Speaker 1: Get in tescht with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren foc Obama,
Speaker 1: and you know, we're starting to wind down the year
Speaker 1: often and we thought it might be cool for us
Speaker 1: to take a look at some of the big tech companies,
Speaker 1: the best tech companies to work for in Yeah, because
Speaker 1: some of them are actually really small. Yeah, and some
Speaker 1: of them you may not have heard of because they're
Speaker 1: not necessarily companies that average consumers would end up interacting with.
Speaker 1: They're more like companies that enterprises interact with. And we
Speaker 1: managed to get this list. It was from an article
Speaker 1: that was published in Business Insider by Megan Rose Dickey,
Speaker 1: who put together an amazing list of twenty five companies.
Speaker 1: We're looking at the top ten. Business Insider does this
Speaker 1: list every year, and I think a competition this year
Speaker 1: was a little but stiffer the lowest ranked. Okay, so
Speaker 1: so what this is looking at. It's based on at
Speaker 1: least twenty company reviews on glass door um from from
Speaker 1: a certain date, range from from from a good year
Speaker 1: long range. Yeah. They look over a stretch of twelve
Speaker 1: months end of the year, and then an extra from
Speaker 1: the beginning, and in case you want to know what
Speaker 1: glass door is if you haven't been searching for a
Speaker 1: job recently. Glass door is a job seeking kind of tool,
Speaker 1: and it'll lets you not only look to see what
Speaker 1: jobs are available, but also gives you some insight as
Speaker 1: to what it's like to work with those companies based
Speaker 1: on actual employee comments about those companies. Right, employees can
Speaker 1: go on there and give some pretty honest and sometimes
Speaker 1: brutal and sometimes wonderful reviews of what it's like that
Speaker 1: what corporate life there's like. Right, it might say something
Speaker 1: like the benefits are amazing, work life balance is fantastic,
Speaker 1: I really enjoy my work, and others might say things
Speaker 1: like I really wish that my my supervisor would stop
Speaker 1: buying a new whip every week so that maybe the
Speaker 1: old whip would start feeling less painful. Yeah, obviously that
Speaker 1: second type of company would be the one that I
Speaker 1: think most people would wish to avoid most people most people.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to paint as with a completely broad
Speaker 1: brush on that one. So, but so, these company ratings
Speaker 1: are in a five point scale, with with one being
Speaker 1: the worst in five being the best and uh, this
Speaker 1: this year, the lowest in our top ten is ranked
Speaker 1: four point one. Last year the winner was only a
Speaker 1: four point four, So there's there's been a lot of upsets, right,
Speaker 1: And we're going to look at the top ten, but
Speaker 1: in this particular part, we're gonna look at numbers ten
Speaker 1: through six so that we can really kind of give
Speaker 1: a little bit of an overview of each company, because
Speaker 1: we could just tell you the name and the rating,
Speaker 1: but you could read the article for that, and you
Speaker 1: should go to the article. Like we said, there are
Speaker 1: other entries in there that we're not going to cover.
Speaker 1: I'll give a little honorable mention at the end of
Speaker 1: the next episode for some of the companies that you
Speaker 1: may have heard of that that made the list, but
Speaker 1: we're not in the top ten. But we wanted to
Speaker 1: actually explain kind of these companies were and uh and
Speaker 1: what they do. A couple of them I hadn't really
Speaker 1: heard of before, had only heard of kind of in
Speaker 1: passing a couple of them, I had not Not only
Speaker 1: did I not know what they were. When I read
Speaker 1: the corporate speak for what they did, I still wasn't
Speaker 1: sure what was happening. And I had to keep digging
Speaker 1: to figure it out. Um full disclosure. Years and years
Speaker 1: and years ago, I worked for a human resources management
Speaker 1: consulting firm and uh, and I learned the the art
Speaker 1: of corpse speak. But it has been a long time
Speaker 1: and I have lost a lot of that ability. And
Speaker 1: also different corps speak is different, I mean you get
Speaker 1: I mean the ones that I was kind of like,
Speaker 1: what does your company do? Or the kind of new
Speaker 1: marketing sort of yes, where I just like, so you
Speaker 1: do colors on websites that are really shiny and I
Speaker 1: don't understand what's going on. And and yeah, back when
Speaker 1: I was working for a consulting firm, cloud based was
Speaker 1: not a thing. That was that So everything now is
Speaker 1: cloud based apparently. But last year a couple of the
Speaker 1: companies made it in included Miter and LinkedIn and Google,
Speaker 1: Apple Yep, yep. And some of these also made it
Speaker 1: into the list this year, but in different rankings than
Speaker 1: they did in years before. So let's kick this all off, Lauren.
Speaker 1: What company came in at number ten? Number ten would
Speaker 1: be Orbits. Now, this was one that I was familiar with.
