11 Jan
2007
11 Jan
'07
10:03 p.m.
On 1/11/07, William Donzelli <wdonzelli at gmail.com> wrote:
Well... while I was there, _mostly_ we got left to ourselves (dress
code, traditional holiday parties, etc.), but there were occasional
moments of confusion and non-recognition when we had to directly deal
with folks in Virginia. I was a developer, so mostly we kept our
heads down and wrote code.
I've heard from friends who are still there or who have recently
(2006) departed that the years I was there (2001-2003) are now "good
old days". One of the first changes to bubble to the top of the list
of complaints is the quality of the coffee at the coffee stations.
Seemingly trivial, but for a bunch of developers, quite important (at
least it's still better there than when I was at Airtouch/Verizon - we
used to bring our own coffee from home rather than drink the swill
I was working
there when they replaced all of our CompuServe badges
with AOL badges, changed the sign on the building and changed our pay
dates from CIS to AOL's schedule. Talk about end of an era.
How did AOL treat its Compuserve employees and culture? from their coffee service).
There was always a lot of pissing and moaning about
AOL in our group
(ANS.NET), but I think that exists everywhere, regardless of how good
or bad the masters were. In hindsight, we look back and now admit that
AOL really was a decent company to work for. We, and our culture, were
treated very well. The amount of BS was pretty minimal.
CompuServe was, at one point, a _really_ nice place to work... I
remember working elsewhere in town and hearing good things about CIS
from my friends who were there _at that time_, so I
know it's not just
nostalgia. When I was there, there were still a lot of
people still
smarting from the Worldcom/AOL dismantling of the former CompuServe,
fueling any unhappy feelings at the time, I'm sure.
Our end of an era came about (2nd end of an era for
ANS, actually)
when AOL sold our group off to Worldcom. Suprise announcement - only
the very top knew, and kept it a secret. It was timed perfectly on the
day we moved to a new building, and they had just (as in a day) put up
the nifty AOL sign up in the lobby. Removed the next day, I think.
Ow!
Worldcom sucked.
I've heard that from just about everyone from CompuServe who ended up there.
-ethan