Actual Spyderco Employees

[JD Spydo]

It's not many forums where the owner and/or CEO comes onto the Forum as much as Sal graciously does and shares his thoughts with us and takes many of our suggestions. We are really fortunate to be able to interact freely as we do here at Spyderville :cool:

And you must keep in mind that there are so many intellectual property thieves out there in the market constantly trying to steal your ideas and your company's advances in the market. Many companies have ridgid regulations prohibiting the sharing of any sensative company information. With all of that in perspective this forum does give Spyderco a unique place in the market landscape IMO.

Personally I've never seen a company that allows it's fans and afficionados to have so much input as Spyderco seems to. Spyderco is truly a great success story that is very unique in this present time we live in.

[The Mastiff]

If I was an employee it would remove the fun from this forum being extra , extra careful of what I said and worrying about thin skinned posters. It's different for a random guy like me to be rude than an employee here. People would have their feelings hurt much easier if something they didn't like came from an employee.

We have all seen people talking about their lives being ruined and "worst things in their lives" from what they see as defects. Imagine if a clumsy employee then hurt their feelings. :)

Sal seems to do a really good job keeping from getting burned out by the day to day stuff here. In my opinion it shows he really does like steel, knife designs and high performing tools.

Joe

[chuck_roxas45]

I couldn't post what I post if I was an employee haha....

[Skywarp]

It's not many forums where the owner and/or CEO comes onto the Forum as much as Sal graciously does and shares his thoughts with us and takes many of our suggestions. We are really fortunate to be able to interact freely as we do here at Spyderville :cool:

Exactly!
Sal has a massive involvement with this forum.
What more do you want?!

[Skywarp]

...other than more toxic green FRN! :-)

[Ankerson]

If I was an employee it would remove the fun from this forum being extra , extra careful of what I said and worrying about thin skinned posters. It's different for a random guy like me to be rude than an employee here. People would have their feelings hurt much easier if something they didn't like came from an employee.

We have all seen people talking about their lives being ruined and "worst things in their lives" from what they see as defects. Imagine if a clumsy employee then hurt their feelings. :)

Sal seems to do a really good job keeping from getting burned out by the day to day stuff here. In my opinion it shows he really does like steel, knife designs and high performing tools.

Joe

Joe,

Yeah, it would change the whole aspect of how and what you would post so it wouldn't be as fun.

Personally I would not likely post in the forums at all, I would just read....

Jim

[SpyderNut]

I think the other thing to consider is that any employees who announced their presence here would likely receive a glut of questions/suggestions/inquiries that would place them in an awkward position. (E.g. "Do you know when the Ti-fluted PM2 is due to hit the market?" ) I would personally lurk on the forum if I actually worked for them. It would just be a lot easier to deal with...

[JD Spydo]

I think the other thing to consider is that any employees who announced their presence here would likely receive a glut of questions/suggestions/inquiries that would place them in an awkward position. (E.g. "Do you know when the Ti-fluted PM2 is due to hit the market?" ) I would personally lurk on the forum if I actually worked for them. It would just be a lot easier to deal with...

Good Point!!! Spydernut If I were fortunate enough to land a job at the Great Spyder Factory I sure wouldn't let anyone on the forum know it. You wouldn't have a minute's rest :rolleyes: Everyone and his brother would be bugging you to death trying to get inside information from you.

Actually I'm sure some of the employees probably do chime in from time to time>> because you know that some of them like the blades as much as the rest of us do. But again you would have to be stealthy about it and blend in like one of the crowd.

[Blerv]

I couldn't post what I post if I was an employee haha....

You could never be a Spyderco employee, Chuck...

Because...You are Batman. :eek:

[TazKristi]

...Actually I'm sure some of the employees probably do chime in from time to time>> because you know that some of them like the blades as much as the rest of us do. But again you would have to be stealthy about it and blend in like one of the crowd.

As Sal mentioned there are a lot of potential issues so we do monitor everything closely. As for someone posting in a stealthy manner... we ask that no one ever hide in that way. We try to be as transparent as possible. We don't believe being a member of the forum without being upfront about an association to Spyderco fits with our ethos.

Kristi

[Bodog]

I have a job where there's a 40,000+ strong work force. We have a private forum dedicated for just us employees where gossip, rumors, updated laws, new policies, etc come out. It's pretty much a free for all with some raunchy humor, bickering about interpretations of policies, stories about what happened to fellow employees, how the shifting political winds affect what it is we do, etc. There's a wealth of knowledge on there, from authorities to daily news to official use only info. Out of the 40,000 plus work force, maybe 15,000 even know about it, maybe 3,000 actually visit the site, maybe 800 are irregular posters, maybe 2 or 300 actively post every month or so, and maybe 50 to 70 post weekly, if that. Now that's about a job that the vast majority of workers honestly care about. Think about how small the Spyderco workforce is, how many are truly invested in the job they do, and how public this site is. That should equal about 3 people visiting and posting to this site, and maybe 1 who regularly posts.

