Post by NYPost by rbowmanI worked for a company on Memorial Drive in Cambridge MA. When I was
getting restless we had the 'what will it take to get you to stay?'
talk. My answer was a keycard for the underground parking lot. The
company had an outside parking area down the street where I'd leave the
car during the week but when you drive a Firebird in Boston it's always
a pleasant surprise when you go back and the car is still there.
I've always worked for companies that had an fairly private car park
that is probably patrolled by security guards or CCTV.
However one company decided to use the large aircraft-hanger size
computer hall (largely empty once they got rid of mainframe computers)
to stage a computer "fair". They asked for volunteers to park off-site
fr a couple of weeks, in another car-park about 15 minutes' walk away,
to leave space for the visitors' cars. Anyone who did this would have
their names entered in a raffle to win a bottle of champagne. It was
highly suspicious that all the people who won the bottles of bubbly
worked in finance, HR or one of the other ancillary departments, and
that none of the software developers or testers (who were by far the
majority) won a bottle. I suspect a fix :-)
I've never had the luxury of a 'what will it take to get you to stay?'
response from HR. I've only left one company out of choice, and they
were in dire financial straits after merging with a US company which it
was later discovered had severe financial irregularities for which my
company had to carry the can; I believe the MD of the US company
disappeared and has never been seen again. The other two times I left a
company it was through redundancy on both occasions - one time whole
departments were "disposed of" which is tough but not personal; the
other time they chose isolated people from all departments, so it was a
case of everyone waiting at home to see if they got a "congratulations,
you have been specially selected for our big prize - redundancy" phone
call. I remember that the understanding was that you waited at home
until 8:30 and then assumed you were safe and set off for work; my phone
call came though at 8:29:30, so I thought I was safe...
years. When I was younger I was always looking for new horizons. The
several of us formed a new company and took off in a new direction.
I guess that was technically the third company. I'd worked a month for
the Penn Central as it was spiraling down the toilet. If you cashed your