The title comes from a response email I received from a friend of mine who is beginning the search for a new job.  His company - one I previously worked for, as well, and where I still have some friends - has systematically removed the few features that once made them attractive enough to continue drawing a pay check, to name a few:

1. Free drinks and regular "ice cream socials" during non-payroll weeks
2. A sane telecommuting policy
3. Annual salary increases that at least kept pace with increases in the cost of living
4. Respectable middle management

I make no apologies if any of the items above seem petty.  The simple fact is, they were all provided at some point; they all made employment at said company more attractive - either through some kind of social interaction, job satisfaction or by simply compensating on pace with the current economy, and they have all been removed (or, in the case of item 4, fled the company) over a period of time for no stated reason: therefore they are perceived as losses to the quality of the work environment by its employees.  I've seen this pattern repeated with at least three companies in sequence in the Austin area alone. More...

After lots of procrastination, I finally decided I was being left behind by the .Net community and started researching LINQ (Language INtegrated Query) and its underlying technologies - anonymous methods, anonymous types, lambda expressions (predicates and assignments), and extender methods etc. Ironically, I purchased an APress’ Pro LINQ exactly one day before finding out that Microsoft had made Introduction to Microsoft LINQ freely available (or nearly so - you need a Passport account, and have to aquiesce to a short personal info questionnaire). I don’t feel like my APress dollars were wasted, however. Their treatment of the different classes of LINQ (-to Objects, -to ADO.Net, -to XML, etc.) appears to be fairly exhaustive, where the ‘Intro’ volume looks like it lays the groundwork for the technology. One of the items that caught my eye immediately was the concept of extender methods, which allow developers to change the behavior of existing types - even (or perhaps particularly) sealed ones. Now, that’s an excellent idea.  More...