Speaker 1: Get in test with technology with tex Stuff from half
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren Bob and
Speaker 1: you are rejoining us in the middle of our discussion
Speaker 1: of the top ten tech companies to work for in
Speaker 1: two according to Business Insiders. Yes. This was an article
Speaker 1: that Business Insider published in the summer, often based on
Speaker 1: a bunch of reviews from both twenty thirteen and the
Speaker 1: tail end of twelve um. It was written by one
Speaker 1: Megan Rose of Dickey and Um using statistics from Glassdoor
Speaker 1: dot com YEP, which was that job search site we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier. Let's employees leave comments about the company
Speaker 1: they work for so that prospective employees can get an
Speaker 1: idea of what it's like to be there before they
Speaker 1: send it an application. Right. The ranks are on a
Speaker 1: one to five, with one being the lowest and five
Speaker 1: being the highest, and there's pretty stiff competition in this year.
Speaker 1: The lowest ranked in our top ten orbits was a
Speaker 1: four point one on that scale, and the highest drank
Speaker 1: on our on our top on on that first one
Speaker 1: was a four point three. So the four point one
Speaker 1: to four point three range. That shows you that we
Speaker 1: we're talking serious competition. So the company that comes in
Speaker 1: at number five is one that it's a fairly obscure
Speaker 1: little company that maybe one or two of you have
Speaker 1: heard about. Yeah, I mean, we had to do a
Speaker 1: lot of research on some of these because we just
Speaker 1: had never even heard the name before. The hardest part
Speaker 1: about doing research on this one is it just kept
Speaker 1: making me go to this one's thing. We're talking about Google. Yah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so every time I wanted to research Google, I just
Speaker 1: got a search engine about Google. It's just I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: it's like recursive or something. No. Obviously Google, we all
Speaker 1: are familiar with it. But it's interesting because it's one
Speaker 1: of the few major, huge, enormous companies that consumers are
Speaker 1: aware of that made this top ten list. Yeah. There,
Speaker 1: there's not the only one. But you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of the other ones we've talked about are these enterprise
Speaker 1: based companies that are you know, their customers are other companies. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Google technically is as well, but it's also obviously
Speaker 1: a search engine company. It's also a an ad company.
Speaker 1: That's where they get their revenue, more and more an
Speaker 1: ad company than a search Engine company. They do have
Speaker 1: a lot of products. I mean, obviously they do uh
Speaker 1: YouTube and email and yep, they've got and then they've
Speaker 1: got some interests that are outside of you know, the
Speaker 1: web as well, like those weird Google X projects, the
Speaker 1: Loon project that we talked about recently, automated cars. They've
Speaker 1: got their Google X stuff that's also designed to be philanthropic, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and obviously smartphones and things of that nature.
Speaker 1: A lot of the stuff they have Chromebook, yeah, Chrome
Speaker 1: cast Um. I own most of these things. Google Glass
Speaker 1: got one of those. Um, don't have an automated car yet.
Speaker 1: They don't seem to be willing to let me have one.
Speaker 1: They haven't called you about that yet. No, I would
Speaker 1: love it. Strange I'm sure. I'm sure your call got
Speaker 1: lost in the mail. Yeah, well, I'm I'm I keep on. Hey, hey,
Speaker 1: Sarah Gay, give me a call. So. Um, that would
Speaker 1: be Saragay Sarah Gay Brand, who was the co founder
Speaker 1: of the company along with Larry Page. Yep, yep. The
Speaker 1: company's headquarters is in Mountain View, California. Now you may
Speaker 1: remember that of course Page and Brand they went to
Speaker 1: college together and at first kind of had a little
Speaker 1: bit of a contentious relationship, kind of thought that each
Speaker 1: one thought the other one was a jerk face. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm putting words into their mouths. I'm just reading between
Speaker 1: the lines based upon all the information I've ever read
Speaker 1: about the biographies. But eventually they began to work together
Speaker 1: and thus was Google born, and um, yeah, you know
Speaker 1: it's a it's seen some success a little bit um
Speaker 1: after it's I p O in two thousand four. Um,
Speaker 1: what's the stock price as of this? Were recording on
Speaker 1: December way and so in the middle of the day
Speaker 1: on December five, I looked at the stock price and
Speaker 1: it was at one thousand and fifty five dollars and
Speaker 1: nine sins per share. Not bad, No, not when you
Speaker 1: were looking at like a share price that started in
Speaker 1: the seventy dollar range and now is over a thousand
Speaker 1: dollars per share. I mean it's it's they're doing okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: part part of the reasons they're doing so okay. So
Speaker 1: so the company rating according to glass Door is four
Speaker 1: point three on that five point scale, and their CEO
Speaker 1: approval rating of Larry Pages on Page again being a
Speaker 1: co founder. Remember before Page the CEO was Eric Schmidt.
Speaker 1: Who had, so there was some controversy about some of
Speaker 1: the things he did and his He was very much
Speaker 1: business oriented and Paige and Brenner considered more engineering oriented.
