Many moons ago I once went for a job as a DBA. So nervous I missed the names and jobs of the interviewers. Interview went well, interviewer asked a question, "So Mr Jones, what do you see as a major challenge to operational departments?". "Well most developers are pretty daft, they never consider the operational cycles. They simply think they can make requests and the ops depts will simply carry them out on a whim! Totally unacceptable to my mind! Change request systems are there for a reason.". Interview finished.

Agency called later. "Sorry but although the interview went well, they considered you very arrogant and rude and no call back I'm afraid.". I asked why. "Well the lead interviewer was head of company development and your comment that 'devlopers are stupid', did not go down well.". I corrected the agency bob by relying the whole statement and said that if the interviewer was that petty, probably best out of it!

"if the interviewer was that petty, probably best out of it!"

So true ... Sometimes, I'll push buttons when I'm trying for a contract with a company I've never worked for before. If I can upset an interviewer or interviewers by pointing out an obvious flaw in the company's methodology (usually pretty easy with Fortune 500 companies), I know they aren't interested in solving problems; rather they are more interested in maintaining the corporate hierarchy and status quo. I turn down contracts after interviews like that. Even in today's economy. It's just not worth it. Most of 'em either get bought or sold in a year or two. Or just go under.

See DEC for a particularly egregious example, followed by Amdahl. Or how about Quantum, purchased by Maxtor, who in turn was bought by Seagate ... maybe Yahoo will go that route. Microsoft is in danger, as well, as is Apple, as is Sun.

Corporate culture is all very well and good, but when it gets in the way of business solutions, it needs to take a back seat. I think 90% of the problem is the "us vs. them" attitude that is so common in business today. Management tries to build a "we're better than the competition" attitude thru' out the company, without providing the infrastructure. This is bass-ackwards, in my book. If you can't deliver the goods, no amount of corporate culture will matter.

i must say some of the greatest help has come from the open sorce community. True story about 4 yrs ago i was working on getting rsync up and running on of all things a Novell Netware server:-) i was having some difficulties and posting on some forms and out of the blue one afternoon a guy called me up and said "i see your really close to getting this going let me give you a hand" and in less then an hour he helped me iron out the wrinkles that were left. Amazingly how out of the blue it he took the time to find me, i never gave any contact info in the forum. I don't know if they make IT guys like that any more but i sure hope their are some left. But that is also why i'm a fan of linux and novell.