9 ms·

How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

121 points by kiyanwang 5y ago

MattPalmer1086 5y ago
My two favourite questions to ask at interview are: 1. Tell me about a time things didn't go to plan and what you did about it afterwards? 2. Do you enjoy working here? Of the two, the second one gives me the most useful signal. Every business has difficult times, so the first usually isn't too hard to answer, and they can gloss over stuff. The second one is more personal. Nobody can say no to that one. It's the way they say yes that's interesting.
- anticristi 5y ago
  > Do you enjoy working here? I wouldn't ask non-factual questions. Of course the default answer is "yes". I wouldn't be able to answer such a question honestly in front of a stranger.
  - leetrout 5y ago
    > I wouldn't be able to answer such a question honestly in front of a stranger. For me it is even easier to be honest to a stranger. "You may or may not find it as rewarding to work here as I have- of course it is a rollercoaster but I wouldnt still be here if I didnt like somethings about it but it is a job like any other."
    - waynesonfire 5y ago
      Right.. maybe it's because it takes some experiance and consciousness to give such a response.
  - MattPalmer1086 5y ago
    Well, I am looking for a bit more than just "yes". Some context has to be given. In my last interview, there was a lovely, slightly panicked pause as the interviewers all looked at one another. Then the main interviewer said something like "Well, there are times it can be frustrating, it's not always a smooth ride. But I like the people I work with, the company is supportive and I get a kick out of it.". I appreciated the honesty, and he seemed genuine. I took the job, and I can confirm everything he said was true :)
    - wly_cdgr 5y ago
      Cacklin'
- Nullinker 5y ago
  I once had an interviewer tell me that he loved working there so much that he was happy to go to work every single day. Even when I explicitly asked him if there never was a single day where felt less happy he denied ever feeling anything other than pure joy for work. At that point I concluded that he was either lying or unable to relate to people who are not happy all the time since he was supposed to be the supervisor it was one of the reasons to decline the job.
bawolff 5y ago
> This is a GREAT one: “As a white man, I’d ask what they’ve done to find qualified women and minorities for the role I’m interviewing for.” I can't help but feel that asking questions during an interview that encourage the interviewer to hire someone who is not you, is a bad strategy for actually getting the job.
- gear54rus 5y ago
  Yeah this one works both ways all to well haha. Mah boi probably realizes it too and that's why he's asking it.
- loudtieblahblah 5y ago
- Juliate 5y ago
  Getting _the_ job, not necessarily. Getting a job in a decent and self-aware team, on the other hand, yes, that's a good strategy. The question is both a direct and an indirect one.
  - grammarnazzzi 5y ago
    A decent and self-aware work team is one who treats each other as equals and respect and keeps their political beliefs outside the work environment. An iterviewee who brings race into the discussion clearly doesn't understand work/personal boundries and is going to be a liability.
    - beebeepka 5y ago
      That makes sense to me. Discussing non work related politics with coworkers seems like a bad idea. No idea why that was downvoted. I had a weird interview last year. After about 30 minutes talk, the guy started shifting to politics and expressing his ideas about Europe, the UK, refugees, etc. I didn't want the job anyway so I told him that I don't agree with his (barely contained) right wing opinions. He immediately told me that things are not going to work, and I agreed. Having early 20 somethings doing interviews alone is asking for trouble. Talking about politics during an interview strikes me as a recipe for disaster by creating a highly homogeneous environment. I like variety
loudtieblahblah 5y ago
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  What exactly do you mean by "pronouns person"? Do you enjoy misgendering people on purpose? Because that's one way the company interviewing you can tell that you're rotten on the inside. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Popehat%27s%20Law%20of%20Goats https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Popehat%27s%... Popehat's Law of Goats He who fucks goats, either as part of a performance or to troll those he deems has overly delicate sensibilities is simply, a goatfucker. He claimed he was just pretending to be racist to trigger the social justice warriors, but even if he is telling the truth, Popehat's Law of Goats still applies.
  - gdy 5y ago
    Another way to tell that someone is rotten on the inside is the use of the 'goatfucker' slur to refer to zoo-sexual people.
    - sqqqqrly 5y ago
      How does a a zoo-sexual find a hum-sexual goat? Is this a concern of a zoo-sexual? I hope your comment was a joke.
      - gdy 5y ago
        I wouldn't know, but I can speculate that it surely should be a concern -- goats are strong, one wouldn't want to get kicked, rammed or bitten by a goat, especially with one's pants down.
  - throwmeaway666 5y ago
    >He claimed he was just pretending to be racist to trigger the social justice warriors, but even if he is telling the truth, Popehat's Law of Goats still applies. OP was talking about "pronouns" people and you immediately assumed he was racist. We might want to be more careful when using labels unless we want those labels to lose their meaning.
protomyth 5y ago
They like to move their managers around to give them experience with different aspects of the company. This means ambitious managers do short term things to make themselves look good which really screws IT.
summm 5y ago