Speaker 1: I think anyone who has done a lot of travel
Speaker 1: is familiar with this company. It is of course an
Speaker 1: online booking agent system for all kinds of travel stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, from from the hotels to the tickets themselves,
Speaker 1: to entire packages like cruise, ships or articles, vehicles, car rental, yeah,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. And then you know, this
Speaker 1: is one of those things where it was like a
Speaker 1: no brainer for the internet, right. It was something that
Speaker 1: allowed you to have access to all the tools that
Speaker 1: a travel agent would have for the average consumer. And
Speaker 1: once you had some companies put that together and really
Speaker 1: organize it, it really made a great deal of sen
Speaker 1: gave empowerment to the consumer. They had a lot more choices,
Speaker 1: they got to see, uh, some some great savings as well.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the savings are kind of hidden behind a veil, right,
Speaker 1: Like you, if you book with a certain amount, you're
Speaker 1: you might get a great deal, but you don't know
Speaker 1: what hotel you're going to get until after the deal
Speaker 1: comes through. All right, if you've got flexible travel plans
Speaker 1: or don't mind that element of surprise for for slightly
Speaker 1: anxious people like me, I'm like, please just let me
Speaker 1: pick the thing that I want to pick. Um For
Speaker 1: people like me, I'm like, where's the cardboard? Box. Okay,
Speaker 1: as long as I can get there. But yeah, So
Speaker 1: so the company was founded back in and, um, that's
Speaker 1: by a group of airlines. Yeah. In fact, American Airlines
Speaker 1: was one of those companies. Yes, uh that yeah. In
Speaker 1: addition to them, we've got Delta, United, Northwest, and Continental. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Not all of those are around. Some of them, like
Speaker 1: Delta acquired Northwest for example. So there, But at any rate,
Speaker 1: it was kind of cool these airlines all got together
Speaker 1: and said, let's try and create this this tool that
Speaker 1: would be really useful. I mean, obviously it's served them
Speaker 1: as well as the customers. It's not like it was
Speaker 1: an altruistic move necessarily, but the benefit was incredible for
Speaker 1: everyone certainly. They the website launched in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: and then the company was acquired by two thousand four
Speaker 1: by another company called um Sant. Sendant, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a C E N D A N T. And
Speaker 1: I have obviously I never have heard that words spoken aloud,
Speaker 1: so I'm assuming Sendant, but I don't know things that
Speaker 1: we should have looked up before he came into the room.
Speaker 1: Um and they had an I P O in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven. Yep, so this is a publicly traded company.
Speaker 1: Some of the ones we're talking about are publicly traded
Speaker 1: a couple or private, and then some of them are subsidiaries.
Speaker 1: Technically this is a publicly traded company that um that
Speaker 1: hasn't a parent, uh kind of company. The scendant would
Speaker 1: be the parent here. But um, yeah, the company was
Speaker 1: rated pretty highly. As you said, it's the lowest rated
Speaker 1: of all the ones we look looking at four point
Speaker 1: one and they're CEO approval percentage rating. That's for Barney Harford.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's not bad. That's not bad. And the
Speaker 1: CEO percentage approvals UM bounce around. You'll hear in the
Speaker 1: n or so. Yeah, you'll hear as we go on
Speaker 1: that some of them that the company may be rated
Speaker 1: higher and a CEO may be rated lower. But you know,
Speaker 1: it happens. Uh. It turns out that the employees say
Speaker 1: that there are a lot of learning opportunities to work
Speaker 1: when you're working at Orbits, and that there are good
Speaker 1: benefits and lots of room for growth, which is great. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you know, I decided that it would be
Speaker 1: kind of neat to look in the news because, first
Speaker 1: of all, this article that was written for Business Insider
Speaker 1: came out in the summer of because it was looking
Speaker 1: over the past twelve months, which actually started in the
Speaker 1: summer of twelve obviously, so since then I thought it'd
Speaker 1: be neat to look and see what kind of news
Speaker 1: articles had popped up about these companies. So with the Orbits,
Speaker 1: there were some there's some you know news and some
Speaker 1: bad news. Um. For instance, there was a bit of
Speaker 1: a kerfuffle, you might say, a couple of counties in
Speaker 1: Maryland had brought a suit against Orbits claiming that had
Speaker 1: not paid taxes properly in those counties. And the taxes
Speaker 1: in question were in response to booking fees for hotel rooms,
Speaker 1: something that the Orbit says it should not be held
Speaker 1: accountable for, and things the county say you should totally
Speaker 1: be held accountable for this. And actually the article I
Speaker 1: read was pretty um, kind of cynical, because I was
Speaker 1: talking about how a lot of governments, specifically like local governments,
Speaker 1: county governments and city governments, we're looking at companies as
Speaker 1: a potential revenue source by going after these things that
Speaker 1: you know didn't exist before because of the online world
Speaker 1: is so stills wherein right you're doing business with people
Speaker 1: all over the place, right, So it's almost that same
Speaker 1: sort of mentality, at least according to the person who
Speaker 1: wrote this article, the same sort of mentality as someone
Speaker 1: who would claim that the police force in your local
Speaker 1: area is stepping up uh roadblocks and and speed traps
Speaker 1: in order to fill a quota. It's that kind of
Speaker 1: same message I was getting. Whether or not that's the case,
Speaker 1: I can't say, but that was that was certainly the
Speaker 1: implication that I was getting from this particular author. But
Speaker 1: another interesting bit of news, so Orbits also suffered a
Speaker 1: twenty percent drop in their share prices after an earnings
Speaker 1: call back in November of That earnings call revealed that
Speaker 1: company performance fell below projections. Uh. They said that it
Speaker 1: was mostly because there was a drop in airline revenue.
Speaker 1: Even though hotel revenue is increasing, there's been overall this
Speaker 1: year a pretty drastic drop in airline Yeah. So, but
Speaker 1: but the good news is that executives say they feel
Speaker 1: there's there's a very optimistic chance that revenue growth will return,
Speaker 1: maybe not quite at the level they had projected originally,
Speaker 1: but they they're seeing an upswing, so it's not all
Speaker 1: bad news. So yeah, that's ah, that's our number ten,
Speaker 1: So I guess we need to move on. Yeah, number
Speaker 1: nine would be Exact Target. Now this is one that
Speaker 1: I had never heard of or I was completely unfamiliar with,
Speaker 1: and partially because again, this is a company that is
Speaker 1: a tech company, but it's not creating stuff. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not like it's coming out with a video game console
Speaker 1: or a smart watch or even a website that most
Speaker 1: people would go to. This instead is a digital marketing
Speaker 1: software as a service company s a a S. Right.
