Vampires work Skype's graveyard shift

Like many companies, Skype learned trusted, valued employees were vampires. Gilles Annespie, HR director, affirmed Skype's commitment to workforce diversity and equal opportunity extended to all employees, even the undead.

 
Vampire-ready jobs are tagged "graveyardshift" on the Skype jobs blog.

Embracing change. Workshops at Skype offices helped employees who wanted to "come out of the coffin" to their colleagues. "Beyond the normal anxieties of people acknowledging something new, we wanted to deal constructively with change" said Annespie.

"Some of our best developers worked late and missed meetings. Now we know why" said a Tallinn team leader. Half the quality assurance team came out at the evening sessions. "It's the focused, ruthless pursuit of bugs that makes them so good. That's why we're pretty sure most of our private beta testers are vampires too."

To become a more vampire-friendly workplace, Skype's bigger offices turned a few wire closets into emergency sleep spaces. The light-proof "day bunks" have beanbags, locks from the inside, atomic clocks, and wi-fi. All Skype offices are now open around the clock. Refrigerators in every lounge stock Trublood in all the popular types.

Staffing up. Skype actively recruits vampire programmers, both for its staff and for its third-party developer program. Skype named Bertoine Antout Manager of Vampire Community Relations. The team will host VampDevCamp, an unconference for undead hackers at Skype House London on 31 October 2009. 

Miller Roberts, Skype's general counsel, said it was hard extending health, disability, and life insurance to vampires. Coverage used to end with death. Skype's legal affairs team rewrote contracts with more than forty insurers, in a dozen countries, to cover all current and future undead employees within the first 30 days.

Some paychecks were briefly stopped during the transition when newly added "first death" dates were added to legacy payroll software. 

tags: skype, vampires, hr, payroll, skypeforvampires, s4v, skype4vampires, graveyardshift, trublood, trueblood

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