places breed interruptions, killing productivity. All these experimental ideas with unassigned offices where anyone uses them when they need to don't work either because people will simply…

What's new about it? It's rare these days to get your own office for any job. Open plan somehow took over all the workplaces to all our detriment.

I think the relatively recent thing is putting everyone in an open room with nothing really separating you from the person sitting at the long table next to you, as opposed to putting people in cubicles which at least have a tiny suggestion of separation.

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

#165

Post by jwoah12 »

goblin89 wrote: post #151
nirvana wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be a clear dividing line. On one hand you have things that benefit productivity-- like monitors and good chairs and a decent work environment. On the other hand you have convenience petty complaints like the flies in the parking lot or too many floors in the buildings. Good management should be able to tell the difference between the two and at least score well on the productivity relevant ones. In my…

To tell the difference between the two is the problem. An understanding of decent work environment varies from person to person. Is it better to have small or large offices? I'd say the larger the better, having working people around helps me concentrate. Does coffee benefit productivity? I'd say it certainly does not (contrast to a good nap at the right moment), and probably isn't very good for health. Now, if I'm a…

> Does coffee benefit productivity? I'd say it certainly does not (contrast to a good nap at the right moment), and probably isn't very good for health.

I know this isn't the point of your comment, but I had to point out this recent study that begs to differ.

http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/17/coffee-drink-more-live...

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

#166

Post by brown9-2 »

gaius wrote: post #104
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…

you're floating dangerously close to self-entitlement, and simple, pathetic whining Developers acting like this, and getting away with it, should ring the bubble alarm bells. It's how it was in the 90s too.

There have been entitled office workers for a very long time, regardless of how well the office might be doing.

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

#167

Post by hollerith »

DanBC wrote: post #147
hollerith wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when Usenet and mailing lists were the medium for most of the important conversations on the internet (that is, before 1994 or 1995) if you tried to post to Usenet or a mailing list with an obfuscated email address, people would complain (in replies to your post) if the admins running Usenet or the mailing list let your post through at all.

This was enforced with various levels of strictness. DE usenet is still pretty strict about not allowed munged email addresses, and only allowing you to use an address that you have control of. Other bits of Usenet would tolerate carefully munged From headers, but insist on empty or real Reply-to headers. (Reply to wasn't returned in a simple header retrieval, meaning it wasn't as often scraped. And it was optional.…

>Other bits of Usenet would tolerate carefully munged From headers

before 1994?

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

#168

Post by hollerith »

joshu wrote: post #95
pbreit wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nope. I don't mess with it. I am using GAFYD though.

Very interesting! I wonder if spammers steer clear of @gmail.com addresses to prevent Google's algorithms from learning about their spam. (If so, they probably want to steer clear of GAFYD addresses, too, but maybe they don't know how to identify them).

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

#169

Post by vonmoltke »

fishtoaster wrote: post #59
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right with you on things that impact productivity, e.g. monitors, chairs, etc., but coming from finance I'm impressed by how Silicon Valley will take huge pay cuts for little things like catered food, pinball machines, or hammocks. I didn't realise it until a VC (not going to name them, but a big one) showed me a graph during his pitch of how much less his start-ups pay in cash + equity versus similar companies for "…

Because I spend at least 8 hours of every weekday- often 60% of my waking day (more if you skip commuting/eating/etc). Salary generally improves my life outside of work, but niceties at the office improve the chunk of my life that money can't. A $900 chair that lasts for 5 years is negligible next to my salary in terms of actual cost to the company, but it huge in terms of the impact on my life.

> Salary generally improves my life outside of work

It also reduces the amount of time you are dependent on someone else to write you paychecks and reduces the likelihood that you will be stuck in an undesirable situation due to financials.

I would rather have a higher salary at a place that let me buy and use my own $900 chair, second monitor, or what have you, because the salary increase will likely be much greater than the cost of those items and the company's willingness to let me do that tells me quite a bit about the environment and culture I will be working in.

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

#170

Post by sethg »

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…

Ah, yes, now I am recalling the AC Adapter Saga from my last employer. We all got free cell phones (with free data plans), but for some reason mine didn’t have an AC adapter in the box. No big deal; I could just recharge it over USB. But it took weeks if not months before the adapter actually arrived. I pointed out to the HR person that if they would reimburse me, I would be happy to run out to Radio Shack and buy the appropriate adapter, but of course, That Simply Was Not Done.

The kicker, of course, is that my employer WAS THE COMPANY THAT MADE THE CELL PHONES.

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