Speaker 1: They do they do software for for email, mobile, social media,
Speaker 1: and web marketing specifically, so you might if you're a
Speaker 1: company and you don't have your own marketing department, then
Speaker 1: you may work with a company like Exact Target to
Speaker 1: handle the marketing strategies for your company. Um, this is
Speaker 1: something we're seeing more and more of today. Like you
Speaker 1: think back in the old days of business, where you
Speaker 1: had this monolithic building that housed dozens of different departments
Speaker 1: that never talked to each other and had terrible, uh
Speaker 1: competitive relationships with one another. I've been in actually a
Speaker 1: couple of couple of companies that worked like that. I
Speaker 1: just think of things like mad Men. You know, you
Speaker 1: watch shows like that and you're like, Oh, that's what
Speaker 1: a marketing company is like, right, because it's you know,
Speaker 1: everything is very siloed and competitive and cutthroat. H Well,
Speaker 1: these days, a lot of companies are looking to other
Speaker 1: organizations to handle certain things that they need to do
Speaker 1: but they don't want to do with under their own
Speaker 1: roof because it's not their focus. Right, particularly with startup companies,
Speaker 1: You've got these big startup companies where they might be
Speaker 1: engineers who are behind the startup company, and the engineer
Speaker 1: is really good at making something that people want to use,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily so good at everything else that's required
Speaker 1: to run a business, right, And frequently the kind of
Speaker 1: people who are really good at talking up a product
Speaker 1: are not the same kind of people who necessarily created it.
Speaker 1: So I think that that exists across many industries. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So this particular company was founded in two thousand. It
Speaker 1: started on a two hundred thousand dollar investment, and specifically
Speaker 1: they offer a quote cloud based marketing software in quote
Speaker 1: to help brands reach consumers. So cloud based meaning that
Speaker 1: you would be able to interface with this no matter
Speaker 1: where you happen to be. If you were a customer
Speaker 1: of exact target, you could end up logging in and
Speaker 1: using their tools, includes analytic tools, which are really important
Speaker 1: these days to make sure you are doing the right
Speaker 1: thing right, that you're reaching the people you want to reach,
Speaker 1: and that your message is having the intended effect right.
Speaker 1: And since since exact Target does more software than the
Speaker 1: implementation of of a marketing campaign for its for its customers,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty important thing to have those analytics built
Speaker 1: in right, right. So there they're doing is they're giving
Speaker 1: all the tools that your company would need in order
Speaker 1: to get your message that you have crafted out to
Speaker 1: your customers. Because it's one thing to create your brand's identity,
Speaker 1: it's another thing to get that identity out there. In fact,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking more about that a couple more
Speaker 1: times in this list. So yeah, uh, an interesting company
Speaker 1: to talk about because again it's one of those that
Speaker 1: otherwise I don't think I would have ever mentioned. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been aware of it because I don't own
Speaker 1: a huge company that needs marketing. But but yeah, they've
Speaker 1: got a really high rating, this kind of same four
Speaker 1: point one that Orbits has. But it's CEO approval of
Speaker 1: of Mr Scott D. Dorsey is yes, and I believe
Speaker 1: Mr Dorsey is also one of the co founders of
Speaker 1: the company. So that's another thing that we're gonna be
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of these companies were talking about
Speaker 1: here are relatively young, and so the people who made
Speaker 1: the companies are still very much an active part. You know,
Speaker 1: there are some legacy companies out there. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and give you a spoiler. Guys, there aren't very
Speaker 1: many on this list. You're not gonna hear HP, You're
Speaker 1: not gonna hear IBM, You're not going to hear Intel.
Speaker 1: These companies that have decades and decades of history. So
Speaker 1: a lot of the companies are very young, still very
Speaker 1: flexible and and and able to make big changes. Plus
Speaker 1: they have some of the original people still very much
Speaker 1: involved on a day to day basis in the operations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: going through this list, it's interesting. I found that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just easy to see where where that kind of
Speaker 1: environment would lead to happier employees than the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that gets so huge, right, because once you get
Speaker 1: to that level, you have to put systems in place,
Speaker 1: otherwise you just have chaos. Right. Although there is one
Speaker 1: mega mega mega company, actually a couple of mega companies
Speaker 1: that will be talking about in this episode that you
Speaker 1: know are still pretty good at keeping everything organized. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this one is pretty small. It's only about two
Speaker 1: thousand employees or so. Um and uh, it sounds like
Speaker 1: one of the perks of working there is that they
Speaker 1: let their employees be pretty independent. Um, but that comes
Speaker 1: with the caveat of you're expected to keep up. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you are given a lot of autonomy, but that company
Speaker 1: with great power comes great responsibility always. Yeah. So they
Speaker 1: also have listed core values on their website, which includes
Speaker 1: pretty simple things. I mean, these are kind of like
Speaker 1: the Golden Rule broken down into a corporate approach, So
Speaker 1: things like treat people well and be easy to do
Speaker 1: business with and uh and make clients look like heroes.
Speaker 1: These all seem like very you know, obvious kind of things.
