5 ms·

Not a story about my own ethics, but those of a start-up I worked for. I quit a good job once to join a start-up and also foolishly didn't take time off in bet

by mlthoughts2018 8y ago

Not a story about my own ethics, but those of a start-up I worked for. I quit a good job once to join a start-up and also foolishly didn't take time off in between the two jobs. So Monday morning, bright-eyed, I flew to the company's main office for some meet & greets, getting my company laptop, etc. Literally the first thing that happened to me upon arriving at the office was that I was marshaled into a conference room where the CEO, director of HR and director of Sales were all sitting. Lunch was on the table. They proceeded to ask me what my religious views were, and mentioned how the three of them, along with various other staff all went to the same local house of worship, and that they all had kids of the same age who participating in a particular religious activity together. I tried to rationalize it as just chatter, like someone talking about where their kids go to college or something. Not my cup of tea, but hey, maybe it's just 'getting to know you' sort of chatter. Then the director of HR started listing off people I would meet later that day, what their religions were, times he had "had a good debate" with them about their chosen religion, while the other two just remained silent. I quit that job about 3 months later. If I hadn't been a remote employee and would have been forced to work in close proximity to those people, I probably would have quit on the spot, regardless of not having a job lined up. I remember in the meeting when it was happening, I was panicking inside and my mind was racing. I had done many interviews with them, asked every question under the sun, and had no idea this was going on. And I had just given up a reasonably good job because I was an expert on some of the software tools this particular start-up made and felt I could do a lot of good work there. Really made my approach to job hunting change after that.

gnicholas 8y ago
Sounds illegal, or at least quite borderline. It wouldn't be so problematic if it'd just come up in conversation over the course of several weeks/months, or if it hadn't been the senior leadership (including HR director!). > Really made my approach to job hunting change after that How so? That is, how does a candidate screen for this possibility in advance?
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  > "Sounds illegal, or at least quite borderline." It absolutely was illegal, and it was the first time in my life I ever hired an employment attorney (because of the way the company acted when I quit). > "How so? That is, how does a candidate screen for this possibility in advance?" Ask more probing questions about company culture, workflow processes, and whether any particular things are mandated or enforced. Ask how the company handles diversity and what their goals on with staff of different backgrounds. Everyone will answer this with the same legalese insincere crap, but how they answer you can be very telling (e.g. are they very impatient with this line of questioning?) Biggest of all: never ever accept a position that doesn't offer a very large severance package, usually in the range of 1 month of salary plus benefits for every 1 month of time listed in any non-compete, non-disclosure, or non-disparagement agreements, or anything like that implied in a company handbook. If they aren't willing to offer competitive severance benefits, I take it as a sign that at best they want to costless restructure people at their whim without giving them fair compensation for the harm it would cause them, but at worst when they run away from severance, it means they take a top-down, dictatorship attitude to employees, and do not want anyone having any degree of bargaining power to disagree with how they are behaving (e.g. like outright religious discrimination). Sure, some companies are earnest and just don't want to budget for the severance. But the cost of incorrectly rejecting them is OK, compared with accidentally ending up in some place where you have to keep your head down when there is rampant religious abuse going on.
  - skellera 8y ago
    > never ever accept a position that doesn't offer a very large severance package, usually in the range of 1 month of salary plus benefits for every 1 month of time listed in any non-compete, non-disclosure, or non-disparagement agreements, or anything like that implied in a company handbook. What level can you expect this? I haven’t personally come across this. Am I missing out on something?
    - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
      It’s simple: just decline jobs that don’t offer it. Unless you are desperate for work or otherwise willing to compromise on it for personal reasons, turn it down. If a company says they either don’t offer severance as a policy, or that severance is calculated like, e.g. 1 week for each year of tenure, just push back or walk away. When I’ve negotiated this before, it hasn’t been an issue, in mid-level individual contributor engineering roles, one senior engineer role, and currently in a managerial role. Most companies will start out saying they won’t do it. But if you say that’s too bad, they’ll either pass on you (doing you a favor) or they’ll negotiate like grown ups. Is IBM going to do this for you? Of course not. So don’t work there. But a lot of places will, or at least will negotiate a large portion of the type of severance I discussed above. It’s not about levels. It’s about sensing that severance-minimization at the cost of missing out on a good candidate is a telling characteristic of dysfunction to be avoided. So just don’t work at those places.
staticautomatic 8y ago
Protestants or Mormons?
borplk 8y ago
Which country was that in? How did you change your approach to job hunting?

gnicholas 8y ago

Sounds illegal, or at least quite borderline. It wouldn't be so problematic if it'd just come up in conversation over the course of several weeks/months, or if it hadn't been the senior leadership (including HR director!). > Really made my approach to job hunting change after that How so? That is, how does a candidate screen for this possibility in advance?

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
> "Sounds illegal, or at least quite borderline." It absolutely was illegal, and it was the first time in my life I ever hired an employment attorney (because of the way the company acted when I quit). > "How so? That is, how does a candidate screen for this possibility in advance?" Ask more probing questions about company culture, workflow processes, and whether any particular things are mandated or enforced. Ask how the company handles diversity and what their goals on with staff of different backgrounds. Everyone will answer this with the same legalese insincere crap, but how they answer you can be very telling (e.g. are they very impatient with this line of questioning?) Biggest of all: never ever accept a position that doesn't offer a very large severance package, usually in the range of 1 month of salary plus benefits for every 1 month of time listed in any non-compete, non-disclosure, or non-disparagement agreements, or anything like that implied in a company handbook. If they aren't willing to offer competitive severance benefits, I take it as a sign that at best they want to costless restructure people at their whim without giving them fair compensation for the harm it would cause them, but at worst when they run away from severance, it means they take a top-down, dictatorship attitude to employees, and do not want anyone having any degree of bargaining power to disagree with how they are behaving (e.g. like outright religious discrimination). Sure, some companies are earnest and just don't want to budget for the severance. But the cost of incorrectly rejecting them is OK, compared with accidentally ending up in some place where you have to keep your head down when there is rampant religious abuse going on.
- skellera 8y ago
  > never ever accept a position that doesn't offer a very large severance package, usually in the range of 1 month of salary plus benefits for every 1 month of time listed in any non-compete, non-disclosure, or non-disparagement agreements, or anything like that implied in a company handbook. What level can you expect this? I haven’t personally come across this. Am I missing out on something?
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    It’s simple: just decline jobs that don’t offer it. Unless you are desperate for work or otherwise willing to compromise on it for personal reasons, turn it down. If a company says they either don’t offer severance as a policy, or that severance is calculated like, e.g. 1 week for each year of tenure, just push back or walk away. When I’ve negotiated this before, it hasn’t been an issue, in mid-level individual contributor engineering roles, one senior engineer role, and currently in a managerial role. Most companies will start out saying they won’t do it. But if you say that’s too bad, they’ll either pass on you (doing you a favor) or they’ll negotiate like grown ups. Is IBM going to do this for you? Of course not. So don’t work there. But a lot of places will, or at least will negotiate a large portion of the type of severance I discussed above. It’s not about levels. It’s about sensing that severance-minimization at the cost of missing out on a good candidate is a telling characteristic of dysfunction to be avoided. So just don’t work at those places.

staticautomatic 8y ago

Protestants or Mormons?

borplk 8y ago

Which country was that in? How did you change your approach to job hunting?