The Digerati Life

Profiling the best company in the world.

I’ve had the fortune to work at some great companies, which offered perks that were almost as good as the salaries they gave out. What’s it like at these places? For successful, top-notch companies, rewards abound (to keep employees loyal); and here are some of the extras that can round out one’s compensation package:

• Free gym and pool
• Stock options (a piece of the equity pie)
• Bonus plans
• Referral bonuses
• 401K with matching
• Educational plan
• Child care services on work campus
• ESPP
• Health Reimbursement Plans
• Flexible Spending Plans
• Matching donations to charities and schools
• Relocation assistance
• Life and disability insurance

These benefits are awesome and can make many hours of toiling away in a cubicle much more palatable. But great as these benefits are, they’re just the tip of the iceberg for a company that has regularly captured the #1 title as “Best Company” in the nation. In Silicon Valley, this is where everyone (from accountants to engineers to web designers) wishes they could work, so I was curious to find out what it really was like to work at a place where nerds rule .

Profile of A Top Company

Fortune’s number one company to work for “sets the standard for Silicon Valley: free meals, swimming spa, and free doctors onsite. Engineers can spend 20% of time on independent projects. Their company is so stinking rich that it continues to ooze cash even while lavishing benefits on its staff. ” They’re also responsible for a good portion of California’s tax dollars.

These are the reasons why Google takes the title as the best place to work:

What’s it like?
Life for Google employees at the Mountain View campus is like college. It feels like the brainiest university imaginable - one in which every kid can afford a sports car (though geeky hybrids are cooler here than hot rods).

Fun, healthful activites
At Google you can work out in the gym; attend subsidized exercise classes; get a massage (by a masseuse or fancy massage chairs); study Mandarin, Japanese, Spanish and French and ask a personal concierge to arrange dinner reservations. Too many amenities to count, including lap pool, rock climbing wall, pool table. Or how about beach volleyball, Foosball, videogames, ping pong and roller hockey twice a week in the parking lot. Oh yeah, dogs allowed.

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A family member who is very close to me is leaving the United States for good to move to Singapore today. He’s leaving with his wife and two kids in tow to start anew in a foreign land, and the reason? Work opportunities.

Sounds a little strange, don’t you think? That someone who’s lived in the U.S. for over 20 years (that’s how long he’s lived here) has decided to up and go elsewhere to build his career. I find it somewhat odd that things are happening in reverse here, when most people are clamoring to come into this country for a piece of the dream.

He made this decision based on the skills both he and his wife possess: they feel that they can build a stronger clientele in Asia for the type of business they’re interested in developing. It’s a dreadful loss for us here, that’s for sure, as we’ve been very happy to have such a strong, extended family network in the Bay Area whom we see regularly for support, fun and good times. We’re breaking some physical bonds here, and gaining a lot of hand-me-downs in the process (the family has had to give away and sell off most of their belongings to prepare for the relocation and first dibs goes to relations). But really, I find no silver lining in this situation: freebies don’t matter, family does.

It’s interesting how economics and finances shape families. In our case, my kids will be missing out on building relationships and enjoying the companionship of other family members their age, whom we’ll probably scarcely see through the years. I’m guessing we’ll all be much older when we see them next, and that’s what’s sad. Do you ever stop to think about how many more opportunities you’ll have to see a close relation or friend who lives far away? If you see them once a year, could you count in one hand how many more chances you’ll have to be with them?

The stories of immigrants are never easy, but we can only do the best we can.

What if you could be a fly in the wall at some company you’re really interested in joining? Know what life is really like at the company where you commit your precious 50 hours a week to.

As employees, we get ourselves ranked, rated and reviewed every time we have a performance evaluation from which our raise and bonus are determined accordingly. Wouldn’t it be great if we could have some way of gauging our bosses in a similar fashion and have the world know about it?

Do you want…

• A place to vent about your place of work?
• A way to see what others are saying about your company?
• A way to check out what goes on at other companies?
• A place for your inner whistleblower to speak?
• Or just a way to screen companies for your job search?

Then use this Web 2.0 solution to kick your company’s tires.

We’re in luck because all these concerns can now be addressed by a neat little Web 2.0 service called Glassdoor.com. With this fairly innovative (and addictive) tool, you’ll get the scoop on whatever company or job within a specific company that you’d like to know more about. It exists to rank, rate and review jobs, companies and company leaders, and in true Web 2.0 fashion, the info is supplied by anonymous insiders (current and former employees). This is where you have the chance to get some feedback (or sordid truth?) about your potential employers. Or if you’re currently employed, you can see how your job stacks up against everyone else.

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Which are the best jobs and careers that weather a downtrend? Do you know which ones may not last?

Photo by rollerboogie

When you’re in between jobs or just starting out, one wise move you can make is to consider work that may possibly be immune to economic shifts. And what exactly are these recession proof jobs like? Here are some things you should be looking for:

• Jobs that are in high demand,
• that require special skills,
• that continue to provide goods and services regardless of what goes on with the economy,
• that are found in specific industries that show resistance to downturns,
• that are offered by stable companies that have the foundation to weather financial and market cycles.

I’ve got my own personal story that illustrates what I’ve done to get through some tough economic periods: During the high tech boom of the 1990’s I took a lot of risks and jumped from one employer to another, eventually landing a job at a small startup that wasn’t making any money. But in the early 2000’s, I was one of the numerous casualties of the dot com bust. So can you guess what I did after I got laid off? After a short break, I decided to sign up with a mature, stable and large company that offered me a full time job. Gone were my days as a contractor as I no longer had the nerve to take chances with my paycheck. And there I stayed for a good long four years (the longest I stayed anywhere!) until I decided to leave on my own volition.