Speaker 1: But when you when you make it a core part
Speaker 1: of what your company is all about, and you and
Speaker 1: you truly try to stick with that, then obviously that
Speaker 1: that can trickle down into other elements that make it
Speaker 1: a great place to work. Um. They also have a
Speaker 1: philanthropic arm, the Exact Target Foundation, which was founded in
Speaker 1: twenty eleven, and they that's dedicated to doing lots of
Speaker 1: stuff like helping with hunger relief, increasing educational efforts, and
Speaker 1: even supporting entrepreneurship across the world. So it's a company
Speaker 1: that involves itself in multiple ways with its community. So
Speaker 1: that's good. Yeah, it was doing so well for itself
Speaker 1: at Salesforce dot Com announced that it was going to
Speaker 1: acquire the company for two point five billion in June
Speaker 1: of this year, yep, and completed that acquisition in July.
Speaker 1: So technically this company is now part of another company.
Speaker 1: It's kind of funny because when I was looking at
Speaker 1: this list, Uh, some of the other ones further up
Speaker 1: the list above number ten are companies that now are
Speaker 1: the same company. I think it was like numbers fourteen
Speaker 1: and thirteen or something like that are now part of
Speaker 1: the same company. So yeah, salesforce dot Com also was
Speaker 1: number nine on last year's list. And uh apparently you know,
Speaker 1: uh exact target has actually boosted the sales forecast for
Speaker 1: sales force dot Com. So salesforce dot Com had a
Speaker 1: certain number that was projected out by its analysts right saying,
Speaker 1: this is what we expect to hit by the end
Speaker 1: of the year. By acquiring, uh this this company, they've
Speaker 1: actually managed to boost that up, so now they're performing
Speaker 1: above what they had projected. So in fact, exact target
Speaker 1: has really been a benefit to Salesforce already in the
Speaker 1: short term financial scale of things. It remains to be
Speaker 1: seen how this plays out over time, because anytime you
Speaker 1: have an acquisition there are some issues to work out
Speaker 1: with cultural differences between the two different or two or
Speaker 1: more different companies different entities. But one would hope that
Speaker 1: since Salesforce has been on this list before and exact
Speaker 1: targets on it this year, that it wouldn't change too much. Hopefully. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although definitely some of the some of the reasons that
Speaker 1: people gave for enjoying working at some of these places
Speaker 1: varied hugely among different companies on the list. You know,
Speaker 1: some people said, I love this company because you get
Speaker 1: to act like a crazy college kid, and others are like,
Speaker 1: I love this company because they don't make you act
Speaker 1: like a crazy college kid. Right, so yeah, So it's
Speaker 1: also one of the things that really benefits you when
Speaker 1: you do your own research, because you have to take
Speaker 1: into consideration your own ideal working situation, right, Like, if
Speaker 1: you're one of those people who really thrives on collaboration,
Speaker 1: and you you have to be around other people, and
Speaker 1: you love working on projects with people, and maybe maybe
Speaker 1: even working on projects with different groups of people throughout
Speaker 1: your career, so it's not like you're part of a
Speaker 1: team that's really cohesive. You your team changes, you know,
Speaker 1: project a project. Then obviously one type of company is
Speaker 1: going to be a better fit for you than some
Speaker 1: other company where you're sitting at a desk and you're
Speaker 1: always doing the same thing all the time always. However,
Speaker 1: if you like stability, that other version sounds way more
Speaker 1: your speed than some crazy one where you have no
Speaker 1: idea who you'll be working with from one day to
Speaker 1: the next. I'm I'm kind of in both camps on
Speaker 1: that one, but I mostly work with the same people
Speaker 1: from data day, so I guess I have that benefit mostly.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've got a wide team of similarly crazy
Speaker 1: people running around. Let me put to you this way,
Speaker 1: if Josh Clark ever comes up to me and says, hey, Strick,
Speaker 1: I need your help with something, I ask a lot
Speaker 1: of questions before I agree. The last time that I
Speaker 1: ran into Josh Clark on the elevator, he was carrying
Speaker 1: like like three packages of rope, like industrial rope and
Speaker 1: I was like, Hey, good morning, Josh, how are you doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it pays to ask questions around here, that's what
Speaker 1: we're saying. Let's move on to number eight. Number eight
Speaker 1: is is another digital marketing company called Responses. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: one again. This was another one. Both Exact Target and
Speaker 1: Responses were companies where I had to dig a little
Speaker 1: deeper to really understand what they do because Lauren and
Speaker 1: I do a little bit of marketing on a very
Speaker 1: surface level, very surface. We like to interact with people
Speaker 1: on social networks, which technically falls under the category of marketing,
Speaker 1: but we think of it as being able to like
Speaker 1: share awesome stuff with our fans and find out what
Speaker 1: they like, so we don't really necessarily think of it
Speaker 1: in the same terms as a marketing department would. So
Speaker 1: a lot of this is like foreign language to us.
