Bill’s Blog

I had a great opportunity that fell in my lap a few weeks ago.  I was invited to speak at Stanford about the value of foreign education and experience.  The event was yesterday.  For my part, I was on a panel with three other folks.  Two of us spoke about our experiences hiring and working with engineers from outside the US.  The other two folks represented big Indian outsourcing companies and spoke mostly about their hiring process built for volume (~25k people a year).

It was cool to be invited and I was thrilled to go.  The attendees were a mix of academics and industry folks.  May were professors studying similar topics.  A few folks from the GAO were there.  Several attendees came from far flung places like India and New Jersey.  There were ~30 people all in all.

The meeting was in an ornately decorated room on campus.  I don’t think I’ve seen so much wood paneling ever.  There was a massive fireplace at one end.  But they had a great sound system, a dedicated AV guy, and comfortable chairs.  The whole time I kept wondering if anyone there twittered?  I still don’t know

For lunch they had arranged for lunch at Google.  It was my first time there, so I jumped at the opportunity.

The day was a nice change of pace for me and I enjoyed every part of it except for getting up at 4:30 to catch the flight down there.

There’s nothing quite like seeing both cars in the garage.  It seems like it’s been forever.

And what enabled such a feat?  I’m glad you asked!  The concrete pad, and the shed that goes on top of it.  All of the necessary items cluttering up the garage and neatly tucked away in the shed.

I’m doing some prework for a career development class next week.  Their definition of career development is

• Increasing your job satisfaction.
• Increasing your value to the company.
• Coping with a rapidly changing global environment.
• A shared responsibility.
• Talking with your supervisor or manager about your career direction and your development plan.
• Managing your work so that it remains meaningful and motivating.
• A process that puts you in charge.

Agree?  Disagree?  Some of I like, some of it I don’t. I’m interested in your thoughts.

This is my first time in front of the camera.  See me talk about my team, Web 2.0, and what it’s like to work at Intel.

Originally posted here

While you can never know the true cost of keep employee morale high, it’s fairly easy to determine the cost of not keeping it high.  This article about the cost of Google free food caught my attention.  The actual dollar value is a drop in the bucket compared to the benefits.  I wonder why other companies don’t do the same?

Disclaimer: At Intel, where I work, they just made coffee and soda free to all employees.  From what I can tell this is pretty standard in high tech companies.  My visits to Adobe and Microsoft were accompanied by free drinks for employees and guests.