The front lobby of SWA headquarters. Southwest Airlines is one of the more inspirational companies and certainly the oddest company I have worked for. It's a loose corporate culture, where you are given a fair amount of freedom to get things done. It feels something like a big high school. In fact, some employees wear SWA letter jackets. There are weekly deck parties when the weather is good, sponsored in turn by different departments, which is essentially a kegger on a deck overlooking the runway. Halloween is the craziest time of all, where the employees build elaborate sets in empty rooms to put on musicals with SWA themes, like "The Wizard of SWAz." People dress up in Halloween costumes and go from department to department, seeing all the skits. No work gets done that day. Herb, the founder and CEO, would flit from skit to skit, smoking and drinking, kissing all the prettiest girls before he left.

I worked there as a contractor and of course, where ever you work, contractors are always treated worse than employees. However, SWA's head was in the right place even though its tail did not always follow. SWA does not pay market rate for its computer people, so if you hire on you are trading salary for a nicer working environment. It's possible you may make it up and more over the long run in the stock purchase plan, since SWA's future looks so promising. There are flight attendants who have retired as millionaires in SWA stock.