So, at the start of the Board of Trustees meeting for The Anita Borg Institute at 8AM today we went around the table and introduced ourselves. Poor planning on my part was to sit next to board chair Bill Wulf who turned to me and asked me to go first.
I quipped "Two days ago I was the CTO of NetApp, and yesterday I became the CTO of the Number 1 Great Place to Work in the US."
Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President of Engineering and Research at Google, sitting next to me said "Alan Eustace, Google. For the past two years we were the number 1 best place to work and now we're number 4, but we're not bitter."
Kathy Hill, Senior Vice President of Access Networking and Services, two people down introduced herself as "Kathy Hill, from Cisco where we are the sixth best place to work - but we have aspirations."
By this point we were laughing, in a very good natured way, and Rick Rashid, Senior Vice President heading research at Microsoft joined in the repartee.
No one thing makes a company a great place to work, unless you say it's the people that work there. The energy and passion that the member company board of trustees bring to The Anita Borg Institute to make a difference in providing career development opportunities, programs for students and recent graduates, and partnerships to improve their place to work is one reason why these companies are singled out for recognition and are successful in their business.
Congratulations to all the winners and people making a difference!
P.S. Four or more Great Places to Work perhaps? I want to congratulate Anita Borg Institute Partners Genentech, Intuit, and Juniper Networks also!
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