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Recession proof your job and career!

I’m planning a series that lists out some of the best choices you can make during this recession. I’ll start off with what you can do for your job and career during tough times like we’re experiencing now.

With unemployment numbers aggravating the markets last week, we’re seeing a quadruple whammy of bad economic news (sez The New York Times) permeating through the financial atmosphere with no respite in sight:

The labor market is continuing to deteriorate, eroding the size of paychecks, just as gasoline and food prices surge, and as the declining value of real estate erodes the wealth and credit of many households.

It appears that the real estate downturn is winding its way into other sectors in this manner:

The details of the report fleshed out how economic troubles that began with the fall of real estate prices and then spread to the construction industry have continued to ripple out to other areas of the economy. Many homeowners who are no longer able to borrow against the values of their houses have been cutting their spending, shrinking sales at shopping malls, grocery stores and home improvement outlets. That has prompted to businesses to cut payrolls, taking more purchasing power out of the economy.

Our earlier prognostications about the badness of the subprime and credit debacle appear to be happening — whatever troubles we have today are at least partially caused by the housing slowdown. But as a community, we’re now extending our worries beyond foreclosures, eroding property values and tight credit; these days we’re also much more concerned about job security and our livelihood.

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Can you really double your salary without having to work more? What a premise!

I’ve never met anyone who didn’t want to get paid more for the job they were doing. I’ve heard it described time and again that the best job out there, is one that offers you the most money for the least amount of work that you need to do. If you’re delivering the goods day in and day out, I don’t see why you shouldn’t feel that you deserve just a bit more.

Conventional wisdom tells us that if we work harder, we’ll end up making more money. Although reward is certainly very often tied to more effort and more contributions, effort and reward don’t always go hand-in-hand. Just ask the guy who’s been sitting at the back cubicle for the last 5 years, pulling all those all nighters. Do you even remember his name?

Anyway, enough snark. There are things we can all do to increase our employment income without necessarily having to do any more work or having to change our job description. Some ideas are easy to implement, while others may sound a bit more radical but may float your boat anyway:

Want More Salary? Work Smarter, Not Harder

So you’d like to get paid a bit more for your time, effort and services. Well, if you use a little bit of strategy, be a little more scrupulous and do a little more planning in advance of getting a job, you may just snag a better paying position.

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Think back to the time when you’d take on summer jobs or interned while you were still in school. It was fun, easy and earned you some extra bucks. So who says we can’t keep on doing this long after our teenage years are over?

I actually have a family member in an interesting dilemma. He’s a practicing lawyer from a different country and just moved here a year ago. He just took the California bar exams but while waiting for the results (which takes some months), he’s decided to take on some odd jobs to be productive and to make a bit of money. The odd jobs aren’t all that odd if it’s in line with what you’re doing — hence, he’s doing some data entry and office work at a law firm. Sure, he doesn’t need a legal license to be the office manager at a law firm — anyone with office management and computer skills can qualify — but it’s one way to get his feet through the door of the profession he’s chosen, which should work out well for him once he gets all the necessary credentials by passing his exams.

There’s really no shortage of things that you can do. If you’ve got a certain talent, or have education and experience in some form of activity that is “in demand”, there’s usually a way to get paid for it.

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The high-tech industry is mostly for younger people — it can be highly stressful since it requires that you be on your toes, learning new technologies so that you can escape the undesirable label of being a tech “dinosaur”.

But during my career as a software engineer, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a few older people — those who are over the age of 60 as I recall, who have surprised me with their work ethic. I also mentioned in an earlier article that one of my older co-workers in his mid-60’s passed away rather unexpectedly late last year, causing me to reevaluate my priorities in life and work. I consider that event as one of those triggering my decision to “retire from corporate serfdom” in order to take control of my own work destiny.

I had only but admiration for my erstwhile colleague, as he was someone who took his job seriously and who thoroughly enjoyed what he was doing; I was impressed by his quality of work, productivity and dedication — the degree of which you’d be hard-pressed to find in many corporate offices.

Nevertheless, there are many more folks like him who plan to work way past their retirement age or who don’t intend to ever retire. It’s actually been reported that up to 68% of employees between the ages of 50 and 70 are in this boat.

You’re A Boomer, Why Continue To Work?

Why are older people still working? These are the people who either never stop working or decide to return to work after a respite of some length of time. There are various reasons:

Money is the most important reason.
The dot com bust has affected a lot of portfolios and can be blamed for causing a lot of older people to return to the workforce. The simple fact is that many people haven’t saved enough for their retirement or their investment portfolios were adversely affected by recent market activity. Not only that — people are living longer, so it’s tougher to accumulate assets that are deemed sufficient to cover the expenses incurred throughout longer lifetimes.

The higher cost of medical care is a concern.
Clearly, with increases in health care costs, there’s a stronger need for people to seek and maintain good medical coverage. I know a lot of people who work mainly for the health care benefits.

People want to feel productive and mentally active.
A lot of baby boomers remain employed or return to the workforce because they want to “have a reason to get up in the morning”. How many people have you heard of who become depressed as soon as they retire? A lot of workers love the routine of their job, the social interaction at work and the sense of fulfillment they get as contributors to a company’s cause.

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