Depends. If you identify as a minority and want to exploit that, these hints are great. Also it might identify companies that have such great profits that they can easily afford spending money on being exploited. OTOH, this might exclude a lot of great companies specifically in niches with heavily skewed university alumni gender quotas, such as engineering in some countries. Be especially careful if this company then has lots of MBA types as leaders, because it is easier to get diversity hires with that background, instead of engineering background...
- bequanna 5y ago
  It seems that less technical the role, the longer an incompetent person can hide.
lordnacho 5y ago
I'm not sure the diversity stuff helps. People who look different can still be dysfunctional. For me the big one is whether people in the interviews have the same mission. I went to an interview with a large investment bank where a friend turned out to be one of the interviewers. I thought highly of him, so naturally I thought his colleagues would be similar. He gave me the speil about what he does, sounded reasonable. Then his five teammates spent an hour each with me, and they had 5 different stories about what the team does. They didn't seem to know that other teams in the same firm did the same thing and were in the news about it. Every single person gave their own version of how they fit in the team. In the end the MD gave me a grilling about some totally irrelevant stuff, and then gave his version of the team. I didn't proceed with the job. Caught up with my friend, and the MD is gone, along with most of the team. Friend is in another division. Another friend joined and left the group, which is yet another red flag.
- hu3 5y ago
  Pardon my ignorance. What's MD in this context?
  - tyingq 5y ago
    Probably "Managing Director".
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - lordnacho 5y ago
    Managing Director, it's a sort of middle management role that a lot of people aspire to. Running a team, getting paid fairly decently.
    - MattPalmer1086 5y ago
      It does vary, but I wouldn't describe Managing Director as a team lead. In the UK it was often equivalent to CEO. It could be the head of a business unit.
ospzfmbbzr 5y ago
If you get any sniff of non-meritocracy - run!
- isoprophlex 5y ago
  Meritocracy is a lie, a device to help rationalize the advancement of in-groups over other less privileged groups. An analogy: as a parent you should probably not reward purely on naked results; you should stimulate and reward effort instead. The first option just reinforces existing traits; the second empowers actual self-improvement. Not saying this is always easy or clear-cut. I understand the wish for getting rewarded for actual merit instead of politics, but meritocratic company or government policy is too short sighted and eventually harmful. Maybe I'm a cynic but I believe the first order approach to "best performers win" is flawed, a cognitive error: The just-world fallacy is the cognitive bias that assumes that "people get what they deserve" – that actions will have morally fair and fitting consequences for the actor. [wikipedia]
  - tomp 5y ago
    Meritocracy is an ideal that is almost by definition unachievable. Like freedom, equality, etc. It’s a very worthy ideal.
    - iso1631 5y ago
      Meritocracy means those who have lucky breaks early in life (schooling, opportunities, etc) earn compound interest on those choices. If you could give everyone a "merit metric", and you had two options, one scoring 45 and one scoring 50, you'd chose the one scoring 50, without realising the the adversity the one scoring 45 has endured to get that far means they'll be operating at 55 or 60 in a year with the right environment, but the one that coasted at 50 for the last 10 years will continue to coast at 50. Someone whose parents coached them in IT skilled for 14 hours a week for 10 years could have a higher "merit" score than someone that picked up 90% of the skills working on their own in 2 weeks, but would likely not be as good a hire
      - 5y ago
jdowner 5y ago
"You want to work at a company on a strong growth trajectory for lots of reasons, but a big one is your own growth potential. You will learn the most the fastest at places that are growing fast, and have way more openings for promotions and leadership roles than a slower-growing company." While I think this is a reasonable opinion, it's been my experience that companies who tout 'strong growth' are a cluster fuck. Communication quickly becomes a nightmare that is really hard to rein in. When that goes, there are a lot of likely outcomes -- none of which are good. Typically, the organization because fractured and siloed. That plucky team that punched above their weight, is now filled with a whole bunch of new people and the culture just became totally different. Now, there are a bunch of people pushing different agendas, and trying to get something done is no longer an engineering problem but also a political one. You WILL learn a lot but, if my own experience is anything to go by, it will be lessons on how not to do things rather than "this is a good way to do things".
- notpachet 5y ago
  I've had the exact same experience. These sorts of environments seem to unintentionally reward assholes and bullies because they're the ones with the immediate means to get what they need in order to move their agenda forward. Chaotic environments are a breeding ground for strongmen.
  - geoduck14 5y ago
    >Chaotic environments are a breeding ground for strongmen. In some cases, yes, but also a breeding ground for nimble people, clever people, and social people. It doesn't have to be bad, it can be good
baxtr 5y ago
How about asking people who have worked there?
gorgoiler 5y ago