Speaker 1: In fact, there was a lot of questions about whether
Speaker 1: or not Paige would be able to handle the role
Speaker 1: of CEO effectively. Not that he didn't care about the company,
Speaker 1: but rather that did he have the skill set necessary. Clear, really,
Speaker 1: the company is doing very well. Yes, so I don't
Speaker 1: think we have to shed any tears. But why why
Speaker 1: did the company rates so high on this list? What
Speaker 1: is it that the employees like about Google? Well, like
Speaker 1: we talked about with the assass Institute in our first
Speaker 1: part of this episode of this two parter um, Google
Speaker 1: is is probably the industry leader in that workspace as
Speaker 1: life space kind of concept. Yeah. The Google Plex, their
Speaker 1: headquarters in Mountain View, is famous for some of the
Speaker 1: amenities that are on campus. They make it really difficult
Speaker 1: to not make Google working for Google your life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and I think I think that that's very much.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's it's it's a little bit
Speaker 1: further out, it's in the suburb. A lot of people
Speaker 1: are commuting out there, so they eat all their meals
Speaker 1: on campus because they are free. UM. And and you
Speaker 1: know all kinds of work in place space and and
Speaker 1: life space exists there. Yeah, it's you know, it benefits
Speaker 1: Google because it keeps people at the the head quarters
Speaker 1: more frequently, which means they're doing more work. It benefits
Speaker 1: the employees who are getting some amazing experience and they're
Speaker 1: working with some of the most intelligent people in that
Speaker 1: field on a variety of projects. And if you are,
Speaker 1: you know, taking advantage of the twenty percent time one
Speaker 1: day all the week, you're working on something super awesome
Speaker 1: that may or may not ever see the light of day.
Speaker 1: But it's definitely going to stretch you as an employee. Absolutely, um.
Speaker 1: But you know, kind of an exchange for that, you
Speaker 1: have to work really hard. It's one of those those
Speaker 1: if you like it, keep up kind of things, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of those, uh, you know, it reminds me
Speaker 1: of a way in a way of a college here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, Georgia Tech. UM. I have a lot of
Speaker 1: friends who went to Georgia Tech. Despite the fact that
Speaker 1: they went to Georgia Tech, they remain my friends. I
Speaker 1: of course, I'm a graduate of the University of Georgia
Speaker 1: and bulldogs hate the jackets. But apart from that, the
Speaker 1: phrase I always hear is that it's it's not that
Speaker 1: hard to get in, but it's really hard to stay
Speaker 1: in because you know, you have to have a certain
Speaker 1: level to get in, and they assume that if you
Speaker 1: meet that level, that you are able to do everything
Speaker 1: that is required of you, and if you're not, then
Speaker 1: that's a problem. So it's another one of those great power,
Speaker 1: great responsibility issues. Um. And you know, if you're able
Speaker 1: to to keep up with it, then you could have
Speaker 1: a really good career there according to most employees. Yeah, um.
Speaker 1: And and employees are are liking it more even than
Speaker 1: they did last year. They they were only four point
Speaker 1: percent last year and pages up three percent in approval. Yeah,
Speaker 1: four point oh points right, sorry, excellent, thank you a
Speaker 1: mejoric rise. Yeah, they scored four point oh and now
Speaker 1: they're up to four point three um and other news.
Speaker 1: Recent news, in September, Google launched a spin off company
Speaker 1: called Calico that's going to focus on health and well being,
Speaker 1: specifically on on on topics that relate to disease and age.
Speaker 1: Is UM like aging the actual like finding ways to
Speaker 1: help people deal with that, and who knows with Google,
Speaker 1: maybe reverse it. Who you never know, right, like maybe
Speaker 1: people who have Android phones just live longer. I'm iPhone people.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't put it past him. And also I'm watching
Speaker 1: and yeah, and the company also has plans for a
Speaker 1: new office in London. Yeah, yeah, yeah office uh a
Speaker 1: k A monolith. It's supposed to be one million square
Speaker 1: feet in size, which is about ninety three thousand square meters.
Speaker 1: According to what I read, it will be one of
Speaker 1: the if not the largest, uh workspace acquisition of a
Speaker 1: company in the city of London. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know this, Lauren, but real estate in London's a
Speaker 1: little dear. Yeah. However, if anyone can afford to do
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, it's Google. Yeah. No, Google definitely
Speaker 1: has the cash. So anyway, Yeah, that's one that we're
Speaker 1: all familiar with. The next one on the list is
Speaker 1: one that I'm sure some of our listeners are familiar with.
Speaker 1: Even though and I'm familiar with their product, I did
Speaker 1: not know that they were the company that made it though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's very much smaller. It only has about a
Speaker 1: thousand employees worldwide. We are talking about Riot Games yea,
Speaker 1: and they came up with a specific computer game called
Speaker 1: the League of Legends, which I have played. I have
Speaker 1: it on my computer at home. I have not actually,
Speaker 1: but um, but it's a it's a multiplayer battle arena. Yeah,
Speaker 1: multiplayer online battle arena game, also known as a mobile was.
Speaker 1: I was glad to finally see that spelled out because
Speaker 1: I've heard people say mobile and I didn't know what
Speaker 1: they meant. I listened to other podcasts and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a great mobile Like I don't know what that
Speaker 1: is and find and I always would forget to search
Speaker 1: for it by the time I would, you know, get
Speaker 1: to some place where I was able to search. So,
Speaker 1: multiplayer online battle arena game. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: different versions of this, but League of Legends is a
Speaker 1: big one. In fact, it's probably the most popular video
Speaker 1: game in the world. Supposedly has around thirty two million
Speaker 1: players logging in every month, making it the most popular one.