Speaker 1: But Responses is one of the companies that will do
Speaker 1: more of this stuff for you. They also work in
Speaker 1: you know, email, mobile, social, and web, but with a
Speaker 1: full like software planning and implementation kind of package. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they were founded in n Their headquarters are in
Speaker 1: San Bruno, California. It turns out California is a great
Speaker 1: place to work if you're in tech weird right you
Speaker 1: never thought of it in Silicon Valley and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Um, So they also do a lot
Speaker 1: of research on what are the most effective means of
Speaker 1: reaching consumers. Uh that if you go to the website,
Speaker 1: one of the taglines on there is your customers want experiences,
Speaker 1: not campaigns. So the idea being that, you know, it's
Speaker 1: not just not just the delivery method, but also what's
Speaker 1: the actual message, what what are you trying, what's the
Speaker 1: effect you're trying to get besides just people interested in
Speaker 1: your product, and they they try and construct an entire
Speaker 1: approach from attracted the consumer, making them aware of who
Speaker 1: you are and what you do, getting them to purchase
Speaker 1: the whatever product or service you offer, and then getting
Speaker 1: them to repurchase later on. So the idea being that
Speaker 1: you convert a customer into a loyal customer. That sort
Speaker 1: of conversion is obviously really important for a lot of businesses.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's great if you can make a sale,
Speaker 1: it's better if you can make a lifelong customer. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of what their approaches is to try and
Speaker 1: help their customers, their corporate customers achieve that. Another thing
Speaker 1: they actually refer to their strategy as marketing orchestration, which
Speaker 1: if a marketing company can't come up with really goofy
Speaker 1: like taglines like that, but they're not a very good
Speaker 1: marketing Yeah. So those another way, those where I was like, huh,
Speaker 1: But again it was this idea of a customized experience,
Speaker 1: a personalized experience, so that uh, the idea being that
Speaker 1: if you are a customer of of responses, they will
Speaker 1: craft their their approach in such a way that every
Speaker 1: one of your customers will get a personalized experience, which
Speaker 1: will make them feel valued as a customer and therefore
Speaker 1: improve the chances of them coming becoming a repeat customer. Say, yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean it's important work. It's one of those things
Speaker 1: where you know, again a lot of us just sort
Speaker 1: of take it for granted because we are on the
Speaker 1: receiving end of this marketing more often than we're on
Speaker 1: the generation. And unless you have to work for a
Speaker 1: marketing sure, and and it's easy to tell where marketing
Speaker 1: has gone wrong, but it's a little bit harder to
Speaker 1: identify when it goes right, because then you just have
Speaker 1: good feelings about stuff that things you know, stuff that
Speaker 1: people want you to feel good about, which is I
Speaker 1: don't know. It can be swell and it can be
Speaker 1: terrifically creepy, it can be It all depends on the
Speaker 1: implementation and the message that you're making. UM. So Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they had their I p O in twenty eleven
Speaker 1: and raised seventy nine point two million. Not bad for
Speaker 1: for a small company, although they are no longer quite
Speaker 1: so small. They have grown to have offices worldwide and
Speaker 1: they seem to be UM just really writing that changing
Speaker 1: marketing industry really well, because it's a space that a
Speaker 1: lot of companies aren't sure in these you know, brave
Speaker 1: new digital times how to reach people? And so how
Speaker 1: did they come out in this um in this this test,
Speaker 1: like what what was their rating? It was a four
Speaker 1: point two point two four point two and point one
Speaker 1: better than the other two. Yes, stiff competition and CEO
Speaker 1: approval rating of Mr Dan Springer at they're really good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They actually had a lot of employees giving comments to
Speaker 1: things about you know, there's a lot of growth opportunity,
Speaker 1: but sometimes according to some employees, the starting positions might
Speaker 1: have lower salaries than what you would find in competing companies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of people were saying that it's, you know,
Speaker 1: the company is still growing and so a lot of
Speaker 1: the problems are still kind of being ironed out, and
Speaker 1: some sometimes communication gets lost in between different management tiers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's tough when you are a small
Speaker 1: startup and you're really nimble and then you're making that
Speaker 1: transition and then all of a sudden you're global. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that. There are huge challenges that come with that,
Speaker 1: just like the challenges that you know, an acquiring company
Speaker 1: gets when they get this awesome new property and then
Speaker 1: have to figure out how to make it work within
Speaker 1: their own culture. These are these are big issues and
Speaker 1: it's been big growth, hasn't it. Yeah. Yeah, Actually, uh,
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal reports that responses had twenty seven percent
Speaker 1: growth in the third quarter of UH and they also
Speaker 1: did a survey responses to the survey, they were the
Speaker 1: actual ones conducting the survey and discovered that marketers are
Speaker 1: not leveraging mobile platforms as effectively as they could. They
Speaker 1: were looking at how many people were starting to use
Speaker 1: mobile platforms to do some shopping, which is something we'll
Speaker 1: talk about in an upcoming podcast. But uh, it's you know,
Speaker 1: they said, you know, considering how many people are using this.
Speaker 1: We are not leveraging our marketing money nearly well enough
Speaker 1: across multiple industries. We've got to figure that out. And
Speaker 1: so that was more of a you know kind of
Speaker 1: I mean, it helps drum up business for am marketing firm, obviously,
Speaker 1: but it also is something that's true. You know, the mobile,
Speaker 1: the mobile browsing world is relatively young, and just as
Speaker 1: marketing departments were starting to finally get a feel for
Speaker 1: the web, now you've got this new implementation that you
Speaker 1: have to worry about. Yeah, it's very tricky. We we
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about that in that mobile ads
Speaker 1: episode that we did. And I think that the shopping
Speaker 1: episode that you're talking about is coming up on forward
Speaker 1: Thinking not TEXTFF. Actually, it's one of the number of
Speaker 1: predictions that we made for that. I'm thinking, oh that
Speaker 1: one our annual wrap up. Yeah, it'll be a small
Speaker 1: part of it. Well, before we get into the last
Speaker 1: couple of the the first section of the top ten,
Speaker 1: let's see how many propositions I can throw into one
Speaker 1: sentence because it's a preposition. Now, did you know, I know,
Speaker 1: I saw that It's actually exciting. Okay, grammar geeks, right,
Speaker 1: here we're gonna geek out, but before we do, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1: Let's see we're up to number seven, I think right, yes,
Speaker 1: and that would be a company workday, work work day? Okay,
Speaker 1: what is work day? This is another one that I
Speaker 1: had never heard. Yeah, they do HR software. Okay, alright, well,
Speaker 1: all right now I got it because I worked for
Speaker 1: that human resources management consulting firm. So now we're speaking
Speaker 1: my language. Okay, so let's a build as cloud based.
