What's Your Dream Company to Work For?
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Everyone has different ideas about where they want to work. For some people, it is all about location. They love a company because it is based in a small town, or because it is in a big city or because it has many locations. Another is reputation. Who doesn't want to work for someplace famous or impressive? The work itself is a huge deal, of course. Do they do amazing IT? Do they have internal training? Do they advance from within? Do they have opportunities to do lots of different jobs over time? Is the work innovative and exciting? Maybe the work is steady and predictable? Type of work is a big factor too... are you part of internal IT or do you provide IT for clients? Maybe you are developing IT products.
There are many companies that would be exciting to work at. Many great companies are ones that no one would ever have heard of because they are small, new, foreign or they work in markets not visible to the normal consumer. People tends to be excited about companies with big end user foci and forget about ones that service other businesses, even though those are often the more exciting technical challenges and the more financially sound.
So.... what companies would you be excited to work for?
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For me, I think a lot of financial and energy companies have a lot of exciting possibility. Both sectors have big, multi-national players with deep pockets, a huge need for exciting IT and an understanding that IT drives their businesses and that it should be seen as a defining value in their corporate portfolios.
But if I was to distill down just a few places that I think are likely to be really amazing places to work (without having worked at any, so this is purely an outsiders view) my shortlist is, in no particular order...
- Microsoft
- Amazon
Why, you ask? All three are non-IT firms but all three depend heavily on IT and understand its value. Two are public cloud providers and one is a massive datacenter operator internally. All three develop their own technology and invest massively in research. All three are global and growing. All three see IT as an innovator and look at personal / career development as a top priority. All three push IT to new degrees and to develop new concepts for their internal IT. All three are large enough to have "full stack" IT internally allowing you to move up or sideways without leaving the organization.
And a big one for me, all three operate around the world with opportunities both in great US locations as well as non-US locations. Microsoft, at the extreme, operates in nearly every country!
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Not sure yet. Plantronics and Webroot are currently on my list though.
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@thanksaj said:
Not sure yet. Plantronics and Webroot are currently on my list though.
Interesting choices as neither is an IT company. One is a hardware vendor and the other is a software (and security) vendor. Neither provides IT as a service externally and neither has a large scale need for IT internally. Webroot, since they have a hosted product (SaaS) would have far more IT than Plantronics from a "more than plumbing" perspective. But as an IT professional, what drives either to be sought after opportunities? Both are great companies to get products from, but to "work at" in an IT role seems odd as dream companies.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
Not sure yet. Plantronics and Webroot are currently on my list though.
Interesting choices as neither is an IT company. One is a hardware vendor and the other is a software (and security) vendor. Neither provides IT as a service externally and neither has a large scale need for IT internally. Webroot, since they have a hosted product (SaaS) would have far more IT than Plantronics from a "more than plumbing" perspective. But as an IT professional, what drives either to be sought after opportunities? Both are great companies to get products from, but to "work at" in an IT role seems odd as dream companies.
I actually want to be a sales engineer for Plantronics. I could probably walk in today and do the job swimmingly.
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@scottalanmiller said:
- Microsoft
- Amazon
Having read Gary Paulse's "My Life in Dog Years" and Douglas Coupland's "Microserfs", I don't fancy working at two of those.
I guess, based on your descriptions of IT, that I'm not actually an IT guy, so I can't answer your thread. But I've always been slightly disspointed that I've never been involved in anything truly great - like sending someone to the moon or developing safer cars: creating products that are truly life changing.
That's always been my dilemna. I'm attracted to the cutting edge, but SMBs don't, as a rule, operate on the cutting edge.
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I don't have any definite choices out there. Right now I would like to work for a place where I can do mostly datacenter/infrastructure work and not a lot of helpdesk/user support (although I wouldn't mind that too much). I think one of the big public cloud places would be awesome to work for as, as you've said, they aren't IT companies but their entire business model is based around IT resources being available and having employees educated to support that always available infrastructure.
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as odd as it sounds....I really am thrilled to work for myself.
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Valve, because of their self-organizing teams and peer review system. The paramilitary corporate structure is a vestige from the industrial revolution and is counterproductive to knowledge work. That's why large companies can only innovate by buying small startups.
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Difficult to say. I fight boredom and repetition fatigue daily, my brain needs more stimulus then a regular office can give. Maybe it's burn out that I'm dealing with... but I want more...
Unlikely I'll ever find it...
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@Nic said:
Valve, because of their self-organizing teams and peer review system.
Facebook and Amazon self organize their teams too.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
Valve, because of their self-organizing teams and peer review system.
Facebook and Amazon self organize their teams too.
Good - I'm glad to see other companies following their lead.
