Dave Donaldson
Critical thinking in software development
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Vertigo People
Wednesday, October 17 2007
Like many in the developer community, I'm a big fan of Jeff Atwood's blog. He has the rare gift of being a technically sharp guy who can articulate it very well through his writing. Knowing that he works for Vertigo (love their logo) I thought I'd peruse their web site to see what they actually do.
The thing I found most intriguing: their people page. This isn't your typical corporate page that lists the founders, CEO, president, VP, etc. No, no, no. They took a completely different approach. They show pictures of all their employees, but not what they look like today - what they looked like in their youth, and as you hover over each picture it tells you who it is. And not only do they use old photos, but they show you each person's handwriting, their favorite breakfast cereal, something from their office, and an action figure.
My first thought when I saw this was how ingenious. It's a completely out-of-the-box way to show who works for them in a way I've never seen before. What it does is show a human element to their employees, and to the company as a whole, which I think is very important. I mean, think about if you go out to interview with them. You instantly have a way to strike up a conversation based on their favorite breakfast cereal instead of the usual "Nice weather out here" type of crap. You actually get a slight sense of who the person is before you ever meet them. I'd love to know who's idea it was. Ingenious indeed.
It would be very cool if more companies did something like this. Maybe I can get Telligent to follow suit ;-)
6 comment(s) so far
kinda crappy that the page doesn't function well in Firefox...
But that is a very cool way to distinguish your company as more "human."
Very interesting indeed.
cool
so post your baby pics on your blog, so we can see how cute you were...
They should probably ask these questions during the interview process, so they can get rid of the 'undesirables'.
So... you had braces as a kid, write like a 2 year old, prefer honey nut cheerios, and you favorite action figure is darth vader? Well... the skill set for the person we're looking for just isn't you, we're going to have to pass. :)
-Kevin
Goto the Vertigo people page www.vertigo.com/.../People.aspx and scroll to the bottom. then click on the "Waacdtugoec" text.
Refresh and try it again as well.
Haha, very nice. Looks like someone had a little too much time on their hands ;-) Any inside information as to what Waacdtugoec means?