Speaker 1: They lost me. That didn't exist when I worked in
Speaker 1: that world. But human capital management and financial management, human
Speaker 1: capital management is like you know, no, no slight against
Speaker 1: work day. But that particular phrase is not one that
Speaker 1: fills me with the warm fuzzies. What about you human
Speaker 1: capital managed? I can't imagine anyone other than like Cat
Speaker 1: Birch saying, where you talk about not employees but their assets.
Speaker 1: These are things that can be treated and sold and
Speaker 1: bought on the market. However, I do appreciate the insinuation
Speaker 1: that employees have intrinsic value that you want to um love. Yes,
Speaker 1: that part makes perfect sen and yes it's hard to
Speaker 1: say this in a succinct way that doesn't come out
Speaker 1: too touchy feely, but it's also really easy to say
Speaker 1: in a way that makes you sound like a robot.
Speaker 1: I would I would be a lot more offended if
Speaker 1: it was called like like human marshmallow or I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make that my next my next title on
Speaker 1: my next business card. I certainly need to make one
Speaker 1: so you can do what you want. Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1: What this actually means is that the company uses creates
Speaker 1: tools for other companies to use to monitor everything from
Speaker 1: financial department type stuff like expenses and pay roll and
Speaker 1: all of that kind of thing, to the human resources side.
Speaker 1: So you're talking about talent management, organization, UM benefits, all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, all the things that these different
Speaker 1: departments would. You know, we talked about that mega company
Speaker 1: from way back when, where it would have all the
Speaker 1: different distinct departments. In this case, it's this company workday
Speaker 1: is trying to kind of fill the roles of finance
Speaker 1: departments and human resources departments. Yeah, just just doing that
Speaker 1: saying hey, we do this really good, let us do
Speaker 1: do it for you. Yeah. Because again, if if Lauren
Speaker 1: and I decide that we want to start a company
Speaker 1: together and we end up raising the capital somehow because
Speaker 1: kickstartered went nuts, and uh, we haven't even figured out
Speaker 1: how we're gonna build the thing we're gonna build, but
Speaker 1: we've already got like millions of dollars. Here's the thing
Speaker 1: we're gonna have. One day, you just wake up and go, Lauren,
Speaker 1: do you do you know how to fill out any
Speaker 1: of these forms? I don't even know what quick books is. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: See at that point, we were like, we need to
Speaker 1: hire people who know what they're doing so that we
Speaker 1: do everything correctly. And that's again what work day does.
Speaker 1: They're looking at the finance side and the human resources side,
Speaker 1: and and again all these tools are involved on the
Speaker 1: cloud so that you can access them from anywhere and
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, which you know makes great sense if
Speaker 1: you if you are these days really Yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: a mobile executive, if you're moving around doing lots of
Speaker 1: meetings and stuff and you want to be able to
Speaker 1: check in, uh, you know, and and see things on
Speaker 1: a granular level in whatever department, whether it's finance or
Speaker 1: human resources or whatever, then tools like this make that possible.
Speaker 1: Where you can you know, you even have like smartphone
Speaker 1: app implementation here so that you can see and and
Speaker 1: maybe you're doing a presentation for a potential client or
Speaker 1: maybe even a potential partner, and you can pull up
Speaker 1: real time information and analytics and say, look, here's here's
Speaker 1: how we're doing, here's what we're doing, here's what's working,
Speaker 1: and this is why you should be working with us.
Speaker 1: So uh, you know, again, not a company that's going
Speaker 1: to be providing anything that you and I as average
Speaker 1: consumers are going to see, but maybe the company you
Speaker 1: work for would be. Yeah. Um. They were founded in
Speaker 1: two thousand five from a group of people from people Soft,
Speaker 1: which had been been hostily taken over by Oracle. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: the people from Oracle came in pitchforks waving torches blazing
Speaker 1: and said this is ours now. Uh, and a group
Speaker 1: of folks from People's Soft said you know what and
Speaker 1: left to found this company. So uh that actually was well,
Speaker 1: it will become a bit of a thorn in a
Speaker 1: in some employees sides, according to one of the comments.
Speaker 1: But uh. They They also held an I P O
Speaker 1: in October two thousand twelve, so it is a publicly
Speaker 1: traded company in its own right, um, and has done
Speaker 1: quite well for itself. So this one also rated pretty high.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, they are a four point two and um
Speaker 1: CEO approval rating of Mr and Neil Mercy, although we
Speaker 1: should point out he is a co CEO and a
Speaker 1: co founder. Okay, yeah, it's it's not on the list there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, did you notice that the list had a
Speaker 1: couple of percentages that had a little asterisk next to him?
