Last week was my five-year anniversary at Southwest. I started on June 25, 2001, so I was quite grateful that Southwest didn’t lay off all the new guys after September 11. To celebrate our anniversary, many of the new hires from my SMART Camp group (Technology new hires fresh out of school) met for lunch, and I got to join them. It was great to see some folks I hadn’t seen in months and catch up. About 2/3 of us are left from the original group of about 22, which is pretty high for technology workers. I think the high retention rate is partly due to SMART Camp, which was 6 weeks of orientation to the company, its various departments, and its history along with lots of fun. Sure, it was a long program, but it helped make us die-hard fans of the company.