I am currently in my perfect job (scaleup, market leading tech product with two big moats, about to close series B.) I know this lot are keepers because, this time around, I had the chance to come onsite (!) for the final round of negotiation and I got to meet two VPs, the chief architect, the managers of three other teams adjacent to the ones I was joining, another candidate (different role :), my upcoming manager (who had interviewed me, but this was much less formal) the lead partner engineer and the CTO. Some of these were formal meetings but a lot of them were ad hoc 5 minute 1:1s I had while being shown around the building, being introduced to people. Everyone was open to talking about the company and I went armed with a laundry list of questions about the product to drive the conversations, mostly just letting them talk about engineering stuff. This was all in addition to a phone screen with the longest serving engineer (an initial “sell” really, more than a screen) two rounds of interviews (pre- and post- take home test) where I also met two other managers and a future team mate. In total that’s something like a dozen meaningful interactions with employees from all parts of the tech org. My top tips: make a point of finding out the roles of everyone you meet and insist your final on-site be scheduled around lunchtime with a tour of the office included. The meta point being you can make the highest signal decision only once you’ve met as many potential colleagues as possible. It’s the people that make up a company culture.
- nunez 5y ago
  I don’t know about that. I had an interview very early in my career with a financial services company that lasted two days. I spoke with 12 (!!!) people. All of them asked me the same questions, and very few of the interviews were technical in nature. What I learned from doing that is that they need a LOT of people to do anything, i.e., everything gets done slowly there.
  - gorgoiler 5y ago
    I had an offer after meeting five people, the rest was me finding out more about them.
megumax 5y ago
I don't think that a `diverse` environment represents a healthy environment. For now, `diversity` is just a buzzword like `machine learning`, `artificial intelligence` or `internet of things`. I believe that people should be hired based on their skills (including social skills). In order to find out that the company is friendly, you should ask people that worked/are working there.
gray_-_wolf 5y ago
I do not see how diversity is a relevant factor. You can have a very diverse, shitty company and great non-diverse company. Anecdotal evidence: Company where I work at is likely not diverse according to woke standards, but it is a great place to work at.
- macilacilove 5y ago
  I think it is important to praise diversity at every opportunity on your site for SEO reasons. I may be wrong. They call it "Machine learning fairness"
stackedinserter 5y ago
> If you know any women or under-represented minorities (URM) who work there, buy them lunch and ask for the unvarnished truth. I stopped reading right after this point.
chris_st 5y ago
I interviewed with a company once who taught me to give the people interviewing you as much rope as possible, by which I mean ask them to tell you about the company, and then ask them to expand on what they said, and then ask them to expand again. Two managers interviewed me first, proudly boasting that they don't do "Clone and Own" development. Wha...? Turns out they had one code-base, and everyone had to develop from that. Okay, fine, but... integration? "OH YEAH, that's another great thing!" I was told. "Just a few times a year, we have to make everything work together, so we go 24/7 to integrate it all, and IT'S GREAT, the upper management is there too on the weekends, and buys us pizza!". Okay, wow... Then I talked to an engineer, and I asked them how often this "24/7" thing happened. They looked haggard and said, "it's going on all the time...". I did tell the next manager/group-leader type about test-first development, and he seemed mildly interested. Oddly enough, I didn't pursue the job opportunity there.
brigandish 5y ago
That was like reading a religious text or self help book - some helpful information and the odd insight scattered among a much more plentiful, hugely moralising nonsense. There were many clues but this one stuck out for me: > under-represented minorities (URM) URM wasn't used anywhere else in the document which means it was a little teaching moment from the righteous to us poor yokels that conveniently also signaled their position amongst the righteous. wtf indeed.
froggertoaster 5y ago
I feel like qualifying companies as either "good" or "evil" are as unhelpful as the whole diversity section of the article.
- wly_cdgr 5y ago
  There're two kinds of people: those who think life is a melodrama, and those whose moral opinions might be worth taking seriously
DeWilde 5y ago
Glassdoor does it for me. Most reviews have a bias towards negativity (those with hard feelings will usually take the time to let everyone know), so if the reviews are extra negative it is a good sign to steer clear. Reddit and HackerNews for more larger companies. Also, recently discovered a Chinese language forum 1point3acrees where there is some real candid talk about the larger/FAANG companies and their offices around the world.
- nunez 5y ago
  Glassdoor can be amazing at finding dirt on a company. ALWAYS sort by new. Many companies (unfortunately) incentivize their employees to write five star reviews. Those will show up first if sorted by Best.
- wly_cdgr 5y ago
  Glassdoor is super useful & also just great entertainment
- preds 5y ago
  The last place I worked at had some serious issues going on internally. A couple hundred people but a basically non functioning HR department. People being yelled at by managers without repercussion. Also just bad engineering culture - top down directives that didn't make sense to be spending time on. About once a month there'd be an extremely negative review show up on glassdoor highlighting what it was actually like. Directors go into crisis mode then a few days later the review is gone. Apparently if you pay Glassdoor you can have reviews removed by just telling them it's not factual. So unfortunately it just can't be trusted. Nowadays I talk to someone that works there off the record, outside of the interview process. Ideally a friend of a friend.
fjfaase 5y ago
