Talk about surreal. I had my exit interview with AOL today — 41 days after I left the company. Seems that they want to know a few things:
- Why are so many people leaving the company?
- Why is AOL having such a hard time hiring new people?
In fact, this is so important to AOL's management that they outsourced my exit interview to a human resources consulting firm. Therein, of course, you may begin to get a glimmering of the problems that AOL is having.
I worked at AOL for five years. The commute was the shortest I've ever had — five minutes, which is probably the only reason I lasted as long as I did. The campus is great, too, with great landscaping and some really nice Marriot-run cafeterias. And the benefits were fine. But I still left.
I don't hate the company, not by any stretch of the imagination. But I wasn't sorry to leave. Working there, especially in the last year or so, was kind of like watching a slow-motion train wreck.
So, here are my reasons why I don't think AOL is an especially good company to work for right now, in no particular order.
- Climate of Layoffs: There is no job security at AOL, especially now with AOL's rapidly shrinking subscriber base. Historically, AOL has always had one or more layoffs per year, of various sizes. The manner in which people are chosen for layoffs is often capricious, and this was taken to new heights in the October, 2007 layoff. Nowadays, the company has no fat left anywhere, so any cuts take out real meat and leave the ones who are left struggling to keep things running.
- Not a Technology Company: A striking difference between Google and AOL is that AOL fundamentally doesn't think of itself as a technology company. It used to be a "services" company, but now it's an "advertising" company. Heck, upper management even moved the headquarters to New York, which underscores how unimportant management thinks the Dulles campus is.
- Round Pebble Syndrome: People who really get things done often tend to be dynamic, forceful personalities who aren't afraid to have knock-down, drag-out arguments with people who disagree with them. Those types of people tend to get laid off at AOL. As a culture, AOL encourages committees and diffusion of responsibility (and risk). The culture also tends to limit innovation and resist new technologies, because innovation and new technologies both imply risk.
- Lack of Opportunity: There is no real opportunity for any sort of advancement in AOL. It's limited in all areas because the company is shrinking. But it's the worst for the technical folks.
There is no career path at AOL for technologists. You can't get to Principal System Engineer (the level above Senior System Engineer) unless you've successfully completed a project that was important to a Vice President. This means that A) you have to get assigned to a good project, B) your role has to be important enough for the VP to notice you, and C) the VP has to last long enough at the company to get anybody promoted.
Besides, there are hardly any junior technologists left at AOL. If you play "The Weakest Link" during enough layoffs, pretty soon the only ones left are senior engineers. So, how do you advance? Generally, you leave the company. At least having AOL on your resume is not considered a bad thing.
- No Transfers: To top it off, it's very difficult for technology folks to switch jobs within the company. AOL often freezes both hiring and transfers (and never really enables transfers very well, anyway). In the last re-org that I went through, I was placed in a .NET group even though I was a senior Java/Rails guy. Surely, there was someplace in AOL that could have used a person with my skill set? And this was a fairly common scenario for technologists.
I could go on, but you get the idea. All of the things I've described are bad, but they also enforce each other, which is even worse. The fact that AOL really, truly doesn't think of itself as a technology play also affects the company's attitudes toward technologists.
So, no, I don't think AOL is a great place to work, especially if you're a technologist. The sad thing is that it's going to take a serious technology effort to turn AOL around. Of course, that assumes that upper management even wants to turn AOL around. They might just be more interested in selling off the pieces.
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