Speaker 1: So I'm not not shabby for something that was released
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine. Yeah. Yeah, this is something that
Speaker 1: went into development in two thousand and six was released
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine. Really, I was not aware of
Speaker 1: this game until maybe late last year early this year.
Speaker 1: So I was amazed they had been around that long
Speaker 1: and it just was one of those things that was
Speaker 1: gaining traction. Uh. They it is a free to play game,
Speaker 1: so the way they generate revenue is through micro transactions,
Speaker 1: and um, apparently they do it in such a way
Speaker 1: where people don't feel like that's a bad thing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean it's a really tricky thing to have
Speaker 1: the micro transaction model work for you where gamers don't
Speaker 1: feel like they are being taken advantage of. It's a
Speaker 1: delicate but apparently they do it pretty well. I know
Speaker 1: that their fans are rapid fans, you know, like that
Speaker 1: there are entire channels online that are dedicated to showing
Speaker 1: League of Legends games where players who are highly ranked,
Speaker 1: like people who are are just known for being some
Speaker 1: of the best players in the game, go up against
Speaker 1: each other. In fact, they're even professional League of Legends players.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that in a second. Um. Before we
Speaker 1: get into that, though, let's talk a little bit about,
Speaker 1: you know, how the company is viewed. Well, okay, so
Speaker 1: so the company calls calls itself a meritocracy that foster's
Speaker 1: teams on the prefers action parentheses, kicking ass over process
Speaker 1: and bureaucracy parentheses, taking names. I mean, it's it's a
Speaker 1: company of gamers. Everyone who works their games. They are
Speaker 1: given three d bucks to spend on games, to increase
Speaker 1: their gaming skills and learn what else is going on
Speaker 1: in the industry. Um, they have you know, giant show
Speaker 1: and tell presentations with beer. And are they showing the
Speaker 1: beer and talking about it or or its show and
Speaker 1: tell presentation and beer is also provided yes, um, and uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, and and all of the kind of goofy parks,
Speaker 1: the snacks they've got like weekly massus visits. Um, they
Speaker 1: sponsored hackathon. I love that they have hackathons where it's
Speaker 1: just like, all right, guys, you know, I know you've
Speaker 1: got got crazy programming skills. We're just gonna do a
Speaker 1: marathon session of hacking and see what people can come
Speaker 1: up with within a given amount of time. That's always
Speaker 1: if even Chris never did an episode on that, we
Speaker 1: should totally do. Yeah. There's also there's one we can
Speaker 1: talk about with sid Meyer that was pretty cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember watching that video. Um yeah neat um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like a really loud really crowded
Speaker 1: kind of culture that places a huge amount of emphasis
Speaker 1: on playfulness and extremely hard work at the same time.
Speaker 1: So their their company rating on this particular surveyans of
Speaker 1: being four point four four point four you and their
Speaker 1: CEO approval rating of Mr Brandon Beck is on yep,
Speaker 1: Mr Beck, he's one of the co founders of the company.
Speaker 1: H Now, what's interesting to me is this is a
Speaker 1: company that has only one game so far. League of
Speaker 1: Legends is the only game that they have produced since
Speaker 1: they started. However, it is evolving and it's and it's
Speaker 1: obviously hugely successful, so it's not like they've been resting
Speaker 1: on their laurels ever since they've launched it in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine. But it's, um, it's interesting to me because
Speaker 1: I wonder when we'll see or if we'll see another
Speaker 1: game come out. It could be that they nurture this one.
Speaker 1: Mostly they've got one in development. Okay. Uh. They have
Speaker 1: what on their website what they call the Riot Manifesto,
Speaker 1: which sounds terrifying but actually actually a pretty uplifting kind
Speaker 1: of list of of of things that they hold important,
Speaker 1: which includes player experience first. So in other words, everything
Speaker 1: they do needs to be done with the player experience
Speaker 1: in mind. They want to challenge convention, so just because
Speaker 1: something has always been done a certain way doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that that's the best way to do it. They want
Speaker 1: to focus on talent and teams. They want to take
Speaker 1: play seriously, which I love. This is kind of the
Speaker 1: oxymoron type thing, and stay hungry, stay humble, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got the most popular game in the world, but
Speaker 1: you can't keep it together. Yeah you can't just sit
Speaker 1: there and you know, strut around and say that, because
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily always going to be the case. And
Speaker 1: you've got to make sure that you are always is working,
Speaker 1: you know, to get that next level or else people
Speaker 1: forget about you. Their their standards are so high that
Speaker 1: supposedly there's a really high employee turnover and you know,
Speaker 1: just just some people aren't cut out for it and
Speaker 1: don't don't make it through. Yea, and uh, recent news
Speaker 1: has a little bit of controversy and that. So we
Speaker 1: talked about how there's some professional League of Legends players.