At my current job, my second interview was with the CEO and his primary question was: Who are you? And he made it clear he did not want to hear about my education and career so far. We basically talked about our lives. This made me clear that he values people more than results. I understands that he has interviewed everyone who joined the company (which is now about 60-70 people). I am not saying that my job is without stress, but in general, I am quite happy about it. I am in the software team of Bond3D which offers a 3D printing service for high performance polymeres and work on the slicer software that is used by my colleagues in other teams. The work I do involves more than just writing software but also understanding the printing process itself. I am motivated by the fact that the solutions I develop are immediately put to use by others to help them solve their problems.
- tyronehed 5y ago
tyronehed 5y ago
dasil003 5y ago
> You want to work at a company on a strong growth trajectory for lots of reasons, but a big one is your own growth potential. You will learn the most the fastest at places that are growing fast, and have way more openings for promotions and leadership roles than a slower-growing company. I would argue this one is a bit more subtle and has some game theory dynamics to it. Yes, it is strictly true that faster growth means more promo opportunities, however it also can hide a lot of problems and obscure your individual contributions. And it's not just politics or optics—as an IC it's just harder for you to really see and understand the true impact of your own work. In a rocket ship environment where the business trajectory has already been established, engineering skill is useful but not strictly necessary for success. A lot of people learn more about working the system than they do about how to actually build things. In a company is hot enough that they can draw heavily from Stanford/MIT and FAANG veterans, you find a lot of folks who have not faced real adversity in their work-life. Many have a sense of entitlement about getting promoted on a regular cadence and are more concerned with their promo packet than the quality of their work. By contrast, there is tremendous value to working in startups or smaller companies that have traction but not hyper-growth. In these places you can move faster and get faster feedback. Impact is viscerally seen in the product, not abstracted beyond massive user numbers divided over thousands of engineers. If you grow up in this environment and then go to a bigger company you can see things others can't because people who spent their whole career in a big company optimize for delegation and communication rather than end-to-end understanding. Whether this translates into climbing the greasy pole I'm not sure, but I think it does give you more options to control your own destiny.
late2part 5y ago
I'm out of line for asking someone at the end of the interview if they want to ask anything else we didn't cover? If they allow you plenty of time to converse with your interviewers throughout the process, great. If they tack on a cursory “any questions for us?” while wrapping up, they don’t think it matters what you think of them. Pull the ripcord. I see the word cursory, but if the company does anything cursory, isn't that a warning?
- rirze 5y ago
  I think the author means, if they ask "any questions for us?" at the top of the hour when the interview is about to end, it implies the interviewer didn't allot any time for the interviewee to ask any questions. According to the author, that implies a lack of courtesy and respect.
65 5y ago
It's interesting to me how trendy "diversity" is these days, and it's always in the context of race. It's interesting how we don't ever think of diversity in terms of class, wealth, disability, etc. An Ivy League educated black person and an Ivy League educated white person are far more similar than a poor white person and a rich white person. And yet, it seems as though we don't really care about hiring people from poorer backgrounds, maybe without college degrees, etc. Besides, complaining about diversity in a place where there's just demographically not going to be that many minorities is a bit unnecessary. If your company is based in Duluth, Minnesota, which is 90% white, campaigning for a racially diverse company just seems kind of futile.
- aaomidi 5y ago
  Diversity is always thought about in the contexts you mentioned. If you've had experiences that they haven't been, then those companies have fucked up D&I. Anyway, good thing remote work exists. And not opening up to remote work already says a lot about inclusion in the company. So a company in Duluth wouldn't really have an excuse for having an all ablebodied, neurotypical, white straight men workforce.
- evv555 5y ago
  >And yet, it seems as though we don't really care about hiring people from poorer backgrounds, maybe without college degrees, etc. That's why these narratives are so attractive to the already rich and privileged. It deflects fault/polarization from their own classism. It's not your rich parents that are the benefactors and perpetrators of socially corrosive capitalism. It's some amorphous "whiteness" that is usually a proxy for poor white people.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
  > complaining about diversity in a place where there's just demographically not going to be that many minorities is a bit unnecessary In the software industry, I suspect sexism and ageism are far more rampant than sexism, and women and older people are everywhere.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
stjohnswarts 5y ago
I'm gonna let you in on a secret. Unless you're working for a charity, NGO, etc the company is almost always rotten on the inside. Don't ever go looking for a moral company, that's not what capitalism is. That's the nature of things. What you need to worry about is if the company will treat you well for what you bring to the table. If they don't then make sure you have an easy out in your contract. You should worry more about the team you will be working with and how they fit the way you like to work. Do you like to work alone with things throw over the wall? Do you like the product/service they provide? Do you like the pay? Do you like tight knit group that works closely and has lots of meetings? Those are few things you can eek out during an interview with some clarity. You will never know if the atmosphere is poisonous or not really until you get there.

