4 ms·

I always find the "best places to work" type lists a lot of crap. Usually its just a case of biggest and best known companies. I have worked for a real mix of p

by collyw 9y ago

I always find the "best places to work" type lists a lot of crap. Usually its just a case of biggest and best known companies. I have worked for a real mix of places and the biggest companies haven't been any better than the smaller ones. Usually a good manager makes a far bigger difference.

mgkimsal 9y ago
I worked at a 'best place to work', and... the pay/benefits for many of the 'regular' folks was pretty good - above average for sure. and overall it was nice to work there, but the politics in the IT dept were difficult for me to deal with. I asked for a transfer to another project or another area and was declined so... there wasn't much option except to leave. I had one guy telling me to 'chill out' and relax some - he was dating the niece of the dept manager, so, there wasn't much chance of him having issues there. there was very much a culture of "person X has worked here longer, listen to them" regardless of how much experience they had with respect to the actual domain or technology on the project, which was frustrating. The managers I had were, most of them, nice people - I liked them. But it didn't seem they noticed or cared about the inefficiencies and politics going on. More than a few people said - "if you want to move up here, it's going to take 5-10 years of just 'being around'" and... I didn't care to wait that long (especially not when the gospel preached was about merit and ability being the measuring sticks).
klenwell 9y ago
I don't know the exact dynamics of how those Best Places to Work lists are compiled but I always got the feeling they were a form of vanity publishing used to keep local business journals and newspapers afloat. Funny story: after a couple years at last big corp I worked for, I guess there was a decision made to join the ranks of the area's Best Places to Work. So memos were circulated, surveys were sent out and lo and behold, a year later the announcement was made: we had made the list of Best Places to Work, Large Company category. There was even a company-wide ceremony with a big cake to celebrate the feat. So a few weeks later, I come across the actual dead-tree journal touting that year's Best Places to Work laying around in our breakroom. I open it up to find out where we actually ranked. Out of 44 companies in our category, #44. We improved over the next couple years. Banners appeared around campus celebrating our achievement. The cakes got bigger. Things got worse for me personally at the company. As you can probably guess, the impression I and others got was that the ranking was actually more important than actual employee sentiment. And I got the distinct sense that HR was motivated even moreso than previously for the sake of their Best Places ranking to push out employees that were critical (even legitimately, perhaps especially legitimately) of the way the company operated than deal constructively with their concerns.
- utellme 9y ago
  It's just a way to attract best manpower. Why not? Kind of HR marketing. Anyway "best place to work" is not patented, anybody could attach their "version" of this tag to any company. Like "people of the year" or "most wealthiest".
d1zzy 9y ago
Hmm not sure about this. I would say that the size of the company (or rather, its profit/disposable income) greatly affects flexibility of employee benefiting policies, at least when it comes to the financial costs associated with them. So yes, if you work in a very profitable company under a crappy manager then it will be a very crappy life. If you work in a non-profitable company under a great manager it will be a better life than the former but not matter how great your manager is he/she won't be able to help you with things like benefits, compensation, additional hardware/software to make your work easier. The size of the company also gives a lot more options to find different projects to work on. I would say statistically speaking you are likely to end up with an average manager and if you are then it's better to be at a largely profitable company while under such a manager. :)

by collyw 9y ago

mgkimsal 9y ago

I worked at a 'best place to work', and... the pay/benefits for many of the 'regular' folks was pretty good - above average for sure. and overall it was nice to work there, but the politics in the IT dept were difficult for me to deal with. I asked for a transfer to another project or another area and was declined so... there wasn't much option except to leave. I had one guy telling me to 'chill out' and relax some - he was dating the niece of the dept manager, so, there wasn't much chance of him having issues there. there was very much a culture of "person X has worked here longer, listen to them" regardless of how much experience they had with respect to the actual domain or technology on the project, which was frustrating. The managers I had were, most of them, nice people - I liked them. But it didn't seem they noticed or cared about the inefficiencies and politics going on. More than a few people said - "if you want to move up here, it's going to take 5-10 years of just 'being around'" and... I didn't care to wait that long (especially not when the gospel preached was about merit and ability being the measuring sticks).

klenwell 9y ago

I don't know the exact dynamics of how those Best Places to Work lists are compiled but I always got the feeling they were a form of vanity publishing used to keep local business journals and newspapers afloat. Funny story: after a couple years at last big corp I worked for, I guess there was a decision made to join the ranks of the area's Best Places to Work. So memos were circulated, surveys were sent out and lo and behold, a year later the announcement was made: we had made the list of Best Places to Work, Large Company category. There was even a company-wide ceremony with a big cake to celebrate the feat. So a few weeks later, I come across the actual dead-tree journal touting that year's Best Places to Work laying around in our breakroom. I open it up to find out where we actually ranked. Out of 44 companies in our category, #44. We improved over the next couple years. Banners appeared around campus celebrating our achievement. The cakes got bigger. Things got worse for me personally at the company. As you can probably guess, the impression I and others got was that the ranking was actually more important than actual employee sentiment. And I got the distinct sense that HR was motivated even moreso than previously for the sake of their Best Places ranking to push out employees that were critical (even legitimately, perhaps especially legitimately) of the way the company operated than deal constructively with their concerns.

utellme 9y ago
It's just a way to attract best manpower. Why not? Kind of HR marketing. Anyway "best place to work" is not patented, anybody could attach their "version" of this tag to any company. Like "people of the year" or "most wealthiest".

d1zzy 9y ago

Hmm not sure about this. I would say that the size of the company (or rather, its profit/disposable income) greatly affects flexibility of employee benefiting policies, at least when it comes to the financial costs associated with them. So yes, if you work in a very profitable company under a crappy manager then it will be a very crappy life. If you work in a non-profitable company under a great manager it will be a better life than the former but not matter how great your manager is he/she won't be able to help you with things like benefits, compensation, additional hardware/software to make your work easier. The size of the company also gives a lot more options to find different projects to work on. I would say statistically speaking you are likely to end up with an average manager and if you are then it's better to be at a largely profitable company while under such a manager. :)