Speaker 1: Ryan actually employs some professional gamers and they are in
Speaker 1: the League Championship League, which you know, seems like the
Speaker 1: evil League of Evil to me, but the League Championship
Speaker 1: League has people who are under salary with Riot who
Speaker 1: are professional gamers, but part of their contracts that um,
Speaker 1: something that got released, you know, kind of leaked to
Speaker 1: the public recently, says that they are not supposed to
Speaker 1: stream any other games, specifically games that are direct competitors
Speaker 1: to League of Legends, but also some that are a
Speaker 1: little more like like Fat Princess, things that are not direct,
Speaker 1: um competitors, competitors. But they said that no, if you're
Speaker 1: if you're working for us, if you're making money playing
Speaker 1: video games for us, and that part of that is
Speaker 1: because you're streaming this content so that people can watch it,
Speaker 1: you are not allowed you you're not allowed to be
Speaker 1: seen in public drinking coke. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's same,
Speaker 1: same sort of approach, And so there's been some backlash
Speaker 1: from the gaming community to this. I've seen points on
Speaker 1: both sides of this debate. And obviously, you know, you're
Speaker 1: talking about contract negotiations. That doesn't you know, mean that
Speaker 1: that's always going to be the case. It could be
Speaker 1: that the players are able to negotiate that to mean
Speaker 1: less than what it says right now. So that's really
Speaker 1: interesting though, I've never heard of any I never honestly
Speaker 1: thought about professional gaming contracts, and although I know that
Speaker 1: that talent in many other areas has similar retrictions placed
Speaker 1: upon them. Yeah. Yeah, the non compete clauses where you
Speaker 1: can't just go to someone else and work for them
Speaker 1: while you're still under contract with another company, like classic
Speaker 1: movie movie studio kind of content. Yeah. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: mean that's it's it's pretty common across lots of different industries,
Speaker 1: not just with talent, but with other areas as well.
Speaker 1: All right, so let's move on to or three. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: this is riverbed technology. This is another one I had
Speaker 1: to look up. Yeah, they do lots of networking applications
Speaker 1: and traffic optimization. Yeah, for wide area networks, right, most
Speaker 1: of their work is in wide area Yeah. So this
Speaker 1: is stuff like it's not necessarily Internet based, although it
Speaker 1: can be, but can be intrannet based. So if you
Speaker 1: if you're part of a huge company that has its
Speaker 1: own intranet where you are able to connect with all
Speaker 1: the different parts of your company, that and that's you know,
Speaker 1: it might be that there are portals out to the
Speaker 1: Internet as well. You need to be able to manage
Speaker 1: that intranet traffic, and depending upon your I T department,
Speaker 1: that may or may not be easy to do. So
Speaker 1: this is a company that ends up optimizing that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. They have some products that you can use.
Speaker 1: Some of them are physical products that you can hook
Speaker 1: up to our router that will help manage traffic so
Speaker 1: that you don't have huge bottlenecks, so that you know
Speaker 1: when when Finance is sending out a big data request,
Speaker 1: it doesn't effect HR or some other department or sales
Speaker 1: or whatever, so that you can end up having your
Speaker 1: entire business operates smoothly without anyone like upsetting the Apple cart.
Speaker 1: That's generally what they do. They ship their first product
Speaker 1: in two thousand four. They were founded in two thousand
Speaker 1: two in San Francisco. First product they shipped in two
Speaker 1: thousand four, so two years for them to actually develop
Speaker 1: a product that they could ship, and then they had
Speaker 1: their i PO in two thousand six. Yep. So this
Speaker 1: is another publicly traded company. Uh and uh. You know
Speaker 1: lots of different products here, including things like machine virtualization.
Speaker 1: Long time listeners of tech stuff know what that is.
Speaker 1: That's the idea that you can create virtual machines on
Speaker 1: a physical machine, and by doing that you can end
Speaker 1: up reducing the number of actual physical machines you need. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it all depends on what kind of hardware
Speaker 1: you have, like if it's if it's sufficient to be
Speaker 1: able to do all the work you as you're dividing
Speaker 1: it up more and more and more, and obviously you
Speaker 1: get you know, diminishing returns if you keep going. But
Speaker 1: it does mean that you can actually reduce the number
Speaker 1: of servers you need if if you do it the
Speaker 1: right way. So this company helps other companies do that also,
Speaker 1: like application acceleration, so that if you are designing apps,
Speaker 1: this company will help optimize them so that they will
Speaker 1: operate more quickly and smoothly, so you're not waiting forty
Speaker 1: five minutes for something to happen that you know. So
Speaker 1: these are you know, if you if you're describing it
Speaker 1: as someone who is strictly a consumer, they may seem
Speaker 1: kind of dull and mundane, but they're incredibly important. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And some of some of the bigger name competitors in
Speaker 1: this industry are are stuff like US Tricks or Cisco. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are big companies that do the same sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So what is it about Riverbed that makes it different? Well, okay, so,
Speaker 1: I mean, so it's got a company rating of four
Speaker 1: point four, which is pretty impressive, and in a CEO
Speaker 1: approval rating of Mr Jerry M. Kennelly of Kennely being
Speaker 1: one of the co founders of the company. Um, And
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, Like, like what I was
Speaker 1: reading from employees is that it sounds slightly traditional. That
Speaker 1: people were talking a lot about a good work life
Speaker 1: balance and having the independence to to really do their
Speaker 1: their work. They said that it kind of straddles that line. Right.