Speaker 1: Did you find what the asterisk meant? As far as
Speaker 1: I could tell, it was an asterisk to nowhere. Yeah. See,
Speaker 1: that's what I thought too. And then when I actually
Speaker 1: looked at work days organization chart, I saw that it
Speaker 1: was a co CEO. So that's a potential answer to
Speaker 1: that question. Well okay, and so so employees say that
Speaker 1: there are lots of incredibly smart people working there and
Speaker 1: that you know, for for all of the hard work
Speaker 1: that those smart people are doing, their their voices are
Speaker 1: appreciated and heard. Yes, yeah, they actually say that the
Speaker 1: organization there is very flat. In other words, you don't
Speaker 1: have this level of mid managers in between you and
Speaker 1: the people who are actually making the decision. So your
Speaker 1: your voice is very important to everyone. However, like we
Speaker 1: were saying, some of the complaints going on are are
Speaker 1: just that if you weren't part of that people Soft transfer,
Speaker 1: that there's a little bit of a clicky sort of problem,
Speaker 1: like people like the people who came over from people
Speaker 1: Soft are in a slightly different echelon than everybody else,
Speaker 1: and that your your prospects for getting promoted or getting
Speaker 1: a raise maybe affected by whether or not you happen
Speaker 1: to be one of the people Soft elite. So even
Speaker 1: though the organization is pretty flat, it can be difficult
Speaker 1: if you weren't in that ground floor exactly. And as
Speaker 1: for recent news, there's some interesting recent news. The other
Speaker 1: co CEO, Dave Duffield, who was another one of the
Speaker 1: founders of this company of work Day, sold off most
Speaker 1: of his stock in the company back in November. Specifically,
Speaker 1: he sold three hundred forty eight thousand, one twenty six shares.
Speaker 1: He still retains more than fifty nine thousand shares, but
Speaker 1: obviously he sold most of them and that was worth
Speaker 1: a cool twenty seven point eight million dollars, so not
Speaker 1: a bad haul there. Yeah, And that same day, Yeah,
Speaker 1: CEO ce all right, you gutta say the name, because
Speaker 1: I'm going to giggle if I say Michael Stankley. No, No,
Speaker 1: there's no L there. It's stank I just imagined the
Speaker 1: whole L. Now, that's fine, I mean I would do no.
Speaker 1: Michael Stanky also CEO, sold forty four shares but retains
Speaker 1: more than one hundred thousand shares. So that's nonetheless, that's
Speaker 1: a decently big upset of share trading. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a lot of there's a lot of shares that were unloaded. Um,
Speaker 1: and and it doesn't mean that the company is doing poorly.
Speaker 1: In fact, the uh, the amount that they unloaded it,
Speaker 1: I think it was like somewhere around the mid seventies,
Speaker 1: like around seventy five dollars something like that at the
Speaker 1: share price that they sold their shares off of. But
Speaker 1: they had done that just before there had been talks
Speaker 1: about the share price rising up to be between seventy
Speaker 1: nine and eighty five dollars per share, So in reality,
Speaker 1: it's not like they were Yeah. So I and obviously
Speaker 1: I can't speak to what their motives were or you know,
Speaker 1: if they were trying to do this to get new
Speaker 1: investment in the company. I don't know. I I honestly
Speaker 1: don't know. Uh, they clearly have done quite a lot
Speaker 1: of work to get the company valued at what it
Speaker 1: is now. So, um, we'll see how this plays out
Speaker 1: and an interesting thing to watch. Um. The next one
Speaker 1: on our list, number six is a SAS Institute. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is a little bit more familiar. Yeah, s a s
Speaker 1: is what we've called it in a previous podcast, But
Speaker 1: turns out you're supposed to call it SASS. I did
Speaker 1: not know that until I happened to read it on
Speaker 1: the website. We we've mentioned SAS once before, not just
Speaker 1: as a company, but as a way of life. Well
Speaker 1: obviously both Jonathan and I lived the sas. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: a little sassy, But no sas we talked about because
Speaker 1: I remember specifically because we loved the CEO's name, right,
Speaker 1: James Goodnight Goodnight. Yeah, this is the company we talked
Speaker 1: about when we were talking about the richest tech billionaires
Speaker 1: we were we mentioned James Goodnight. I think he was
Speaker 1: number of fifteen or number fourteen on Forbes list last year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's one of the co founders of the Company's still
Speaker 1: the CEO. Yep. And this is a company that, according
Speaker 1: to the website, has turned a profit every single year
Speaker 1: of his thirty five year existence, and that has incredibly
Speaker 1: low employee turnover. As for what does this is a
Speaker 1: business analytics software company. And if you remember our discussion
Speaker 1: from the the The Tech Executive episode we did months
Speaker 1: and months ago, they started off by creating software that
Speaker 1: helped agricultural companies analyze huge amounts of data. The thing
Speaker 1: was that the agricultural industry in the United States had
Speaker 1: amassed huge, huge amounts of information, but it was really
Speaker 1: hard to organize it, or to format it, or to
Speaker 1: to make any real use of it. And what happened
Speaker 1: was you had some engineers who came up with this
Speaker 1: way of creating a software that would very effectively go
Speaker 1: through all this and make it meaningful. So the data
Speaker 1: that you had was actually useful. It wasn't just that
Speaker 1: you had lots of it, but you could do things
Speaker 1: with it. And that was just the very first major
Speaker 1: customer that SAS had, and after that they started to
Speaker 1: branch out into doing analytics software for various industries and
Speaker 1: businesses and for lots of different applications. So again yet
Speaker 1: another company that works with other companies, not with right, right,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's it's a lot of really smart and
Speaker 1: scalable stuff that can help companies of basically any size,
Speaker 1: you know, look at look at look at an analyze
Speaker 1: their statistics and visualize that data and all of that
Speaker 1: important stuff that, right, I mean, give you meaning to
Speaker 1: the information that you're gathering. Right, I mean again, I
Speaker 1: know we keep saying this over and over, but you
Speaker 1: just think about the amount of information that your typical
Speaker 1: large businesses is generating, whether it's sales figures, customer loyalty, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the company value. These are concepts that are
Speaker 1: are really important and sometimes they're a little difficult to
Speaker 1: get a grasp on. So if you have a company
Speaker 1: that can analyze that data may make it meaningful, create
Speaker 1: data visualization where you can actually see what it means.
