I know one guy who got an offer from Google but chose to stay in CERN, so obviously he must like it. On the other hand, some of the stories he tells are not ver

I know one guy who got an offer from Google but chose to stay in CERN, so obviously he must like it. On the other hand, some of the stories he tells are not very reassuring. For example, someone recently decided that CERN would be a Microsoft-only shop, to the extent that the NNTP server news.cern.ch has been shut down because MS doesn't sell NNTP servers. However--this is sweet--the department where my friend works writes software that actually operates the detectors in the colliders, so it has to work so their department is exempt and they're still using Unix (Linux and LynxOS.) Another guy I know had to implement web applications using Oracle cartridges. Also, some say there's a lot of nasty politics going on there, my friend's wife quit CERN because of that. My guess is this also depends on the department.