Speaker 1: It still feels like it's nimble from a startup kind
Speaker 1: of perspective, but it also has some more traditional elements
Speaker 1: to it too. Um. Also, they the rigid management structure
Speaker 1: can go either way, right. You can either have that
Speaker 1: be a benefit because it means that perhaps the company
Speaker 1: has a very clear vision and is able to act
Speaker 1: upon it and can go and do what they want
Speaker 1: to do and what they need to do. But it
Speaker 1: also can sometimes mean that it restricts your options as
Speaker 1: an employee. Yeah, that sometimes upward mobility is going to
Speaker 1: be difficult. So for recent news, Riverbed Technology announced that
Speaker 1: it would implement a shareholder rights plan, which is also
Speaker 1: known as a poison pill. I had heard this term
Speaker 1: several times before and really wasn't entirely clear on what
Speaker 1: it meant. So I actually did some digging so I
Speaker 1: can learn, because I mean, finance world is something that
Speaker 1: frightens and confuses me and we go back into my
Speaker 1: corner of safety zone. So so a poison pill is interesting.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that if you have an entity
Speaker 1: coming into your company and buying up shares, and you
Speaker 1: figure out that maybe this entity is trying to do
Speaker 1: a hostile takeover where they're trying to buy up enough
Speaker 1: shares to have controlling voting power to vote their own
Speaker 1: applicant up to the board of directors and thus start
Speaker 1: to make changes to the company. This is like an
Speaker 1: economic cyanide pill. Yeah, it's well, it's kind of you know,
Speaker 1: it's they call it a poison pill because it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be like the spies have in there. You know,
Speaker 1: you flip your tooth up and you've got the old
Speaker 1: sanide pill and you bite down on and you croak.
Speaker 1: But it's not really killing off the company. Instead, what
Speaker 1: it's meant to do is dilute the stock because what
Speaker 1: what a company will do is they'll say, if any
Speaker 1: entity buys up a certain percentage of our stock, and
Speaker 1: usually it's somewhere between ten and then that will trigger
Speaker 1: this plan where other shareholders who have less than ten
Speaker 1: percent of the stock will be able to buy additional
Speaker 1: share is at a incredibly reduced cost. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: it ends up diluting the ability of a company to
Speaker 1: buy up enough to to be able to really mess
Speaker 1: with things. And because that company, the one that bought ten,
Speaker 1: is not eligible for this reduced rate, So all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you've got all these people who can just
Speaker 1: kind of buy buy the shares out from under them, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they end up buying more shares, and it ends
Speaker 1: up making it less likely that one, any single entity
Speaker 1: will be able to get a kind of controlling interest. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a practice that rose to prominence in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. People who watch Wall Street are like, I
Speaker 1: totally get this, um, but uh, you know both Wall
Speaker 1: Street the entity and Wall Street the film. Uh, greed
Speaker 1: is good Gordon Gecko anyway, So anyone who is familiar
Speaker 1: with that already already knows all this stuff. But I
Speaker 1: thought I found it really interesting. It's also something that's
Speaker 1: considered to be fairly controversial. There's some parts of the
Speaker 1: world where yeah, this is totally not something you are
Speaker 1: allowed to do, kind of underhanded and and or illegal. Um.
Speaker 1: And it was it was responsive to a particular news item,
Speaker 1: wasn't it. Yeah, there's a there's an investment group, um
Speaker 1: the the Elliott Associates company that purchased nine percent of
Speaker 1: the stocks and actually had made the comments saying that
Speaker 1: the reason why they had made that purchase was they
Speaker 1: felt that the stocks were undervalued and soon would reflect
Speaker 1: the true value of the company, and that actually gave
Speaker 1: a boost to the stock price. And there the market
Speaker 1: responded by saying, you know, maybe this company is undervalued
Speaker 1: considering the number of loyal customers Riverbed has, perhaps the
Speaker 1: stock price should reflect that better. And the number of
Speaker 1: oil employees. Yeah so yeah, so the number. So that
Speaker 1: stock price started to creep up. But the on the
Speaker 1: flip side of the board directors was like, well, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: We do want to see our company value increase. At
Speaker 1: the same time, I'm a little nervous about this, this
Speaker 1: one entity buying up nine percent of our shares, so
Speaker 1: that it looks like that may have been the impetus
Speaker 1: to go in and say, let's go ahead and propose
Speaker 1: this this, uh, this plan, this um this shareholder rights plans.
Speaker 1: So it'll be interesting to see how that turns out
Speaker 1: because this is still an ongoing story right now. Well,
Speaker 1: we still have some a couple of companies to talk
Speaker 1: about numbers one and two, if I'm not mistaken. But
Speaker 1: before we do that, let's, uh, how about we take
Speaker 1: a quick break and thank our sponsor. All right, we're
Speaker 1: down to the final two. So number two this is,
Speaker 1: you know, again a company that when I saw it,
Speaker 1: I was like that, what huh what do they do?
Speaker 1: This is guide Wire. Yeah, it's a computer software and
Speaker 1: hardware company founded in two thousand one, started in Foster City, California,
Speaker 1: and they have very specific customers. Yeah, it's mostly insurance carriers,
Speaker 1: specifically property and casualty insurance. Yeah. So again here's another
Speaker 1: company that that the average consumer would have no knowledge
Speaker 1: of because they are dealing with companies that you deal with.
