On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 09:04:24PM +0000, Robin Houston wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 08:01:51PM +0000, Chris Benson wrote:
>
> > Another link is
> >
> > http://www.arsdigita.com/careers/
> >
> > They seem to be a very good model for a consultancy business
>
> Personally I wouldn't like to work anywhere that thinks like this:
> http://www.arsdigita.com/asj/managing-software-engineers/
>
> Even if that article is slightly tongue-in-cheek, it disturbs me :-)
I suspect it is *not* tongue-in-cheek -- he wants only the best and does
expect 70-80 hour weeks ... during a project. In some discussion I saw
about this he justified it two ways that I remember: (1) not everyone
worked on projects all the time and (2) if people did work full time on
projects they'd be getting about ~us$500k / year. (Having spent the
entire 80's doing 70-80 hour weeks for less than gbp10k I'd liked to
have had the chance!).
There are also good bits there which have been mentioned in other threads:
<quote>
The average home cannot accomodate a pinball machine. An office
can. The average home can have video games, which are very popular
with young programmers, but not people with whom to play. The
average home cannot have a grand piano but almost any office can.
Attractive
A worthwhile goal is to have at least one thing that is extremely
attractive about the physical enivronment for any particular
prospective software engineer. Here's a possible list:
* dog-friendly policy
* grand piano
* climbing wall
* indoor garden
* aquarium
* koi pond
* exercise room with fancy machines
* pinball machine
</quote>
I don't think I'd like to work for them though ... I'm getting old'n'soft
:-( and I find the attitude that comes over in Phil Greenspun's writing
rather (very!) arrogant. And of course they use <shudder> TCL.
But the organisational structure and strategy/vision *is* interesting.
Who might come to PO on Monday night (with chqbook for the machine) to see
what people are thinking of doing.
--
Chris Benson
