I agree that companies tend to over hire. My company certainly does, which leads to things taking much more time they would with less folks (and often more buggy). It's the age old problem of throwing engineers at things thinking it'll speed things up I guess.
I disagree that there isn't exciting work to be done at these places. I think you're just as likely to be bored at any other job, you just get paid boatloads more. Most end up running off to do their own thing since they have the financial freedom to do so after a few years.
For what it's worth, I think you'd be able to blog about your work at Netflix, Google, Facebook, etc. Plenty of their employees do so.
EDIT (you added in some PTO details): Heck I wouldn't leave if I got 45 days PTO either! Yeah, I hope companies start competing more on hrs of work. I'd gladly take a hefty pay cut to work 20 hrs a week.
> I think you'd be able to blog about your work at Netflix, Google, Facebook, etc. Plenty of their employees do so.
There’s two types of work-blog: the kind you have on your personal website - and the kind on the company’s own blog.
Most companies prohibit what you can talk about on your own blog (rightfully so - competitive secrets, etc) but some companies like a Apple outright prohibit you talking about your work to others at all beyond generalities.
Company-run blogs, for all their casual demeanour, are still ruled by management - and one’s blog articles become their copyright unless otherwise stipulated (as it’s a work stemming from your employment). When/if the company ceases to exist - so do your articles.
I had my own blog on blogs.msdn.com when I was at Microsoft - I sometimes posted somewhat subversive articles (such as guides on how to tweak the appearance of components of Windows if you didn’t like the defaults using publicly available articles and documentation) - I was hoping it would still be online today but it seems most MSDN blogs that didn’t reach Raymond Chen-levels of popularity got axed when the “MSDN” brand was retired. Oh well...
I disagree that there isn't exciting work to be done at these places. I think you're just as likely to be bored at any other job, you just get paid boatloads more. Most end up running off to do their own thing since they have the financial freedom to do so after a few years.
For what it's worth, I think you'd be able to blog about your work at Netflix, Google, Facebook, etc. Plenty of their employees do so.
EDIT (you added in some PTO details): Heck I wouldn't leave if I got 45 days PTO either! Yeah, I hope companies start competing more on hrs of work. I'd gladly take a hefty pay cut to work 20 hrs a week.