121 points by kiyanwang 5y ago

My two favourite questions to ask at interview are: 1. Tell me about a time things didn't go to plan and what you did about it afterwards? 2. Do you enjoy working here? Of the two, the second one gives me the most useful signal. Every business has difficult times, so the first usually isn't too hard to answer, and they can gloss over stuff. The second one is more personal. Nobody can say no to that one. It's the way they say yes that's interesting.

anticristi 5y ago
> Do you enjoy working here? I wouldn't ask non-factual questions. Of course the default answer is "yes". I wouldn't be able to answer such a question honestly in front of a stranger.
- leetrout 5y ago
  > I wouldn't be able to answer such a question honestly in front of a stranger. For me it is even easier to be honest to a stranger. "You may or may not find it as rewarding to work here as I have- of course it is a rollercoaster but I wouldnt still be here if I didnt like somethings about it but it is a job like any other."
  - waynesonfire 5y ago
    Right.. maybe it's because it takes some experiance and consciousness to give such a response.
- MattPalmer1086 5y ago
  Well, I am looking for a bit more than just "yes". Some context has to be given. In my last interview, there was a lovely, slightly panicked pause as the interviewers all looked at one another. Then the main interviewer said something like "Well, there are times it can be frustrating, it's not always a smooth ride. But I like the people I work with, the company is supportive and I get a kick out of it.". I appreciated the honesty, and he seemed genuine. I took the job, and I can confirm everything he said was true :)
  - wly_cdgr 5y ago
    Cacklin'
Nullinker 5y ago
I once had an interviewer tell me that he loved working there so much that he was happy to go to work every single day. Even when I explicitly asked him if there never was a single day where felt less happy he denied ever feeling anything other than pure joy for work. At that point I concluded that he was either lying or unable to relate to people who are not happy all the time since he was supposed to be the supervisor it was one of the reasons to decline the job.

bawolff 5y ago

> This is a GREAT one: “As a white man, I’d ask what they’ve done to find qualified women and minorities for the role I’m interviewing for.” I can't help but feel that asking questions during an interview that encourage the interviewer to hire someone who is not you, is a bad strategy for actually getting the job.

gear54rus 5y ago
Yeah this one works both ways all to well haha. Mah boi probably realizes it too and that's why he's asking it.
loudtieblahblah 5y ago
Juliate 5y ago
Getting _the_ job, not necessarily. Getting a job in a decent and self-aware team, on the other hand, yes, that's a good strategy. The question is both a direct and an indirect one.
- grammarnazzzi 5y ago
  A decent and self-aware work team is one who treats each other as equals and respect and keeps their political beliefs outside the work environment. An iterviewee who brings race into the discussion clearly doesn't understand work/personal boundries and is going to be a liability.
  - beebeepka 5y ago
    That makes sense to me. Discussing non work related politics with coworkers seems like a bad idea. No idea why that was downvoted. I had a weird interview last year. After about 30 minutes talk, the guy started shifting to politics and expressing his ideas about Europe, the UK, refugees, etc. I didn't want the job anyway so I told him that I don't agree with his (barely contained) right wing opinions. He immediately told me that things are not going to work, and I agreed. Having early 20 somethings doing interviews alone is asking for trouble. Talking about politics during an interview strikes me as a recipe for disaster by creating a highly homogeneous environment. I like variety

loudtieblahblah 5y ago

DonHopkins 5y ago
What exactly do you mean by "pronouns person"? Do you enjoy misgendering people on purpose? Because that's one way the company interviewing you can tell that you're rotten on the inside. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Popehat%27s%20Law%20of%20Goats https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Popehat%27s%... Popehat's Law of Goats He who fucks goats, either as part of a performance or to troll those he deems has overly delicate sensibilities is simply, a goatfucker. He claimed he was just pretending to be racist to trigger the social justice warriors, but even if he is telling the truth, Popehat's Law of Goats still applies.
- gdy 5y ago
  Another way to tell that someone is rotten on the inside is the use of the 'goatfucker' slur to refer to zoo-sexual people.
  - sqqqqrly 5y ago
    How does a a zoo-sexual find a hum-sexual goat? Is this a concern of a zoo-sexual? I hope your comment was a joke.
    - gdy 5y ago
      I wouldn't know, but I can speculate that it surely should be a concern -- goats are strong, one wouldn't want to get kicked, rammed or bitten by a goat, especially with one's pants down.
- throwmeaway666 5y ago
  >He claimed he was just pretending to be racist to trigger the social justice warriors, but even if he is telling the truth, Popehat's Law of Goats still applies. OP was talking about "pronouns" people and you immediately assumed he was racist. We might want to be more careful when using labels unless we want those labels to lose their meaning.

protomyth 5y ago

They like to move their managers around to give them experience with different aspects of the company. This means ambitious managers do short term things to make themselves look good which really screws IT.