Speaker 1: So your insurance carrier might be a customer of guide Wire,
Speaker 1: and guide Wire creates these software systems that allow insurance
Speaker 1: carriers to manage their products and also their customers. It
Speaker 1: includes everything that insurance companies do. Yeah yeah, the underwriting,
Speaker 1: the policy, administration, billing, claims, claims resources. Yeah yeah. All
Speaker 1: of this stuff is you know, obviously the meat and
Speaker 1: potatoes of what insurance companies have to do in order
Speaker 1: to do business. And so, uh, they're the way they
Speaker 1: position themselves as they said, Look, we are a software
Speaker 1: company that knows how to make software inside and out,
Speaker 1: and we are also incredibly knowledgeable with the insurance industry
Speaker 1: in particular. When this happens across many different sectors of software,
Speaker 1: you know, people will specify in systems management for one
Speaker 1: particular type of company just because it's it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's easier to get recommendations, um, word of mouth, and
Speaker 1: and be it's easier to design a product if everyone
Speaker 1: is working towards the same goals exactly right, And if
Speaker 1: you make a one size fits all management software thing,
Speaker 1: it's it's going to be the least of all worlds, right,
Speaker 1: because you want to try and cast as wide a
Speaker 1: net as you possibly can to try and take care
Speaker 1: of all the potential issues that a company might need.
Speaker 1: But it waters down the effectiveness of that product for
Speaker 1: specific cases whereas if you are catering to a very
Speaker 1: specific industry, then you can really focus and provide stuff
Speaker 1: that only matters to them. Y. Yeah, so that's kind
Speaker 1: of where they came from. And uh you know, the
Speaker 1: like I said, they were founded in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: and they held their I p O in two thousand
Speaker 1: twelve and now are publicly treated and as much as
Speaker 1: we had never heard of them, they rank on a
Speaker 1: lot of lists as one of the top best places
Speaker 1: to work. It was actually number one on this Business
Speaker 1: Insider list on in both twelve. Yeah. So they've slipped, yes,
Speaker 1: slipped down from one to two. Um. Yeah. Their company
Speaker 1: rating is currently four point six and their CEO approval
Speaker 1: of Mr Marcus Riu is. What's interesting to me is
Speaker 1: that last year they had a rating of four point four,
Speaker 1: so the rating actually went up, and yet they slipped
Speaker 1: down in the rankings, teasing what number one might possibly be.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Yeah, it's it's pretty interesting that the quality
Speaker 1: of working at these places has increased over the past
Speaker 1: year to the point where even when number one gets
Speaker 1: even better than it was the year before, it's still
Speaker 1: now number two. Uh So it's it's interesting what employees
Speaker 1: said about working at this place that they again they
Speaker 1: felt that they their work was actually valued and that
Speaker 1: their input was taken into account, that they were no
Speaker 1: matter what you're at, Yeah, which is fantastic. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, anyone who's ever worked for a company where
Speaker 1: you feel like what you do doesn't really seem to
Speaker 1: matter to the overall company, job satisfaction just plummets. So
Speaker 1: that's always a good thing. And yeah, you know, just
Speaker 1: just talking about about engineers getting to work alongside upper
Speaker 1: management on projects. Yeah, that's obviously you know, if you're
Speaker 1: if you know, it's you're not distancing the upper management
Speaker 1: from everyone else. It's not like they they inhabit a
Speaker 1: floor that no ordinary employees ever allowed to go to.
Speaker 1: That's also really cool. And no shadowy figures behind curtains. Yeah, however,
Speaker 1: all of that does come with with the caveat that. Again, um,
Speaker 1: work life balance can be a little bit of an
Speaker 1: issue working here, right, And then there were some employees
Speaker 1: who said that the four oh one K programs not
Speaker 1: all it could be and that the benefits aren't necessarily
Speaker 1: in line what's what some other companies offer. So you know,
Speaker 1: again it's one of those things where some aspects of
Speaker 1: the job might be amazing and others you might find
Speaker 1: a little lacking. It depends on what you're looking for
Speaker 1: in your place of employment. Um. So, as far as
Speaker 1: news goes, the company had a net loss per share
Speaker 1: in the most recent quarter. However, that loss was smaller
Speaker 1: than what analysts thought it was going to be, So
Speaker 1: so that's good news. Like like they analysts predicted that
Speaker 1: there was going to be a loss, but it ended
Speaker 1: up not being as drastic as they thought it was
Speaker 1: gonna be the factive you know, minor in comparison, and
Speaker 1: so the bright side of that is that perhaps this
Speaker 1: is just a show that the things are going to
Speaker 1: turn around and be more optimistic in the future. So, um,
Speaker 1: that takes us to our number one company, which is
Speaker 1: one that I think most of our listening audience is
Speaker 1: really familiar with, probably probably on a daily, if not hourly,
Speaker 1: if not minutely basis. Yes, we're talking about Facebook. Now.
Speaker 1: This actually surprised me to see Facebook as the number
Speaker 1: one company. Yeah, company rating of four point seven and
Speaker 1: uh CEO approval of of Mark Zuckerberg at very surprising.
Speaker 1: I guess, uh, I guess that that that biopic film
Speaker 1: didn't really hurt him so much. Huh. Yeah, he's up
Speaker 1: nine percent approval from last year and um and the
Speaker 1: company as a whole is up from four point three, right,
Speaker 1: So that's that's a big jump. Four point three to
Speaker 1: four point seven is huge. So obviously, I mean you're
Speaker 1: familiar with This company is founded in two thousand four
Speaker 1: by Mark Zuckerberg, uh, somewhat controversially depending upon who you
Speaker 1: talked to, and it's headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Also
Speaker 1: had a controversial initial public offering in two thousand twelve.
