Any Dopers work for ESPN in Bristol? I’m looking at a 12-month contract there and while the recruiter and their career website are pretty rah-rah, I’d like some insider viewpoint before committing to a major career step.
While I myself don’t, I’ve watched a series of short documentaries about working there.
I would suggest not talking about making baseball bats around the Stanford tree.
Have you checked Glassdoor?
I don’t, but when I lived in CT I knew a few people who did. Assuming you’re not going to be an on-air personality, it never sounded much different from working in most other large corporate environments. Which is to say the job you’re there to do and the people you’re immediately working with are still going to matter more than all of the corporate rah-rah.
Also, Hartford really doesn’t bite, and there are a ton of good restaurants in central CT if you know where to look.
I already live in the area (east of Hartford). Most of the downchecks I am seeing are from the 25-35 crowd who relocated to work there and are disappointed (1) in central CT and (2) that ESPN isn’t KEWL to work at. I’m way past “fun campus playground” as a job requirement and, hey, I moved to central CT by choice. They’re also willing to throw a lot of greenbacks at me for my trouble.
Not thrilled about going back corporate or a 40-mile commute through Hartford’s mess, but say la vee.
40 mile commute sounds like a way bigger downside than anything at the office. There’s no way I would accept giving up ~10 unpaid hours of my life every week. Maybe if it were by train, and I could do something else productive while commuting (read the paper, work on personal projects, etc). But mindlessly and unproductively zoning out for the equivalent of an entire extra work week each month? No way. Once you get some of those greenbacks, the first thing I’d do is move.
Yeah, I can’t imagine working in Bristol and living east of the river unless you’re working off-peak times. That’ll clear an hour with ease most days, unless something’s changed drastically for the better since last year. It routinely took me 25-30 minutes to get from Manchester to work downtown, and you’d have to deal with 30 more miles and the more difficult bridge.
Moving is not an option - we located here by choice and intend to stay for at least the medium term. Some thing are slow in working out, so I am setting aside independent work for a paycheck for a time; the problem with that is that paychecks are scarce in this part of the leaf-peeper woods. (Not missing entirely, but it is an integral part of the overall problem that local companies ignore me and hire people from the river strip, while the companies in the river area and west are actively courting me… not the place for this long rant.) Quite a few in my neighborhood commute to downtown Hartford and slightly past, so it’s not a completely isolated form of lunacy.
Money is not really the issue, either. We are comfortably semi-retired, but I am still too young to sit on my ass and if my independent efforts have not taken root here well, I’ll go scam a few hundred K off of corporate masters instead. 
Just sucks about the commute, mostly. The one thing I left behind 25+ years ago and thought I’d never do again.