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Ask HN: What are the other companies you'll never work for?
What are the companies you should absolutely avoid?
Why? Culture? CEO? Management? Customers?
- mstaoru 7y agoMy personal opinion on what I would avoid: - FAANG / BAT: too large, I don't want to tell people that my work was handling validation of 17th form in Adwords extended preferences screen for Tier-3 partners; - any kind of surveillance / anti-privacy tech, including all those "we help companies understand their employees better" and "we make workers more productive" etc, all kinds of ad-matching platforms, behavioral analysis and so on; - generally anything advertisement-related; - anything military- or defense-related; - anything by ex-Wework and Uber because of how toxic work culture was / is in those (just IMO); - sweatshops like Luxoft, Crossover etc; - probably would avoid corporates like Citi, McKinsey, BCG, Deloitte etc; - anything that produces cheaply in China and sells outside; - would be very careful with anything invested by Softbank directly or through a proxy fund... Hahaha, so probably starting a business or working for a NGO with a good cause is the only way.
- 2rsf 7y ago> FAANG / BAT I suppose that YMMV, it really depends on the team and product. I worked for one of the letters you failed to mentioned an had a fair share of influence on the final product
- ninetax 7y agoBAT = Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent?
- mstaoru 7y agoRight! Well, anyway, what I meant was the Big Co. where it's hard to make any practical difference or be heard, unless you're in the top layer.
- highhedgehog 7y agoThanks, I search for it and all I could find was "British American Tobacco"
- 2rsf 7y agoCEO and culture will make me do better homework before and during the interview process, but will not stop me from working for such a company. I would avoid everything related to betting, I can't justify to myself abusing people's weaknesses. There are grey areas like esports involving money I would have to think twice about companies or teams building "content recommendation", online ads or anything else that spies on individuals for the soul purpose of making more money
- codingdave 7y agoI can give the same answer here that I give to recruiters. The job I do has to improve the world somehow. It doesn't have to be some profound world-changing project, but it has to be a net positive. For example, the project I've been on for the last 7 years moves paper-based processes in small government to online processes. Less waste, saves them money. Doesn't solve the big problems of the world, but at least is one small positive step. I will consider any job that can make that same claim. And I'll reject jobs that cannot.
- Japhy_Ryder 7y agoBrightcove. Completely terrible company - some of the most cliquey, horrible people I've ever had the displeasure of working with.