summm 5y ago

Depends. If you identify as a minority and want to exploit that, these hints are great. Also it might identify companies that have such great profits that they can easily afford spending money on being exploited. OTOH, this might exclude a lot of great companies specifically in niches with heavily skewed university alumni gender quotas, such as engineering in some countries. Be especially careful if this company then has lots of MBA types as leaders, because it is easier to get diversity hires with that background, instead of engineering background...

bequanna 5y ago
It seems that less technical the role, the longer an incompetent person can hide.

lordnacho 5y ago

I'm not sure the diversity stuff helps. People who look different can still be dysfunctional. For me the big one is whether people in the interviews have the same mission. I went to an interview with a large investment bank where a friend turned out to be one of the interviewers. I thought highly of him, so naturally I thought his colleagues would be similar. He gave me the speil about what he does, sounded reasonable. Then his five teammates spent an hour each with me, and they had 5 different stories about what the team does. They didn't seem to know that other teams in the same firm did the same thing and were in the news about it. Every single person gave their own version of how they fit in the team. In the end the MD gave me a grilling about some totally irrelevant stuff, and then gave his version of the team. I didn't proceed with the job. Caught up with my friend, and the MD is gone, along with most of the team. Friend is in another division. Another friend joined and left the group, which is yet another red flag.

hu3 5y ago
Pardon my ignorance. What's MD in this context?
- tyingq 5y ago
  Probably "Managing Director".
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- lordnacho 5y ago
  Managing Director, it's a sort of middle management role that a lot of people aspire to. Running a team, getting paid fairly decently.
  - MattPalmer1086 5y ago
    It does vary, but I wouldn't describe Managing Director as a team lead. In the UK it was often equivalent to CEO. It could be the head of a business unit.

ospzfmbbzr 5y ago

If you get any sniff of non-meritocracy - run!

isoprophlex 5y ago
Meritocracy is a lie, a device to help rationalize the advancement of in-groups over other less privileged groups. An analogy: as a parent you should probably not reward purely on naked results; you should stimulate and reward effort instead. The first option just reinforces existing traits; the second empowers actual self-improvement. Not saying this is always easy or clear-cut. I understand the wish for getting rewarded for actual merit instead of politics, but meritocratic company or government policy is too short sighted and eventually harmful. Maybe I'm a cynic but I believe the first order approach to "best performers win" is flawed, a cognitive error: The just-world fallacy is the cognitive bias that assumes that "people get what they deserve" – that actions will have morally fair and fitting consequences for the actor. [wikipedia]
- tomp 5y ago
  Meritocracy is an ideal that is almost by definition unachievable. Like freedom, equality, etc. It’s a very worthy ideal.
  - iso1631 5y ago
    Meritocracy means those who have lucky breaks early in life (schooling, opportunities, etc) earn compound interest on those choices. If you could give everyone a "merit metric", and you had two options, one scoring 45 and one scoring 50, you'd chose the one scoring 50, without realising the the adversity the one scoring 45 has endured to get that far means they'll be operating at 55 or 60 in a year with the right environment, but the one that coasted at 50 for the last 10 years will continue to coast at 50. Someone whose parents coached them in IT skilled for 14 hours a week for 10 years could have a higher "merit" score than someone that picked up 90% of the skills working on their own in 2 weeks, but would likely not be as good a hire
    - 5y ago

jdowner 5y ago

"You want to work at a company on a strong growth trajectory for lots of reasons, but a big one is your own growth potential. You will learn the most the fastest at places that are growing fast, and have way more openings for promotions and leadership roles than a slower-growing company." While I think this is a reasonable opinion, it's been my experience that companies who tout 'strong growth' are a cluster fuck. Communication quickly becomes a nightmare that is really hard to rein in. When that goes, there are a lot of likely outcomes -- none of which are good. Typically, the organization because fractured and siloed. That plucky team that punched above their weight, is now filled with a whole bunch of new people and the culture just became totally different. Now, there are a bunch of people pushing different agendas, and trying to get something done is no longer an engineering problem but also a political one. You WILL learn a lot but, if my own experience is anything to go by, it will be lessons on how not to do things rather than "this is a good way to do things".

notpachet 5y ago
I've had the exact same experience. These sorts of environments seem to unintentionally reward assholes and bullies because they're the ones with the immediate means to get what they need in order to move their agenda forward. Chaotic environments are a breeding ground for strongmen.
- geoduck14 5y ago
  >Chaotic environments are a breeding ground for strongmen. In some cases, yes, but also a breeding ground for nimble people, clever people, and social people. It doesn't have to be bad, it can be good

baxtr 5y ago

How about asking people who have worked there?

