IBM:
– My boss actually made an effort to thank me in front of his boss how much he appreciates the effort I’ve been putting in. The VP of Finance of the $5 Billion software division then said to me, “That’s why we get paid the big bucks.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
– I had to walk 0.5 miles (took me 10 minutes) just to get to the cafeteria. The menu was always the same every single day. And every year they took away pieces of the menu.
– Tens of thousands of people were laid off to “increase productivity” or to “align our resources with IBM’s strategic goals,” and was usually referred to as “resource reallocation.”
– We once had a pizza party. It was held between people in the corporate HQ office and the people from Minneapolis, who had been flown in to be trained by the same people whose job functions they were replacing. Needless to say, it was the stupidest pizza party I had ever seen in my life.
– We didn’t have a kitchen. Or a water cooler. Or a break room. Just offices.
– The building was in the middle of nowhere. More often than not, I can count on deers and wild turkeys carelessly lounging around the gates. Furthermore, we had very few options for Friday afternoon lunch gatherings. We always went to the same damn pizza place that literally half of us hated.
– IBM was internally migrating from licensed products that were clearly superior to proprietary IBM software both in 2010. We stopped using Microsoft Powerpoint for Lotus Domino, and Oracle (Hyperion) Essbase for Cognos. So glad I didn’t stick around for that.
– I had to copy and paste everything to Powerpoint (or its replacement) and print it out for every one in the office, even if it wasn’t a meeting I was responsible for. Sometimes I’d get a copy of the deck late, and it’d be on me to copy excel to powerpoint, print out 10 copies, work through the printer jams, and still be scrutinized for being late to a meeting.
– More responsibility rarely meant more monetary recognition beyond the usual 2-4% annual increase.
– At least 1 of the 4 elevators was broken, 75% of the time. They all worked so slowly that that taking the stairs was faster (it seriously was).
House Party:
General things that I love about this company.
– We have random cocktail parties to mark company milestones.
– We view things as is, usually in Excel format, even when talking things through with the CEO or the President. No need to mindlessly copy things over to Powerpoint and work through paperjams to get printouts.
– Random people bring in bagels, cookies, and random goodies. Reasons can vary from “thanks for all your help” to “because it’s a Monday.”
– Sales people send the company sweets on Christmas, enough to last the entire company 2 full weeks in preparation for the holidays.
– VP of Interface Design invites the entire company to try out Turkish coffee he’s dishing up on his hot stove in the company kitchen. We spend the Friday afternoon overlooking the Hudson river talking about the good life.
– The view of the Hudson itself is worth the very price of admission to be here. To witness it everyday as I park, and to have the freedom to enjoy a walk around the river in the middle of workdays is a liberty I cannot take for granted.
– We have a “Fun Committee.” People leave random pieces of paper around talking about what they’re doing. A note posted on the wall of the kitchen reads, “Remember to have fun today!”
– The CEO sends me an email asking if I’m interested in attending a Financial Intelligence Forum: Leadership in Financial Management 2010 at San Francisco, on May 24-25.
– We have a kitchen. And in it, we have an awesome coffee brewer that we use for free.
– We order Chinese every Wednesday.
– We have a internal site that utilizes socialcast.com, which allows us to share anything and everything that’s on our mind. Links, pictures, everything.
– We have a budget for “Employee Morale.”
– We have a company wide meeting that will define which 1 of the 12 archetypes our company represents. It’s a great lesson in marketing, and all of our inputs are required to get it done. We order pizza every time we have a meeting for this on going effort.
– We have a 52″ Sony Bravia TV that the VP of Technology got for $800 (currently retails at Best Buy for twice that) that we use to “test out” the new Party events for Sony Playstation 3.
– We are encouraged to speak our minds, even when talking to the CEO or the President. In fact, they demand it, and they sincerely appreciate our input and very often leads to action or a change of action.
– Everyone gets a laptop and an external monitor. If you’re a designer, you can count on a monitor that measures at least 24 inches.
Old House Party:
Things that really reminded me that I was working for a startup, really put me in that entrepreneur spirit. All nothing but positives here.
-The Metro North passed by just outside my window at least once every 30 minutes, shaking the very foundation that my office was built on.
-There was a stairway to nowhere. Literally, there was a stairway, and when you got to the top of it, you ran into a wall.
-One of the offices was a converted martial arts studio (Tae-Kwon-Do). So you had this huge mirror draping the entire wall. On the entrance to this room a sign read, “Please take off your shoes.”
-To save on money, we utilized the cleaners once every two days.
-The air conditioning was so off that my office was at 55 degrees while conference rooms were at 70. It was so cold that I sometimes didn’t take off my jacket and I often sat on my hands to keep it warm.
-The company upstairs made a ruckus every step they took.
-There was a vent that cut from one of the two conference rooms to my office. I could make out basically every word that was said behind closed doors and I’m sure the reverse was true as well.
-We didn’t have room, so my boss shared his office with me. All fine and dandy, except I had absolutely no privacy since my desk was against the wall and he could clearly see what I was doing every minute, and his desk was in the middle of the room, his monitor away from me.
-People were so cramped that on the drive home after a lady brought her son over, he asked her why she never showed him where she works. She had a small corner in a cubicle and he didn’t realize that that was her “office.” Somewhat embarrassed, she told him it’s a temporary space until the company moves upstairs.
-As the company expanded, it ran out of space so 3 people were put in an office space that was far enough that it required a premeditated effort to stop by and visit.
-When I locked up at IBM, it usually meant I just walked out. When I locked up here, I would make sure no one else was around and literally locked the doors and made sure all 3 of them were secure.
New House Party:
– We’re all situated together now!
– Cleaners come in every day!
– The air conditioning works consistently around the office!
– We now have proximity sensor cards to let us in the door!
– We have a conference room that can fit the entire company!
– There’s enough sunlight coming through for all of us to work without having to turn on a single light.
– We have cubicles, sure, but they’re large enough to fit 4 (probably more) people. Only the higher up VPs have closed offices. Everyone else works in an open space, with no drop ceiling. In fact, my “office” doesn’t even have a door! But I have my privacy now, and it feels like a place that people are actually working in, feels lively.
Differences in my functions:
Then: My previous job function required me to do a lot of spreadsheets and try to tell a story. It rarely led to any action.
Now: I’m not someone that’s just doing the work. My input is required and often leads to one action over another.
Then: I worked on spreadsheets doing mostly budgeting stuff.
Now: Budget is a very small part of what I do. I now do budgeting, forecasting, reporting, accounting, auditing, maintaining cap tables, and valuating the worth of the company.
Then: Budgeting meant I got to allocate different amounts of dollars from one bucket to another.
Now: It’s an inter-dependent discussion and decision that involves business priorities and plausibility. What do we honestly believe we can deliver in terms of revenue? I would come up with 3 different scenarios, and base our hiring decision to the dollar and to the month of the hiring necessary to support that much business. We have limited amount of dollars to spend. Where do we spend it? Clients tell us that our database of people is important. But should we spend the dough to try and train new sales people instead? How about additional reports for our clients that would cost us money but is unproven to add value and future bookings? All part of my job.
Then: Sometimes, I was handed templates to fill out and getting those filled out consistently took forever.
Now: Everything that we’re doing here is brand new. I come up with the ideas to measure our businesses, and I create it. I feel like I’m really making a difference here, like I’m putting my footprints on the foundation of this company. Even when I’m gone, the work that I’m doing here will carry on in one shape or another.