Re: On Finding, Hiring, Inspiring and Keeping

My best job was eventually ruined by various circumstances. The company, however, was excellent.

Free lunches
Free drinks
Profit-sharing plan
Bonuses twice yearly
Relatively flat hierarchy; within Compliance limits you could talk to anyone in the company
up-to-date hardware
Health care paid by company, not employee
Excellent parties

The company was employee-owned, which may have had something to do with it. People were not fired frequently, and left very infrequently.

My second-best job wasn't in IT. It was at a movie theater. It offered:

Free movies
Free popcorn
Young ladies who were very open and affectionate and wore short skirts
leading to excellent parties

This leads me to believe it's either the free food, or the parties, that make or break a workplace. However, "get the right people" has a strong ring of authenticity.

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_{s''limp';@p=split '!','n!h!p!';s,m,s,;$s=y;$c=slice @p1;so brutally;d;$n=reverse;$c=$s**$#p;print(''.$c^chop($n))while($c/=$#p)>=1;}

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Re^2: On Finding, Hiring, Inspiring and Keeping
by apotheon (Deacon) on Apr 11, 2006 at 23:34 UTC

That is an excellent comparison! Kudos! It really points out some of the finer details of why the first example was a good one. In general, it's more important to know why some strategies work than to have a laundry-list of previously successful strategies. Don't ask yourself what workplace characteristics are conducive to good workers: ask yourself why those characteristics work. The details can change, but the underlying reasons those details were good at one time remain the same. While you didn't specifically point out the underlying reasons per se, you certainly pointed out that the underlying reasons aren't dependent upon the form they take.

print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);
- apotheon
CopyWrite Chad Perrin

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