Mr. Pug possibly has two job offers to choose from, and it would be very helpful if he had foreknowledge of the realities each workplace has to offer. In the past, I have referred to Vault.com, but (a) discussions there were less than helpful, and (b) nowadays you have to sign in as a member to have access.
Anybody have the poop on a good website where we can discuss these corporations? Thanks in advance.
Just realized how cheap that was. Wasn’t thinking, I’ll take the warning without protest. Sorry all.
PUG it is completely in Mr.Pug’s rights to ask to see the “day-to-day” environment before taking the job. If he truly has an actual offer from two corporations, then he should say upon verifying the offer that he’d like to come and see the day to day operations of where he would be working. This is an advisable thing for him to do. Corp. 1 may have thea better work environment for equal money to Corp.2 who has a Gestapo managment and crownie mid-levels willing to do anything for their masters…tho much of the inner politic won’t be seen, he can at least see an environment.
duffer, no offense taken. I actually would prefer the advice of any Doper who had worked at either of these corporations, only I was in doubt whether it was an admissible thing to have a frank dissection of the cultures on these Boards. Perhaps later in the thread I’ll mention the places and see what happens.
Philosphr, Mr. Pug is actually temping at one of the places (and they show every indication of wanting him to become permanent), while he is a friend with a VP at the other place. Said VP is a great guy, and he is trying to get the bureaucratic wheels in motion to permit him to hire Mr. Pug. So far the first place looks like a liberal and friendly place to work, but rather chaotic and disorganized. This may not be a bad thing - “In chaos there is opportunity”, and all that. But if there is a history there of flakiness on a grand scale, we’d like to know.
The other place is the biotech subsidiary of a major national corporation. A good thing to know about them is whether they lay people off at the drop of a hat, in the charming fashion of a lot of huge corporations.
So the question remains - does anybody know of a good corporate culture discussion website?
www.fuckedcompany.com is a place to start, but unless a place is huge or numerous like a retailer (ie Walmart, Sears, Radio Shack etc) , it’s unlikely to have a lot of discussion about it’s corporate culture.
Re the trigger finger layoff scenario virtually all large, publicly held companies do that nowdays.
What are the companies?
You know those sites where students can rate their professors/teachers? Someone should start one of those for employees to rate their managers.
(Unfortunately, I bet it’d last about a week before the flying squads of lawyers bore it under. 
)
You might try Monster networking at Monster.com.
Also give both companies a good thorough Google.
One bump before I give up.
I’ll go ahead and name the companies and cross my fingers that it doesn’t get me into deep doo-doo. One is Alza, which is the biotech subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson; the other is Nektar, a smallish biotech firm. Both workplaces are in Silicon Valley.
Anybody have any inside info?
Here is what some employees have to say about ALZA.
Working at ALZA?
Here is a link to all you ever wanted to know about Nectar Therapeutics. I feel that it is not yet as fine as ALZA. You have to take a longer look at the companies that came to make up Nectar.