Bang The Drum 2.0: “Getting It” Edition

What follows is a whole ton of Unsolicited Advice. About websites. Run away if you can. You have been warned.

Every time I help launch a major website I find myself meditating on lessons learned, (more…)

Job (In)security

So in late June I quit my salaried, full-time honest-to-goodness employee position at The New York Times in favor of a consultancy with MTV Networks — more specifically, Nickelodeon, the children’s TV programming network. (Betcha didn’t know they were one and the same company, huh? Well, programming content and other close-to-the-ground decisions probably originate in different minds than the ones that regaled you with Viva La Bam, TRL, The Real World, and other such gems. I hope so, anyway.) My choice seems to have puzzled my security-obsessed friends, so to reassure them/you about my iron-clad reasoning here’s a Top 10 Ways In Which My New Job Improves Upon My Previous One:

1. Free Coke fountain in every floor!
2. A magnificent cafeteria (Hey, lunch matters)
3. Light!! and a 40th floor view of Hell’s Kitchen, the Hudson River and much of Northern Jersey
4. ThePowersThatBe don’t block the use of Trillian (though, strangely, they block the transmission of URLs) and automagically grant developers (ie, me) administrator rights to their own machines. (In my experience, IT policies are a bellwether of what kind of corporate culture I can expect)
5. Lots of iTunes shares (side-effect: some coworkers have fascinatingly diverse music taste so I get exposed to some awesome new music)
6. (…and speaking of) - mad creative coworkers (musicians, visual artists, filmmakers…)
7. Working for the house that SpongeBob, Ren & Stimpy, South Park built - how can anyone keep a grouchy attitude around that?
8. Being the acknowledged resident CSS authority, my contributions get to be more significant, more meaningful and more likely to be implemented (because I’m the one to implement them, more often than not)
9. A teensy bit more awareness, respect and appreciation for the contribution that web properties make to the brand and bottom-line of the company
10. No OfficePolitics™

Then there’s the little matter of getting paid hella better, and every hour I work = 1 hour’s pay.

Actually, the last two, along with the pay, pretty much were all I needed. The rest is bonus.

In case you haven’t heard, Job Security (in US) is a myth whose roots died around the time of LBJ’s Great Society, and accepting a lower salary for the sake of an attractive-seeming benefits package is a lousy bargain. Trust me on this one.

Same Planet, Different Worlds

But my uncanny ability to photograph atrociously in every kind of lighting situation remains unchanged.

Actually, I switched jobs in late June but, well, maybe I’ve just been uninspired. Much, much more to say about the whole thing, but it’ll have to wait just a bit longer.