gorgoiler 5y ago

I am currently in my perfect job (scaleup, market leading tech product with two big moats, about to close series B.) I know this lot are keepers because, this time around, I had the chance to come onsite (!) for the final round of negotiation and I got to meet two VPs, the chief architect, the managers of three other teams adjacent to the ones I was joining, another candidate (different role :), my upcoming manager (who had interviewed me, but this was much less formal) the lead partner engineer and the CTO. Some of these were formal meetings but a lot of them were ad hoc 5 minute 1:1s I had while being shown around the building, being introduced to people. Everyone was open to talking about the company and I went armed with a laundry list of questions about the product to drive the conversations, mostly just letting them talk about engineering stuff. This was all in addition to a phone screen with the longest serving engineer (an initial “sell” really, more than a screen) two rounds of interviews (pre- and post- take home test) where I also met two other managers and a future team mate. In total that’s something like a dozen meaningful interactions with employees from all parts of the tech org. My top tips: make a point of finding out the roles of everyone you meet and insist your final on-site be scheduled around lunchtime with a tour of the office included. The meta point being you can make the highest signal decision only once you’ve met as many potential colleagues as possible. It’s the people that make up a company culture.

nunez 5y ago
I don’t know about that. I had an interview very early in my career with a financial services company that lasted two days. I spoke with 12 (!!!) people. All of them asked me the same questions, and very few of the interviews were technical in nature. What I learned from doing that is that they need a LOT of people to do anything, i.e., everything gets done slowly there.
- gorgoiler 5y ago
  I had an offer after meeting five people, the rest was me finding out more about them.

megumax 5y ago

I don't think that a `diverse` environment represents a healthy environment. For now, `diversity` is just a buzzword like `machine learning`, `artificial intelligence` or `internet of things`. I believe that people should be hired based on their skills (including social skills). In order to find out that the company is friendly, you should ask people that worked/are working there.

gray_-_wolf 5y ago

I do not see how diversity is a relevant factor. You can have a very diverse, shitty company and great non-diverse company. Anecdotal evidence: Company where I work at is likely not diverse according to woke standards, but it is a great place to work at.

macilacilove 5y ago
I think it is important to praise diversity at every opportunity on your site for SEO reasons. I may be wrong. They call it "Machine learning fairness"

stackedinserter 5y ago

> If you know any women or under-represented minorities (URM) who work there, buy them lunch and ask for the unvarnished truth. I stopped reading right after this point.

chris_st 5y ago

I interviewed with a company once who taught me to give the people interviewing you as much rope as possible, by which I mean ask them to tell you about the company, and then ask them to expand on what they said, and then ask them to expand again. Two managers interviewed me first, proudly boasting that they don't do "Clone and Own" development. Wha...? Turns out they had one code-base, and everyone had to develop from that. Okay, fine, but... integration? "OH YEAH, that's another great thing!" I was told. "Just a few times a year, we have to make everything work together, so we go 24/7 to integrate it all, and IT'S GREAT, the upper management is there too on the weekends, and buys us pizza!". Okay, wow... Then I talked to an engineer, and I asked them how often this "24/7" thing happened. They looked haggard and said, "it's going on all the time...". I did tell the next manager/group-leader type about test-first development, and he seemed mildly interested. Oddly enough, I didn't pursue the job opportunity there.

brigandish 5y ago

That was like reading a religious text or self help book - some helpful information and the odd insight scattered among a much more plentiful, hugely moralising nonsense. There were many clues but this one stuck out for me: > under-represented minorities (URM) URM wasn't used anywhere else in the document which means it was a little teaching moment from the righteous to us poor yokels that conveniently also signaled their position amongst the righteous. wtf indeed.

froggertoaster 5y ago

I feel like qualifying companies as either "good" or "evil" are as unhelpful as the whole diversity section of the article.

wly_cdgr 5y ago
There're two kinds of people: those who think life is a melodrama, and those whose moral opinions might be worth taking seriously

DeWilde 5y ago

Glassdoor does it for me. Most reviews have a bias towards negativity (those with hard feelings will usually take the time to let everyone know), so if the reviews are extra negative it is a good sign to steer clear. Reddit and HackerNews for more larger companies. Also, recently discovered a Chinese language forum 1point3acrees where there is some real candid talk about the larger/FAANG companies and their offices around the world.

nunez 5y ago
Glassdoor can be amazing at finding dirt on a company. ALWAYS sort by new. Many companies (unfortunately) incentivize their employees to write five star reviews. Those will show up first if sorted by Best.
wly_cdgr 5y ago
Glassdoor is super useful & also just great entertainment
preds 5y ago
The last place I worked at had some serious issues going on internally. A couple hundred people but a basically non functioning HR department. People being yelled at by managers without repercussion. Also just bad engineering culture - top down directives that didn't make sense to be spending time on. About once a month there'd be an extremely negative review show up on glassdoor highlighting what it was actually like. Directors go into crisis mode then a few days later the review is gone. Apparently if you pay Glassdoor you can have reviews removed by just telling them it's not factual. So unfortunately it just can't be trusted. Nowadays I talk to someone that works there off the record, outside of the interview process. Ideally a friend of a friend.

