First Signs That You Should Not Take That Job | Hacker News Reader

First Signs That You Should Not Take That Job

approvedindex.co.uk

55 pointsgerryg45 comments

I like it--unfortunately, you usually never get a glimpse of those warning signs until after you accept and move your family across the country. Interviews with toxic companies are like tours of North Korea. Carefully scripted, they select what you see and who you talk to, and make sure all the crap is well hidden.

> you usually never get a glimpse of those warning signs until after you accept and move your family across the country

For what it's worth, finding new jobs without moving your family is a prime advantage of technology hubs like Silicon Valley (and, to a lesser extent, New York / London / etc).

I can't stress this enough. Having done the 'work in non-hub' thing before, and having moved for it: not worth it. Having the large number of jobs open is a big deal. Means that, for the right company, you can literally just walk into a different floor of the same building you were working at two weeks ago. It's a massive advantage. Not to mention the networking between companies, the competition, and the speed of advance.

All of that is for you yourself, without family. Imagine the same thing, but for your children and their social networks & education. :-/

> I can't stress this enough. Having done the 'work in non-hub' thing before, and having moved for it: not worth it.

I'm struggling to read that... Are you saying that moving to somewhere like Silicon Valley is worth it or not worth it?

It's not worth it moving for each job. Just go to a place where you can stay long term.

Obviously if you want to move a lot, go for it. :-}

I agree with you both (and live in the Bay Area for pretty much that reason and that reason only). But that reduced risk comes with a significant increase to your cost of living.

Unfortunately, yes. I'm in Seattle, and it's sitting at ~10% YoY house price increases for purchases, with some horrific rent increase for units on the market.

Other cities are more stable than SF/Seattle, afaict, without the price raise.

If you're moving your family across the country, due diligence is doubly important.

Try to interview employees as they leave the building. Take one or two of them out for a beer and try to get some real insights. Chat with the receptionist, who will give you the inside scoop. Search for reviews on Glassdoor (but take them with a grain of salt -- I just checked my employer there and it seemed awfully negative).

Most importantly, go with your gut. If something doesn't "feel right" about the place and the offer, respect that hunch and hold off on accepting.

Bad signs:

- They are too eager to have you.

- All of the critical work is being done by contractors.

- "This is just a prototype of the software," they say, "There's no way we're going to ship this." Double the "run away" factor if the company is doing a hardware product and the runway is less than a year . . . maybe two.

- Your old boss from two years ago calls you up and says, "Interested in rescuing a start-up?"

However rescuing a startup/project is good as a contractor. Did it more than once and it is rewarding in both experience and money.

As long as you get paid in money rather than stock, and you cash the checks the minute they arrive.

The important par is "as a contractor" (with clearly defined exit conditions). Also, some projects are beyond rescue.

It depends. I haven't exactly rescued a startup, but worked on several completely failed products to bring them up to "workable" status for a lot of large companies.

Usually, if I'm working directly for the company, it is great. They understand the previous team failed and they want to move forward. It might be a little tough to ultimately gain their trust, but confidence goes a long way.

If I'm working as a subcontractor for the contractor/team that failed, it won't be fun (in my experience). They are not grateful, they are going to blow budget (their problem, but they make it yours) and they will blame you when the time comes for it. Also, they take forever to pay.

I'm pretty sure this is linkbait advertising "Approved Index", whoever they may be. I'm also pretty sure there's nothing in here that someone with half a brain couldn't figure out for themselves.

This may be so - it's a pretty amusing infographic though, most people can probably relate to a few of these.

Apparently "airplane passenger seat safety card" as a web comic style can be implemented better than expected. I wouldn't mind seeing more.

QThat is what corporate blogs are for. Nothing wrong with it if the content is interesting, which in this case it is.

You are right. I read the link and it seems to be made by an HR consultancy company, and the content of the post has nothing life changing.

It's also interesting to notice that the submitter has never commented on HN but has submitted lots of HR related links.

Yeah who would have thought a current employee saying "run while you still can" is negative? Great insight.

The weird thing is when everyone else doesn't mind these, so you can't catch it with #7. My current job has stuff like:

- Open office with music playing, people talk at will (RIP, focus)

- Long hours that people just do willingly (i.e. no one asks them to)

- Spent money on making office look nice, yet have desks from Ikea

But everyone else thinks it's the best place to work ever - "OMG, let's have beers! At work! OMG!"

My desk is from Ikea! What's wrong with Ikea?! ;)

In my experience, "beers at work" correlates with "...because we need you to stay late (because...?)," indeed. Doesn't need to be all bad - if you have nothing more interesting to do (and that's not meant ironically: building something can be pretty awesome, if you're single and work with interesting tech; OTOH, if you have other responsibilities, the attractiveness of all-night hacking sessions is...lower).

The actual signs that something is amiss come when you do not volunteer your time - will your boss(es) just say "yeah, we understand that volunteering is your right"? Good. Do they say "well, we understand that not volunteering is your right"? A little weird, but still okay. Do they say "but we will pay you for the extra hours"? Red flag - does that mean that normally they wouldn't? Do they say "but everyone else does"? Big red flag, emotional manipulation attempt. Do they say "but we already promised delivery to the client"? RUN, ain't a red flag big enough for that.

