I thought it would be clever to try and make a list of places that I'd like to work. Not just for the research value, though it's always useful to do research on the industry and good employers out there, but also because it would give me a list of places to check up on frequently. To be honest, I have a tendency to get emotionally attached to companies that employ me; I attribute it to some aspect of racial conditioning. Centuries of insane, suicidal loyalty to one family or another has sunk into the blood.

Being an American Japanese, I don't have the luxury of hurling myself on the swords of my enemies in order to sacrifice everything for my lord. For one thing, it's illegal. For another, it sounds sort of painful, and I'm really against that whole pain thing. On the other hand, I can develop strong loyalties towards companies and become fiercely protective of my coworkers.

This doesn't work very well unless the company that I'm working for is one that I really believe in. Otherwise, I end up singing Barney songs for hours at a time, an external manifestation of psychological turmoil. Thus, the research.

Plus, heck, I'm unemployed. What else am I going to do with my time?

google.com

Honestly, who wouldn't like to work at google? Just take a look at this company. It's private, so it's not at the mercy of strangers with more money than sense. It's not a portal, so it's not bleeding out the gums. Thank God it didn't become a portal. What it has is a product -- a damn good product, an amazing product -- that it improves, daily. It has a corporate identity, one that's appealing and open. It has a startup culture where people work hard, with pride. In all my time at Excite, only once did I ever see anybody use the excite.com search engine. Everybody that I saw used google. Does that tell you something?

I'm seriously considering applying for a simple receptionist job here, just so that I can walk in the door. Is that insane?

No, seriously. Is that insane?

yahoo.com

Okay, it's a portal. But it's what excite.com never had the energy, the organization, or the intelligence -- we'll blame this one on the top executives, not the engineers, who rocked -- to be. I love yahoo's products: shopping, games, mail, messenger. Another corporate culture and identity that really attracts me, because it seems to be more about the technology than the profit.

The thing that specifically attracts me about yahoo and google is that both of them have such a direct, positive impact on so many customers across the world. This is the kind of satisfaction that I felt working at @Home; every piece of software I wrote, every problem I fixed, went directly to improving the Internet experience of over three million people. How can you beat that kind of high?

Sun

I've had this thing about Sun for a long time. Originally -- don't laugh -- it was because of the name. I'm from Seattle. The Sun is a big deal for us. We sacrifice things to try and make it come out more. (It doesn't work. However, we did find that Siberian dwarf hamsters cause hail.)

However, while I was working at @Home, we did some projects with the Sun contractors that were on site. I have to say, these people rocked the house. They were, one and all, consummate professionals. They were nice. They were sharp. They were on the ball. My theory is, a company that can attract and retain these types of people is a good company.

Some part of me is attracted to the idea of working for a really large company. I've never done that before. All my previous positions were with companies of less than 3,000. Me, I like the thought of being a cog in a big machine. I like uniformity. I like teamwork and cooperation and ooh, company picnics and maybe even a company baseball team, all things that didn't really happen much anywhere else I've worked. Is it wrong to want these things?

Oracle

Some of the same reasons apply to Oracle as do Sun. On top of that, though, there's this thing with Oracle; namely, Oracle seems to me a company that actually gives a damn about its employees. This is true for the companies above, of course, but it struck me as fairly unusual for one of the really big companies to display that kind of consideration for its workers even during the lean seasons. Plus, I've got to admit it, databases are Cool. I'm not very good at them, but there's something thrilling about putting together a workflow, an organized, efficient machine for business operations. It ain't romantic, but it's powerful stuff.

adobe

Adobe Systems is number 27 on the top companies to work for. Microsoft is behind them by one. My credit card company is ahead of them by one.

But hey, they're up there.

Here's another company with a product that blows me away. Adobe is one of those pieces of the web that you just can't get away from, and why should you? It's a product that I think will get more and more useful and valuable as time wears on and those traditional companies that rely so heavily on paper start to transfer degrading media to digital. It has such a large variety of products, but a common, focused theme to them that keeps them on the straight and narrow insofar as product quality is concerned. (You'd better believe after my @Home experience, I'm all into watching out for the "Attention Deficiency Disorder" Business Plan.) Working for Adobe would let me be proud of my company. Wouldn't that be grand?

SAP

I've got to tell you, I've heard SAP all spelled out several times, and not once have I been able to remember what the acronym stands for. It's in German.

Been a while for my German.

See, here the whole product thing takes a hike, because the real reason I want to work at SAP is because my friend -- who works there, (hi, Tara!) -- hooked me on it. I mean, sure, if you're not familiar with the company, you look at the acronym and think, "What sort of bonehead Marketing Exec let them decide on that as a company name?" (They were German.) And okay, occasionally I look at that title and giggle. Just a bit.

But from the stuff that Tara tells me, this sounds like another company that I could really work for, and work well for. They're International in a very literal sense; their employees come from all across the world. She's told me stories about the opportunities that they're willing to give to even the lowest-paid and -trained employees, and to me, that kind of displays an openness to ability that isn't Corporate-with-a-capital-C.

Pixar

Christ, what do you want from me, an explanation? It's Pixar, for crying out loud.

macromedia

This is one of the first companies I ever wanted to work for in Silicon Valley. Irony of ironies, it's not actually in Silicon Valley, or at least not mostly. Doesn't matter.

Hey, yo. Macromedia. Flash. Dreamweaver. Fireworks. Director. Shockwave. ColdFusion. They made the web that moved and grooved.

Yeah. You'd probably appreciate it more if you had broadband.