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I'm surprised no one has mentioned F*cked Company so far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company I graduated
by tomh 12y ago
I'm surprised no one has mentioned F*cked Company so far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company
I graduated from ArsDigita University in 2001. Right time, right place to see stuff completely implode. I must have sent 100+ resumes during 2001, and temped at Harvard for a while until getting a job through a friend in Feb 2002, in Java development. It wasn't great, so I kept up the job search and finally went to grad school in 2003 while finding a part-time consulting job, also in Java. That kept me afloat until I graduated in 2006, and moved out of the USA.
Looking back, the companies acted like they could do no wrong, and it bit them hard. ArsDigita was a dot-com darling for a while, but it did crazy things like sign ten-year leases for a branch office that could seat 20-30 people and they had 2-3 actual employees in that city.
I remember in ArsDigita University, we weren't based in the actual office but a place about a metro stop away (where ITA Software based themselves a decade later, yay lisp), in the basement. We started the program in September, and one day in March we were let into a larger, nicer office on the first floor and were told that AD also rented this part as well, anticipating another 20 or so programmers would work here as well. It remained empty until we moved out of the space later that year.
- x0x0 12y agoArs Digita was fucked by the ceo VCs brought in. You can read some very unhappy posts about it from Phil Greenspun. He took them down, I presume as part of a lawsuit settlement, but you can still find them if you google. Actually, here's a copy http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/ http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/
- tomh 12y agoThere's actually a few takes on the history, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Greenspun#ArsDigita_histories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Greenspun#ArsDigita_his... But you are right, that CEO was not the right guy for the job. His personality + Philip's no-bullshit attitude ended it.