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The big caveat with a company that historically failed at something is...are the people involved good enough to actually solve this problem this type around giv

The big caveat with a company that historically failed at something is...are the people involved good enough to actually solve this problem this type around given the companies historical trend? Or does it make more sense to go to another social network where abuse has been a focus for a longer time and learn from people who have been successful so far? Turning around a ship is really hard. I've made the mistake of working at a company with a hugely insurmountable problem (Bing) having viewed it as a big opportunity but I almost certainly pursued a job at the winner (Google) considering I had no experience as a professional engineer yet and would have learned much more. On the other hand if you already are the subject matter expert, it can be a huge opportunity to bring your skill set somewhere it is desperately needed. Not that I really know first hand social networks that are great at solving the abuse problem but this is one way to look at a career choice.

apathy 10y ago
Also, turning around an aircraft carrier (e.g. a public company with thousands of employees) is a whole hell of a lot harder than turning around a tugboat (private company) or a raft (a startup with 10 people in a room). Advice to the OP: don't be a martyr. If it looks like you can make a difference, go for it! Just don't pin your identity or sense of self on whether you succeed. The markets are a harsh mistress.
r_smart 10y ago
This is a hugely important point. Allow me to back it up with a little story time. I took a job a little over a year ago at a company that I knew was struggling financially, but saw opportunity for a lot of personal growth. To give you some idea of how dysfunctional this place is, it rates a 0 / 12 on the Joel Test. There's no scale for negative, otherwise it might be negative. After more than a year of working here, I think I've managed to get us to .5 / 12. And that's been a battle. The biggest factor? I completely underestimated the social aspect of it. I failed to realize that, in any dysfunctional organization, the people there are either extremely tolerant of that dysfunction, or worse, worked to create it. As I sit here writing this, my co-worker is at his desk rewriting swathes of code that I had working. We're 6 weeks past our delivery date, he says it's fixed, but he's still over there swearing, so that can't be true. He hasn't committed anything to the repo in over a month, so I have no idea what he's done (or how valid his complaints are). When he was doing this a few weeks ago, he rewrote a lot of my stuff only for it to turn out to be a small mistake in his code that was causing things to fail. I don't mind having my stuff criticized or rewritten, but logic would dictate if you write a bunch of new code and merge it in with stuff that was working, there's probably an error in the new code, or possibly the mating with the existing base. Sort of a look to the log in your own eye before you cast out the mote in your brother's. And that's just how things go here. Projects that should take a few months have dragged on for years (before I got here). Untested changes get pushed into products. Nothing is documented. Comments in code are usually snarky quips directed at the compiler provider or Microsoft and littered with curses. And there are a million other things. It's like that because he wants it like that, it likely won't change, and I should probably just leave.

apathy 10y ago

Also, turning around an aircraft carrier (e.g. a public company with thousands of employees) is a whole hell of a lot harder than turning around a tugboat (private company) or a raft (a startup with 10 people in a room). Advice to the OP: don't be a martyr. If it looks like you can make a difference, go for it! Just don't pin your identity or sense of self on whether you succeed. The markets are a harsh mistress.

r_smart 10y ago

This is a hugely important point. Allow me to back it up with a little story time. I took a job a little over a year ago at a company that I knew was struggling financially, but saw opportunity for a lot of personal growth. To give you some idea of how dysfunctional this place is, it rates a 0 / 12 on the Joel Test. There's no scale for negative, otherwise it might be negative. After more than a year of working here, I think I've managed to get us to .5 / 12. And that's been a battle. The biggest factor? I completely underestimated the social aspect of it. I failed to realize that, in any dysfunctional organization, the people there are either extremely tolerant of that dysfunction, or worse, worked to create it. As I sit here writing this, my co-worker is at his desk rewriting swathes of code that I had working. We're 6 weeks past our delivery date, he says it's fixed, but he's still over there swearing, so that can't be true. He hasn't committed anything to the repo in over a month, so I have no idea what he's done (or how valid his complaints are). When he was doing this a few weeks ago, he rewrote a lot of my stuff only for it to turn out to be a small mistake in his code that was causing things to fail. I don't mind having my stuff criticized or rewritten, but logic would dictate if you write a bunch of new code and merge it in with stuff that was working, there's probably an error in the new code, or possibly the mating with the existing base. Sort of a look to the log in your own eye before you cast out the mote in your brother's. And that's just how things go here. Projects that should take a few months have dragged on for years (before I got here). Untested changes get pushed into products. Nothing is documented. Comments in code are usually snarky quips directed at the compiler provider or Microsoft and littered with curses. And there are a million other things. It's like that because he wants it like that, it likely won't change, and I should probably just leave.