One reason to like working at Novell

One of the things that I loved about working at Novell was how family friendly it is. The company takes "Daughter/Son to Work" days seriously, which is probably the reason for this card that all visitors are required to fill out.

Novell must have lots of underage visitors

(Credit: Matt Asay)

What was the last time you saw that at any other company? Never? Exactly.

Of course, given the savvy operator that Ron Hovsepian is, it could be that he's just trying to get quality labor for less. Who better to build next-generation software than the next generation? :-)

[objective_view]

In the old days, Novell had a stated mindset of "Family First; Then Company; Then Shareholder". Made them fantastic to work for. Of course that has changed over the years - with more and more "increase shareholder value" type statements - more and more demands on what was family time.
To his credit, Ron was making steps to rebalance that - with his three sides to the relationship - staff; company; shareholder and the drive to make them all equally important. Pity that it didn't filter down to the intermediate management :-(

[jottley]

It was not uncommon to see my kids hanging out in my lab at Novell. Or, to have them tag along to a meeting. No one ever complained. In fact, I even remember making a presentation to a group while one of the Project Mangers held one of my sons who was almost one at the time.

It became so common that one co-worker kept a basket of toys under their desk for the kids. More companies should ask themselves: Would I rather have my employees bring their kids to work with them or take the time off? Because they were more willing to work with me during "office" time, I was more willing to invest time after hours and on weekends. It was win-win for both of us.