The Craigslist Secret - why no tech has ever quit Craigslist in 12 years

markevanstech.com

27 points·vlad··8 comments

I live a block away from the Craigslist office (which is, yes, in a normal-looking house/storefront with a charmingly ugly sign above the door). I often walk past it during business hours, but the gate is always closed and locked.

I bumped into CEO Jim Buckmaster (a friend of mine) near the office, and I asked him about the locked gate. "We all work upstairs now," Jim said. "We had to keep the first floor locked up because people kept dropping in to say how much they love us."

Not a particularly good headline.

Why has no tech ever quit Craigslist in 12 years? Lack of meetings? Lack of CEO vision?

Agreed. WHY?

Perhaps they don't have any techs... ;-)

That'd be a helluva secret!

"The way of the future...":

http://gigaom.com/2007/04/10/web-20-death-of-the-network-engineer/

I was at a talk by Jim Buckmaster (CEO) at Edinburgh University earlier this year, he mentioned this. He attributed the lack of staff turnover to the generally relaxed work environment rather than one of these specific reasons. Seems like quite a cool place to work for a programmer, and given only 23 people work there it's not surprising few people leave. Anyway, the video is available here if you are interested, have a look around 8 minutes: mms://granton.ucs.ed.ac.uk/tech-entrepreneur/IE2-06-07/S07JimBuckmaster.wmv (maybe it was the jet lag but he's definitely the most chilled out CEO I have seen!)

I know a guy who works there, and indeed, he likes it quite a lot, even though he's not wild about the Perl code.

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