Baseline Magazine - June 2008

Does This Server Cluster
Make Me Look Fat?

While technologies such as virtualization, multithreading and blade servers have made the data center leaner, those who work there are getting … well … not leaner.

According to a new study by CareerBuilder.com, 34 percent of IT workers say they have gained more than 10 pounds in their current job. A hefty 16 percent say they’ve gained at least twice that. That’s 50 percent of IT pros putting on weight—a nice, round number for a nice, round group.

To be fair, tubby technologists t ip the scales only slightly ahead of their sedentary counterparts in industries such as health care and sales.

The culprits seem to be the stressful-yet-sedentary nature of tech work, coupled with IT workers’ famously poor eating habits.

According to the survey, 41 percent of IT workers eat lunch out twice or more a week, making portion and calorie control difficult. A pale-looking 11 percent buy their lunch out of a vending machine at least once a week.

Between these unhealthy pit stops, half of the survey participants said they also snack between meals. And we’re not talking about apples and rice cakes, here. Think potato chips and cookies.

BY
CHRIS
GONSALVES

Technology’s Worst Work Spaces

Leave it to the folks at Valleywag to follow up their list of the best tech work spaces with the list we really wanted all along: the worst.

The list, at www.valleywag.com/tag/10-worst-workspaces, hits hard in all the places you’d expect: Grey, soul-crushing cubicles; storage boxes in common areas; faded industrial carpets. But the Valleywaggers also took issue with the folks that try too hard: too many foosball tables and “chill out” rooms—and enough already. with the plastic toys and kindergarten color schemes! One big surprise: Google made the list, mostly for being drab, despite its rep as a hip, fun, gonzo place to work. Others getting hit: LinkedIn for being too utilitarian and boring; Jahjah, for trying too hard with its interior urban-graffiti thing; and Facebook for looking like an unkempt college dorm room. As if there are any kempt ones.

T E C H N O SCOURGE
Hiding in Plain Sight

A new service from PressReleasePros.com is promising a sort of anti-search-engine optimization service aimed at helping companies bury bad news online.

In a release issued in May, the company claims it can help hide things “such as negative blog postings” through the use of search engine optimization (SEO). The service floods certain targeted search results with alternate material designed to rank higher with search engines. They also place numerous unrelated external links to the offending content in an effort to reduce its SEO ranking.

Clever—until someone catches a company trying to do this. Then heaven save them from the ensuing flood, when they’ll have thousands of negative blog postings to overcome. Whatever happened to pleasing your customers and learning from the occasional black eye?