Speaker 1: That can be a huge benefit. And and apparently, according
Speaker 1: to Sas themselves, it is a very large benefit. They
Speaker 1: say that their customers represent ninety of the top companies
Speaker 1: on Fortune's Global Yeah, so n scent of the top
Speaker 1: one companies listed by Fortune in that global list. That's
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a great resume. Yeah, so, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's important there. Uh And yeah, apparently working there
Speaker 1: is is, at least for some employees, kind of awesome.
Speaker 1: Now now they have offices all over the place. But
Speaker 1: their main campus looks pretty amazing. Is I mean a
Speaker 1: huge campus. It's kind of I mean it's the sort
Speaker 1: of like food and recreation and bringing your your work
Speaker 1: life and your life life together into one giant, happy
Speaker 1: college like maths. Yes. The idea being that if you
Speaker 1: can make the experience of going to work pleasant and
Speaker 1: uh and uh and and be able to offset some
Speaker 1: of the things that a lot of people have to
Speaker 1: sacrifice when they go to work full time. You know
Speaker 1: that things like daycare or even having a gym on site,
Speaker 1: these are things that can make a big difference in
Speaker 1: a person's life. I mean, my excuse for not going
Speaker 1: to the gym is that we don't have one in
Speaker 1: this building today. That's a very convenient excuse, and I
Speaker 1: mean I'm sticking with it. Look, just because there's one
Speaker 1: a whole two like like like half a mile dout
Speaker 1: raining outside Lauren, it's raining, I'd get I'd get wet
Speaker 1: on the way to the gym. Anyway, Do we have
Speaker 1: any news about about that? So SAS Institute has, like
Speaker 1: we said, it has a global reach. It's it's not
Speaker 1: just in the United States. Uh. They held a survey
Speaker 1: in the u K and it was a survey where
Speaker 1: they ended up the findings said that they it's really
Speaker 1: important that we find ways to educate people about big
Speaker 1: data and how to handle it, how to analyze it,
Speaker 1: and finding new ways to do that. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is the business that SAS is involved with. But they're
Speaker 1: saying not just don't it's not just come to us
Speaker 1: so that we can fix your problem. It's we need
Speaker 1: to make sure that this is something that we stress
Speaker 1: in curriculum, in school curriculums, curriculum, I guess I should say, um,
Speaker 1: so that we can make sure we're raising the next
Speaker 1: generation of analysts so that we can take advantage of
Speaker 1: this huge opportunity. And so SAS was actually saying that
Speaker 1: the UK is poised to potentially being a leader in
Speaker 1: this space. That if they were able to encourage this
Speaker 1: kind of thing and maybe develop these kind of curricula,
Speaker 1: then students would be able to really become experts in
Speaker 1: this field that's an emerging field, and thus you have
Speaker 1: a new generation of analysts that can really take advantage
Speaker 1: of this incredible amount of information his big data. We've
Speaker 1: been talking about that a lot too. It's it's got
Speaker 1: a huge amount of potential, but it's also comes with,
Speaker 1: you know, enormous challenges because you're just generating so much
Speaker 1: every single day. How do you manage it? How do
Speaker 1: you make me have anything to make sense of it? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean you know, it's like it's like throwing someone
Speaker 1: into a library that's completely unorganized and saying, bring me
Speaker 1: a book about such and such, and it was just
Speaker 1: like I'm just I don't even know how to sort
Speaker 1: through all this, right. Um. They also are engaged in
Speaker 1: an effort in Nigeria along with a company called Resourcery,
Speaker 1: to help fight fraud, which you know in that particular
Speaker 1: country is a big issue. So um, they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're looking at opportunities to not just do business but
Speaker 1: to help people. Um. And and actually we totally forgot
Speaker 1: to give the company rating. Um oh yeah, so that
Speaker 1: they are at a four point three and their CEO
Speaker 1: approval of Mr Goodnight is so um. You know again,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where people say, like, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of interesting benefits, including one of the
Speaker 1: ones I saw was food. Food. Food. There's food everywhere.
Speaker 1: Food is awesome in general. Just if you give people food,
Speaker 1: they'll love you. Forever. I think. Yeah, that's that's why
Speaker 1: occasionally I will go across the street and buy a
Speaker 1: dozen cupcakes and bring them back to the office. And
Speaker 1: that is a true story. Yep, that that is that
Speaker 1: has happened. I can tell you Jonathan is not lying
Speaker 1: right now. Well, we've got five more companies to talk about.
Speaker 1: In our next episode, you'll get to hear what the
Speaker 1: top five are. And if you have any requests, like
Speaker 1: there's some topic that you think we should cover, maybe
Speaker 1: there's a company on this list you would like to
Speaker 1: know more about, or maybe there's another company entirely different
Speaker 1: company that you just are dying to have us cover,
Speaker 1: or technology concept, whatever you like, let us know, write
Speaker 1: us our email addresses, text stuff at Discovery dot com.
Speaker 1: And hey, here's another thing. We're social people. We're on
Speaker 1: some social networks. I wouldn't call us social, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we are on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumbler. Our handle at
Speaker 1: all three of those is text HSW. Yeah, so get
Speaker 1: in touch with us because uh, you know, we'll we'll
Speaker 1: read it, and we'll we'll enjoy it. And then once
Speaker 1: we crawl out of our corners, uh, in which we
Speaker 1: call our safe zone, we'll be happy to respond to
Speaker 1: you as a social person. I'm the only anyway, So
Speaker 1: get in touch with us. Guys. We want to hear
Speaker 1: from you, and we will talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how staff works dot com.