Speaker 1: There was a little bit of a kerfuffle there where
Speaker 1: there was the allegations that Facebook had let some players
Speaker 1: know that they were not going to perform up to
Speaker 1: the projections they had made and that would affect the
Speaker 1: stock price. But other people, as in me and you,
Speaker 1: weren't alerted to this fact, and so when we went
Speaker 1: in good faith to purchase stock price at a certain amount,
Speaker 1: we did so not knowing that the company wasn't really
Speaker 1: worth what we thought it was worth. That was the allegation. Um, messy, messy,
Speaker 1: But that's all still kind of Yeah, the stock price
Speaker 1: hasn't exactly blown all the other companies out of the water.
Speaker 1: It's performed fairly well. I mean it's not like it's
Speaker 1: it's not like it's plummeted down to tiny levels. At
Speaker 1: last I looked, I think it was in the forty
Speaker 1: dollar range, which it's not from from its initial dive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's and it's even up from what it was
Speaker 1: initially offered at. But not like not like an astronomer.
Speaker 1: It's not a Google. It's not a Google. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so they they obviously social network everyone's familiar with. They've
Speaker 1: got like the whole uh revenue generation model of having
Speaker 1: advertising as well as promoted things. We'll talk about some
Speaker 1: of the promotion stuff in a second, because that that's
Speaker 1: an interesting story. That's that's breaking right now. Um. And
Speaker 1: and people say that working there, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that everyone has heard stories about working at Facebook,
Speaker 1: where you know, it's just so much energy, which you
Speaker 1: can either be really good or really bad. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: can either be incredibly energizing like energy as in the
Speaker 1: way of who, let's all get the work on this,
Speaker 1: or it could be exhausted right right for the right
Speaker 1: people at the right time. It's it's excellent. Um My
Speaker 1: my favorite employee quote from from the company is uh,
Speaker 1: I never knew a company could move so fast and
Speaker 1: get so much done while still being kind about of control. Yes,
Speaker 1: that that to me says that Facebook, even though it's
Speaker 1: reached this huge size, and I mean we're talking billions
Speaker 1: of dollars in revenue every year. Uh, it's a it's
Speaker 1: an enormous thing. They have more than a billion users.
Speaker 1: So when you have more than a billion users, that's
Speaker 1: it's it's unfathomable to me. But it's still operating at
Speaker 1: at some levels anyway, like a little internet startup, which
Speaker 1: is kind of it's it's you wonder how long a
Speaker 1: company can do that because, uh, in some ways it
Speaker 1: needs to be able to do that because the Internet
Speaker 1: is so change you know, it's so chaotic, it changes
Speaker 1: so quickly, so you have to be able to adapt that.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, when you get that big,
Speaker 1: it's hard to have a company operate that way and
Speaker 1: maintain any semblance of sanity. You know, it's it's a challenge.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that's if sanity is ever what
Speaker 1: they've been going for. I don't know. I'm sure if
Speaker 1: I said, would you like your work to be saying
Speaker 1: i'd get a lot of Facebook employees hitting the like button.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's um, you know, it's also supposed to
Speaker 1: be a really supportive environment. They talk a lot about
Speaker 1: innovation and that that's much more important than doing things
Speaker 1: the way it's always been done, and that they say
Speaker 1: that the work is challenging and engaging. So it's not
Speaker 1: you know, it's not just that it's fun to do,
Speaker 1: but it's challenging to do, and I think for a
Speaker 1: lot of people that is really important. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's a part of what they call flow and yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty yep. Yeah, and critical part of of anything
Speaker 1: that you are engaging yourself and yep. And so some
Speaker 1: news from recent months, Facebook recently suffered a security breach,
Speaker 1: with more than two million accounts compromised. They were not
Speaker 1: the only entity to have that happened. Google also was
Speaker 1: victim to that, and uh it we're still seeing people
Speaker 1: become aware of that. Usually if you if you received
Speaker 1: a message that said you need to change your password,
Speaker 1: then you may have been affected by this. So far,
Speaker 1: I haven't. The lesson to take from this is don't
Speaker 1: use the same password across multiple use a different one.