As far as the public visiting this site, it's extremely rare that I've met a person in real life who genuinely cares about knives enough to learn about them, and even then, the subsection of that population who genuinely cares about a specific company enough to search for and post to a forum dedicated to that one company is even smaller. So out of 300+ million people in America, I bet there are only maybe a couple of thousand who even know about this forum, maybe only 1000 who have an active user profile, maybe 100 who post at any time within a month's timeframe, and maybe 20 or 30 who post enough to be considered regular contributors.

This is an elite club :)

[Surfingringo]

I couldn't post what I post if I was an employee haha....

Hah!! You would have been canned ages ago Chuck! :D

[cckw]

I had a job in the sales part of a small manufacturing company. I can tell you that most employees are not enthusiasts of the products they make. Hypothetical person "X" a wife and mother of 2, 40lbs overweight, no college education, but a nice lady and reliable worker. She applied for 10 jobs that day and the one she got was at the knife making place. Her job is to drop pieces into a jig and put the screws in, then open/close and slide it on down the line. The target pace is 50 pieces per hours, times 8 hours a day. whoo-hoo now lets go home and talk about it online.

[Ankerson]

I had a job in the sales part of a small manufacturing company. I can tell you that most employees are not enthusiasts of the products they make. Hypothetical person "X" a wife and mother of 2, 40lbs overweight, no college education, but a nice lady and reliable worker. She applied for 10 jobs that day and the one she got was at the knife making place. Her job is to drop pieces into a jig and put the screws in, then open/close and slide it on down the line. The target pace is 50 pieces per hours, times 8 hours a day. whoo-hoo now lets go home and talk about it online.

Yeah, factory work isn't all that exciting... Been there, done that....

But it was a steady job back then and when I look back it was the best job that I ever really had in a lot of ways...

I worked at a roofing truss plant back in the 80's, did everything from build trusses to running the component cutter during the time I worked there, and in the Winter I was one of the ones who did the off season repair work. They treated me well, I had full benefits, got a nice X-Mas Bonus every year, was 8-4:30 M-F....

Then I went to College and got into management, the computer industry etc and things went all the **** from then on for the next 24 years......

But I look back on that 1st job after the Military these days and know it would have been rock solid, unlike the places I worked after for various reasons...

Well the choices we make and the mistakes they end up being....

[WorkingEdge]

I thought I read somewhere that Spyderco was one of the best places to work in Colorado or something like that. At least I could say I have a cool boss there (and hopefully get employee discount). He can pay me in tickets to be redeemed at the SFO.

[The Deacon]

I thought I read somewhere that Spyderco was one of the best places to work in Colorado or something like that. At least I could say I have a cool boss there (and hopefully get employee discount). He can pay me in tickets to be redeemed at the SFO.

They were voted one of the top 100 places to work, nationwide, this year by Outside magazine, for the third year in a row.

As for employees posting, heck we get Sal, Kristi, and Michael posting on a regular basis, Joyce pops in occasionally, and Eric and a couple others post on rare occasions. Not to mention a number of the knife makers who, while not "employees" in the traditional sense, are each responsible for one or more Spyderco knives.

[DougC-3]

I think I can vaguely remember two or three posts where people who worked at Spyderco or at least had Spyderco connections came on but made it plain who they were and what they were doing here. (Maybe this is a phantom memory or I'm just thinking of people who had dealer connections.) I'd like to think that a few of our posters have some sort of connection, maybe friends or relatives of employees, etc, but post with discretion.

This is a very interesting thread. Most of the points I would have brought up have already been made. I'd like to mention a couple of things that are off topic as far as employees are concerned but related to the discussion about what motivates people to come on forums.

Since the internet made this kind of thing possible, I have belonged to about four main forums. On one of them, it was easy to see that the majority of people just came on the forum to get specific information and a smaller group also enjoyed the camaraderie and opportunity to converse with people from all over the world and often hung out in the off-topic section. I fell into the second group, and the main moderator said we were "a whole different animal." But on the Spyderco forum, I think we have this opportunity in all the sub-forums. I won't say that I live in an intellectual backwater or that I'm a total recluse, but it's great to be able to converse with a high-caliber, cosmopolitan bunch of people about a very interesting topic without leaving your favorite chair and with no strings attached :)

[HarleyXJGuy]

After a long day at work, do you go home, jump on the internet and talk about work? I don't.

I do occasionally...but mainly to post photos that cause those afraid of heights to freak out because I find it entertaining.

I am not afraid of heights or falling.

The sudden stop at the end though, yeah not my thing.

Not sure how to explain why I jump out of airplanes or rappel from helicopters though.

[endgame]

tazchristy?

[Stuart Ackerman]

She steps in to educate us mostly, and sometimes to smack our hands when we get naughty...