3 ms·

"Not Enough Clarity about your Role" - Like the author mentions, this can definitely signify that the role is not important. The other thing I've noticed over m

by sna1l 6y ago

"Not Enough Clarity about your Role" - Like the author mentions, this can definitely signify that the role is not important. The other thing I've noticed over my career is that it could be that the role involves "grunge" work (awful oncall shifts, doing backend work when you want to do only frontend, etc). Companies hide behind cool titles/department names/etc, promising whatever you want to hear to get you in.

erikerikson 6y ago
Or you are interviewing "for the company" (e.g. Google or Facebook). While it fits their processes, it's always seemed a way to create and reinforce lock in.
- mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
  "lock-in" of _____ to ____ ? Do you mean making it more difficult for the employee to eventually leave / how?
  - RobRivera 6y ago
    Branding has its power over certain people.
  - erikerikson 6y ago
    Once committed to a company (as the "apply to company, do orientation, team-match" onboarding pattern forces), it is considered bad form or indicative of failure to move on quickly. You're additionally now engaged where you are and have sunk cost and social commitment having probably bragged or at least told people you care about where you're going to work. Still you haven't even really figured out what you'll be doing with your life/time. The sell is "big name" as a end unto itself not an thoughtful evaluation of your predicted experience in what your days will be spent obsessing over.
duxup 6y ago
IMO it's not really 'not important' as much as 'not honest'. Someone, somewhere at that company chose to hire someone... and they know what they want them to do. Why aren't they telling me? Here I am sitting down expecting to divulge all sorts of things / do a dance, but they can't tell me what they want... There's all sorts of reasons to not tell anyone / corporate circumstances, but it's a really bad foot to start off with / makes me worry.
- polk 6y ago
  >Someone, somewhere at that company chose to hire someone... and they know what they want them to do. Why aren't they telling me? This isn't necessarily true. As a counter example, I've seen team leads who claim they need to hire more engineers in order to keep up with workload. In reality, it's a process issue, but why put in the hard work of streamlining company operations, when they can just request more people underneath them. Not only is it less effort, but they also get to say "I grew the team 2x and now manage y people" which in turn increases their compensation. It's a case of poorly aligned incentives: managers are supposed to do more with less, but their compensation structure rewards the opposite.
- pmichaud 6y ago
  You're probably right that sometimes people are hiding something from you. But I think a lot of the time it's more like "I have 10 people doing a bunch of things that vary over time and on a day to day basis, and what each of them does specifically really depends on what they are good at and what comes up. I really want those 10 people to be able to do 10% more of that confusing mix of activities than they are currently doing. So I guess I'll hire someone new." And when that new person asks what they will be doing, the answer actually is, honestly, sort of ambiguous. It's not a great sign for how organized they are, but it's still a realistic way someone could both be hiring and not know exactly what the new person's day to day will be like.
  - zafka 6y ago
    This definitely describes our R&D group.
  - 6y ago
fragmede 6y ago
As someone who's never taken a traditional role until after devops got defined as its own role separate from dev and ops, my advice is to figure out what grunge work you hate, and what you don't (or at least, hate less) so you can specifically about that. Like household chores, different people hate different things. Some thrive in operational chaos, others can't handle having more than one plate in the air at a time. Some loath building frameworks and others can't stand building anything but. If taking a call at 1am is your version of hell, make sure to interrogate what the on-call schedule looks like. If you're up till 3am most nights anyway and honestly don't mind taking the call at 1am, spend the limited reverse-interview time during your interview to ask about other aspects of role and company culture. (Pick your poison from the Joel Test - https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-steps-to-better-code/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-s... )

by sna1l 6y ago

erikerikson 6y ago

Or you are interviewing "for the company" (e.g. Google or Facebook). While it fits their processes, it's always seemed a way to create and reinforce lock in.

mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
"lock-in" of _____ to ____ ? Do you mean making it more difficult for the employee to eventually leave / how?
- RobRivera 6y ago
  Branding has its power over certain people.
- erikerikson 6y ago
  Once committed to a company (as the "apply to company, do orientation, team-match" onboarding pattern forces), it is considered bad form or indicative of failure to move on quickly. You're additionally now engaged where you are and have sunk cost and social commitment having probably bragged or at least told people you care about where you're going to work. Still you haven't even really figured out what you'll be doing with your life/time. The sell is "big name" as a end unto itself not an thoughtful evaluation of your predicted experience in what your days will be spent obsessing over.

duxup 6y ago

IMO it's not really 'not important' as much as 'not honest'. Someone, somewhere at that company chose to hire someone... and they know what they want them to do. Why aren't they telling me? Here I am sitting down expecting to divulge all sorts of things / do a dance, but they can't tell me what they want... There's all sorts of reasons to not tell anyone / corporate circumstances, but it's a really bad foot to start off with / makes me worry.

polk 6y ago
>Someone, somewhere at that company chose to hire someone... and they know what they want them to do. Why aren't they telling me? This isn't necessarily true. As a counter example, I've seen team leads who claim they need to hire more engineers in order to keep up with workload. In reality, it's a process issue, but why put in the hard work of streamlining company operations, when they can just request more people underneath them. Not only is it less effort, but they also get to say "I grew the team 2x and now manage y people" which in turn increases their compensation. It's a case of poorly aligned incentives: managers are supposed to do more with less, but their compensation structure rewards the opposite.
pmichaud 6y ago
You're probably right that sometimes people are hiding something from you. But I think a lot of the time it's more like "I have 10 people doing a bunch of things that vary over time and on a day to day basis, and what each of them does specifically really depends on what they are good at and what comes up. I really want those 10 people to be able to do 10% more of that confusing mix of activities than they are currently doing. So I guess I'll hire someone new." And when that new person asks what they will be doing, the answer actually is, honestly, sort of ambiguous. It's not a great sign for how organized they are, but it's still a realistic way someone could both be hiring and not know exactly what the new person's day to day will be like.
- zafka 6y ago
  This definitely describes our R&D group.
- 6y ago

fragmede 6y ago

As someone who's never taken a traditional role until after devops got defined as its own role separate from dev and ops, my advice is to figure out what grunge work you hate, and what you don't (or at least, hate less) so you can specifically about that. Like household chores, different people hate different things. Some thrive in operational chaos, others can't handle having more than one plate in the air at a time. Some loath building frameworks and others can't stand building anything but. If taking a call at 1am is your version of hell, make sure to interrogate what the on-call schedule looks like. If you're up till 3am most nights anyway and honestly don't mind taking the call at 1am, spend the limited reverse-interview time during your interview to ask about other aspects of role and company culture. (Pick your poison from the Joel Test - https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-steps-to-better-code/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-s... )