Speaker 1: I know, it's a pain. But if you get a
Speaker 1: password management application that you know for a fact is
Speaker 1: a good one, use that. I highly recommend you check
Speaker 1: those out. There are a lot of them out there. Um,
Speaker 1: I use one myself, the one I used just so
Speaker 1: you know, and in film there's just just one of many,
Speaker 1: but I like it as dash Lane. But use something
Speaker 1: like that so that you can prevent this from happening
Speaker 1: to you, or at least if it does happen to you,
Speaker 1: it only happens to one account as opposed to everything. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: they've also there's also been in the news a little
Speaker 1: bit of controversy about their system. For if you don't
Speaker 1: have a page, like a brand page on Facebook, then
Speaker 1: then you're probably less aware of what percentage of your
Speaker 1: followers are reading your posts than otherwise. But this is
Speaker 1: a big deal to people who have pages and tech
Speaker 1: stuff and a common criticism of Facebook is that they
Speaker 1: artificially reduced the number of readers who see your posts
Speaker 1: in order to encourage you to to buy ad space
Speaker 1: or to to to promote to promote an entry. So
Speaker 1: for example, over at tech Stuff, we have several a
Speaker 1: few thousand people who like our page, and we might
Speaker 1: post something that might reach one fifth of all the
Speaker 1: people who have liked it, and that's a really good day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're talking about like, just of everyone who likes
Speaker 1: your page has a chance of seeing it. It's going
Speaker 1: to show up on their news feed. Otherwise it just
Speaker 1: for everyone else. For the other percent, it doesn't show
Speaker 1: up at all. And that's and that's how it's always been,
Speaker 1: and it's it can be frustrating. Um And and Facebook
Speaker 1: announced that um that that organic reach was going to
Speaker 1: become even more limited. Yeah. And from Facebook standpoint, I mean,
Speaker 1: I understand what they're saying. They say they want their
Speaker 1: users to have well, I understand what they're saying from
Speaker 1: two aspects. Right. What they say is they want their
Speaker 1: users to have a satisfying experience where they're not constantly bombarded. However,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, this is stuff that Facebook users have
Speaker 1: gone out to like, meaning that they had an interested
Speaker 1: in the first place, So they can also unlike things
Speaker 1: if they were being bombarded and felt that it wasn't,
Speaker 1: you know, a good experience. So I don't know how
Speaker 1: like that seems a little disingenuous to me. Now, granted
Speaker 1: I'm biased, I have I have cards on this table,
Speaker 1: in this and and this is a thing that that
Speaker 1: the new social media how stuff works. Lady Sherry and
Speaker 1: I have have had kind of private freakout sessions about so.
Speaker 1: But you know what Facebook says is like, we want
Speaker 1: our users to have a good experience, but if you
Speaker 1: want to have more of a reach, you can pay
Speaker 1: and you will have more of a reach. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: how much of a good user experience do you want
Speaker 1: if you're also trying to cash in on people who
Speaker 1: want to quote unquote ruined I could experience by by
Speaker 1: inundating everyone with their content. Um. So yeah, I question
Speaker 1: the sincerity of that whole user experience part, but I
Speaker 1: totally understand from a business perspective why they're doing what
Speaker 1: they're doing. It is their platform. When when you've got
Speaker 1: some nearer billion users, they say it's over a billion,
Speaker 1: but that's a billion accounts, which is different from a
Speaker 1: billion actual people humans, right, Um, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: when you've got that much traffic to your site, then
Speaker 1: you have to do something to manage to manage it
Speaker 1: unless you start making everyone pay. Exactly, So, I'm going
Speaker 1: to stop being better now, even though I make incredible
Speaker 1: content that only gets seen by a few of you.
Speaker 1: So you should actually go and visit the tech stuff
Speaker 1: Facebook page some time and just see some of the
Speaker 1: stuff that you're not seeing because Facebook won 'll show
Speaker 1: it to you. Yeah, you can, you can. There's a
Speaker 1: little drop down menu where you can check off how
Speaker 1: much of our content you want to see. You want
Speaker 1: all of it, all of the content, just I mean,
Speaker 1: just if you want to. I mean, just no big, no,
Speaker 1: no big. My bonus depends on it. Um. That's a joke.
Speaker 1: That's a joke. It's it's not entirely a joke. It's
Speaker 1: mostly a joke. Let's talk about some honorable mention. Let's
Speaker 1: see that. So Facebook was our number one, but there
Speaker 1: are some companies that were listed because this was a
Speaker 1: top twenty five in the armble And like I said,
Speaker 1: you should go and check that out. Here's some companies
Speaker 1: that you have heard of that also made that top list. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some things that perhaps you would have expected to have
Speaker 1: heard on our top ten that didn't quite make it.
Speaker 1: Adobe a number twenty, down from sixteen last year. Yep.
Speaker 1: Apple was number nineteen, which was a bit of a
Speaker 1: drop right way down from seven last year. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: Google was number five, Apples number nineteen. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: I'm an entroprod user, alright. So LinkedIn was number fifteen,
Speaker 1: way down again from number three last year, and Intel
Speaker 1: was number eleven, which is up from eighteen last year.
Speaker 1: So actually that's interesting because some of these companies play
Speaker 1: into you know, we did We do this every year
Speaker 1: where we make the predictions of what the next twelve
Speaker 1: months are going to be like in the world of tech,
Speaker 1: and then at the end of the year we have
Speaker 1: to grade ourselves. So our next episode is actually going
Speaker 1: to be the roundup of what our predictions were, and
Speaker 1: some of these companies factor into that. Who to funk it? Well, guys,
Speaker 1: if you have any suggestions for topics that we should
Speaker 1: cover in the future, whether it's a company, a technology,
Speaker 1: just the concept that kind of fits in with tech
Speaker 1: that you've always wanted to know more about, let us know,
Speaker 1: send us a message. You can write us our email
Speaker 1: addresses tech Stuff at Discovery dot com, or drop us
Speaker 1: a line on the mini social media platforms that we
Speaker 1: dominate on that allow us our organic reach. That would
Speaker 1: be Twitter, Facebook, and Tumbler. Our handle is tech Stuff
Speaker 1: hs W Lauren It will continue to giggle, and I
Speaker 1: will talk to you less snarkily. Releasing for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics because it how staff works.
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