3 ms·

How do you recognize these types of good companies?

• asn0 11y ago
  The companies are probably small, it'd be rare for a large company to be able to pull it off. They probably have most people telecommuting (telecommuting tends to level out executive vs front-line). They necessarily have a higher mix of "senior" people (people who can manage themselves without much management). The executives do things that directly make money (e.g CTO still codes, CEO still closes deals), even as the company grows (and tend to outsource/offload things that would normally give them more power, but don't contribute to the bottom line). Coders probably work directly with Support and Sales staff and sometimes customers to understand customer problems. On the higher end of revenue/employee and productivity/employee ratio. Company is probably frugal, spending money on things that actually make the company successful, not just look/feel successful. The company will behave like its small even as it gets bigger. More focused on getting to profitability without raising more money, than on "higher" rounds of funding. Will probably live by "something decent that works now is better than perfect in the future". They will probably be using a boring technology stack because they can't afforce to waste time proving out newfangled stuff (that customers usually don't care about anyways, and certainly won't pay for). If you think you've found such a company, compare them to the characteristics in "Getting Real" by 37Signals[1], it captures a lot of things that I've seen in these companies. If they even get close to hitting 1/2 of those, good chance it's such a company. [1] https://gettingreal.37signals.com/ https://gettingreal.37signals.com/