Tired of the Turtle? Join the Duck!

One must never get complacent about these things, and I realise that statistically it is unlikely that everyone presently at Alphabet is going to stay with us until retirement ... but when I walk into the office every day I like seeing happy, familiar faces.

So it does give me a little frisson of excitement when companies like Terrapinn and IQPC start ringing around the office, whispering sweet nothings in our ears, trying to lure our Alphabetters over to the Dark Side.

Of course it rather begs the question why someone would want to leave a stable, happy, high-performing team, where they are individually recognised not just by management and their peers in the office, but also by a wider community of senior government officials. This contrasts rather with the weird parallel universe on offer elsewhere, a place where everyone is rushing around trying to replace the six members of staff who jumped ship the previous week, and wondering which of their present colleagues is about to follow suit. A place with high staff turnover is not a happy place to work, which is presumably why it only really appeals to kids straight out of university - and even they, evidently, don't hang around for long...

I can imagine that running a large, hierarchical conference factory can't be easy in today's tight labour market ... which is why I'm rather pleased that Alphabet is not a large hierarchical conference factory.

And I think our present staff - including quite a number of people who didn't love the Turtle, and who were unimpressed by ICPCQ - are rather pleased not to be working in that type of environment either. So if you're tired of the Turtle, or are fed up with acronyms, feel free to drop me a line at james.smith@alphabet-media.com. Click to learn more about the Duck.

[Pictured: Kelly and Saffron. We do things differently here.]