job satisfaction / interviewing

["Derek Martin-9" <user=7@nabble.blu.org>]

 On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 12:08:32PM -0500, [hidden email] wrote: 
> On-topic to your off-topic addendum, there was a recent \. discussion on 
> "how to identify/hire/retain brilliant Software Engineers".  Good reading, 
> but I had to respond to one or two replies that were WAY off-base. 
> Ferinstance, one reply was essentially "Throw a lot of money at them". 
> No.  An office with a window and some free lukewarm pizza will motivate 
> them a lot more than a few thousand dollars a year. 

I think that's highly debatable and subjective.  If I were choosing 
between two jobs that seemed otherwise essentially the same, but one 
offered windows and pizza, and the other didn't but offered $15,000/yr 
more (or even half that), I'd take the money.  =8^) 

Environment does definitely play a role though, and I'd definitely 
take less money to work at a place where I thought I would be 
significantly happier.  But for me that has a lot more to do with the 
nature of the work and the people I'd be working with, than it does 
pizza or windows or similar perks.  That's why I prefer when I am 
interviewed by the whole team rather than just the manager.  In fact, 
given a choice between being interviewed by the manager and only one 
of the team members, I'd prefer the latter.  You can find out more 
about what's really going on that way.  I'd go so far as to say that 
in most (but definitely not all) of the jobs I've had in the last 15 
years, the manager was almost completely irrelevant to my day-to-day 
duties and job satisfaction. 

All that said, if you know of a place looking for a Unix admin that 
offers windows and pizza AND lots of money, let me know. =8^) 

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 
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