fjfaase 5y ago

At my current job, my second interview was with the CEO and his primary question was: Who are you? And he made it clear he did not want to hear about my education and career so far. We basically talked about our lives. This made me clear that he values people more than results. I understands that he has interviewed everyone who joined the company (which is now about 60-70 people). I am not saying that my job is without stress, but in general, I am quite happy about it. I am in the software team of Bond3D which offers a 3D printing service for high performance polymeres and work on the slicer software that is used by my colleagues in other teams. The work I do involves more than just writing software but also understanding the printing process itself. I am motivated by the fact that the solutions I develop are immediately put to use by others to help them solve their problems.

tyronehed 5y ago

tyronehed 5y ago

dasil003 5y ago

> You want to work at a company on a strong growth trajectory for lots of reasons, but a big one is your own growth potential. You will learn the most the fastest at places that are growing fast, and have way more openings for promotions and leadership roles than a slower-growing company. I would argue this one is a bit more subtle and has some game theory dynamics to it. Yes, it is strictly true that faster growth means more promo opportunities, however it also can hide a lot of problems and obscure your individual contributions. And it's not just politics or optics—as an IC it's just harder for you to really see and understand the true impact of your own work. In a rocket ship environment where the business trajectory has already been established, engineering skill is useful but not strictly necessary for success. A lot of people learn more about working the system than they do about how to actually build things. In a company is hot enough that they can draw heavily from Stanford/MIT and FAANG veterans, you find a lot of folks who have not faced real adversity in their work-life. Many have a sense of entitlement about getting promoted on a regular cadence and are more concerned with their promo packet than the quality of their work. By contrast, there is tremendous value to working in startups or smaller companies that have traction but not hyper-growth. In these places you can move faster and get faster feedback. Impact is viscerally seen in the product, not abstracted beyond massive user numbers divided over thousands of engineers. If you grow up in this environment and then go to a bigger company you can see things others can't because people who spent their whole career in a big company optimize for delegation and communication rather than end-to-end understanding. Whether this translates into climbing the greasy pole I'm not sure, but I think it does give you more options to control your own destiny.

late2part 5y ago

I'm out of line for asking someone at the end of the interview if they want to ask anything else we didn't cover? If they allow you plenty of time to converse with your interviewers throughout the process, great. If they tack on a cursory “any questions for us?” while wrapping up, they don’t think it matters what you think of them. Pull the ripcord. I see the word cursory, but if the company does anything cursory, isn't that a warning?

rirze 5y ago
I think the author means, if they ask "any questions for us?" at the top of the hour when the interview is about to end, it implies the interviewer didn't allot any time for the interviewee to ask any questions. According to the author, that implies a lack of courtesy and respect.

65 5y ago

It's interesting to me how trendy "diversity" is these days, and it's always in the context of race. It's interesting how we don't ever think of diversity in terms of class, wealth, disability, etc. An Ivy League educated black person and an Ivy League educated white person are far more similar than a poor white person and a rich white person. And yet, it seems as though we don't really care about hiring people from poorer backgrounds, maybe without college degrees, etc. Besides, complaining about diversity in a place where there's just demographically not going to be that many minorities is a bit unnecessary. If your company is based in Duluth, Minnesota, which is 90% white, campaigning for a racially diverse company just seems kind of futile.

aaomidi 5y ago
Diversity is always thought about in the contexts you mentioned. If you've had experiences that they haven't been, then those companies have fucked up D&I. Anyway, good thing remote work exists. And not opening up to remote work already says a lot about inclusion in the company. So a company in Duluth wouldn't really have an excuse for having an all ablebodied, neurotypical, white straight men workforce.
evv555 5y ago
>And yet, it seems as though we don't really care about hiring people from poorer backgrounds, maybe without college degrees, etc. That's why these narratives are so attractive to the already rich and privileged. It deflects fault/polarization from their own classism. It's not your rich parents that are the benefactors and perpetrators of socially corrosive capitalism. It's some amorphous "whiteness" that is usually a proxy for poor white people.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
> complaining about diversity in a place where there's just demographically not going to be that many minorities is a bit unnecessary In the software industry, I suspect sexism and ageism are far more rampant than sexism, and women and older people are everywhere.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago

stjohnswarts 5y ago

I'm gonna let you in on a secret. Unless you're working for a charity, NGO, etc the company is almost always rotten on the inside. Don't ever go looking for a moral company, that's not what capitalism is. That's the nature of things. What you need to worry about is if the company will treat you well for what you bring to the table. If they don't then make sure you have an easy out in your contract. You should worry more about the team you will be working with and how they fit the way you like to work. Do you like to work alone with things throw over the wall? Do you like the product/service they provide? Do you like the pay? Do you like tight knit group that works closely and has lots of meetings? Those are few things you can eek out during an interview with some clarity. You will never know if the atmosphere is poisonous or not really until you get there.