Sunday, October 14, 2007

Why PayScale is Better than Boeing

A couple of months ago, I asked a friend if they wanted to come work for PayScale. They responded: "How do you think working at PayScale is compared to working at Boeing?" Well, I answered question... and decided that I liked my response enough to post it.

PayScale

Vs.

Boeing

Our office is in Pioneer Square

Their offices are in Renton, or Everett, or Auburn, or Bellevue, or BFI. You don’t get to decide where you’ll be, and you will be expected to drive between the places

For lunch, you have the option to go one of several cheap and delicious establishments. Most notably is the world famous Salumi. But don’t forget about Tat’s Deli, Bakeman’s, The New Orleans, and many others.

Boeing’s lunch cafĂ©. You’ll be able to choose from rubbery meat, an iceberg-lettuce salad bar, or a Snapple. Nothing delicious; everything overpriced.

You’ll be working on stuff that people actually see, use and find helpful in life

You’ll be working on an internal system to track other internal systems so that “upper management” can complain that we have too many internal systems.

You’re 1 out of 55

You’re 1 out of 155,000

You get lots of stock options

You get ShareValue Trust (which is pretty damn sweet)

You don’t like how something is going? Go talk to the CEO, or the VP of Engineering… their offices are 20 feet away and they’re always willing to listen

You don’t like how something is going? Go talk to your manager, who will talk to his manager, who will talk to his/her colleague, who will talk to one of their employees, who is the person in charge of the project you’re working on… and maybe things can change.

You have a good idea how we can make money? Sweet… we’ll put it into the dev cycle.

You have a good idea? Too bad, the Chairman’s Innovation Initiative got shut down. Your manager’s budget is already too overbooked. Their manager’s budget isn’t doing any better. While the company is on one of the strongest up-swings it’s ever had… every group there is having to cut budget.

Want to go to a conference? Sweet, that sounds like a good idea. Take good notes because this conference looks really good

Um… yeah. Submit your request to the Conference Attendance Core Team for approval. While the CACT recognizes that this conference looks good, there is not enough time to get all the necessary approvals for your request. Plus, do you really want to use Travel Manager?

Remember: A lot of people love working for Boeing; it just wasn't the place for me. There are lots of reasons to work for Boeing, they're just documented elsewhere in this blog.