> Spent money on making office look nice, yet have desks from Ikea

You say that like it is a bad thing. I'd take an Ikea "LINNMON" table top with their "GERTON" adjustable legs over half of the crappy desks I've had to work at. Their "BEKANT" range isn't too shabby either (inc. the BEKANT sit/stand).

I'd say Ikea's office chairs are "meh" but their actual table tops/desks are definitely up to par. I wouldn't be disappointed if I rolled into an office to find them.

Well, we got the cheap ones apparently, because they're tiny and they wobble.

Yeah, their cheapest stuff is worth every penny you paid for it (i.e. both of them ;)). The higher-range furniture is actually quite nice and sturdy, OTOH.

For software jobs, if the coding interviews are too easy it's likely you will be working with people who are not very skilled, both because the low bar allows poor programmers in and because it's a sign that the people putting together the interview aren't very good. And of course that means you're likely to be working with lousy code, and we all know how much fun that is.

On the other end of the stick, an interviewer really should avoid really tricky code interviews/tests. I find reading a candidate's code is more useful to evaluate their ability to write clear code, to open up conversations about harder problems around the code, or optimisations, or whatever, than to probe their knowledge of programming tricks.

Having a gotcha coding test where even good candidates would spend a lot of hours or miss entirely is not very interesting, as most working solutions will resemble themselves and not really show the strengths and weaknesses of the candidate.

Yeah, calibrating coding questions for timed interviews is really tricky and in my experience always requires iteration. Trick questions with an "aha!" moment lead to binary outcomes (either you pass or completely flop) and don't give much useful signal. On the other hand, simplistic questions tend to focus the interviewer on critique of stylistic details and personal coding habits/preferences which don't say much about the interviewee's effectiveness.

I have to say that #5 isn't always true in IT. I see lots of companies that are growing rapidly, but are selective at who they hire. Therefore they have a constant need for people in pretty much the same role. The last 3 companies I worked for had jobs that were always open, and they were great companies to work for.

Yeah, that was the only one I immediately questioned. Many companies that I've worked for as a contractor were permanently looking for developers, and I was their more-expensive plan B.

The problem was that they either just didn't get enough applicants, or the ones who did apply proved incompetent right away.

In one company they were so desperate that they blindly hired someone who appeared to have a pretty decent track record. After two full weeks of him not asking any questions and producing code that seemed 'off', I got suspicious. Under the pretense of needing some help with a trivial bug, I sat down next to him and observed, in total shock, that he didn't know even the most basic keyboard shortcuts like copy and paste or alt-tab. I'm not sure how he managed to write any code at all and suspect he outsourced it...

Of course, the real problem is that these companies are not willing to pay competitive salaries...

On mobile there's a giant "HR quiz" thing taking up the screen and masquerading as the content. Scroll down to see the infographic.

One from my own past "How are you with managing difficult people?"

A few of my own.

1) Fake reviews on Glassdoor.

2) People don't give real answers to "Are there things you that could be better?" or other probing questions.

3) Everyone is the same gender or race. This usually doesn't matter because people are generally mature and respectful. But it's not a chance that's worth taking.

I don't get the Glassdoor thing. I was contracting for a few months at a company that literally asked all their employees to leave reviews on Glassdoor. They did. So like 20 reviews, all five star (one 4 actually, he got called into a meeting) all from the same IP, same domain for email. How do they not catch that?

Their legit review probably also fit that profile (same IP, same domain, etc.)

Yeah, but not 15+ within a week, is my thought.

It would be really ironic if that company is Yelp.

What's the problem with gender or race? A sign of sexism or racism?

You could just as well argue that it's a company that values competence over political correctness.

This isn't about diversity. It's about safety. Have you ever been harassed? It's not fun. Chances of that are higher in a homogenous environment because it breeds ignorance.

Edit: You could just as well argue that it's a company that values competence over political correctness.

If a single woman or Asian person sets off your "political correctness" detector then maybe it needs recalibration.

That perhaps has been your experience but it is by no means universal. In my 25+ years of experience, almost all devs and sys admin types were males, but when females were on the team, they were welcomed and respected by the males. Never did I witness harassment -- certainly it happens, but probably is less prevalent in technology because of the focus on getting the job done. Racial diversity likewise. Most dev teams these days are a very diverse mixture. Everyone at my office except for myself and one sys admin are from south Asia or China today. Should I be alarmed? No. They're great and we rely on each other every day to get work done. Sorry if that hasn't been your experience.

I accept your apology. I agree that your 25 years of experience is by no means universal.

"60 percent of women in tech say they've been sexually harassed"

I'm not a fan of surveys, but even 10% is still unacceptably high.

http://recode.net/2016/01/11/60-percent-of-senior-women-in-t...

Interesting. Is this a reputable group, that did this survey? They were "inspired" by the Ellen Pao lawsuit, which already somewhat discredits them.

Recall that Ellen Pao made all sorts of claims against Kleiner Perkins and none of them were proven; on the contrary, they hired her on at a very generous salary, after seven years gave her a generous settlement to go away, and her response was to hit them with this big, bogus sexual harassment lawsuit which even the three Asian women on the jury did not buy. She then moved on to Reddit where she made a terrible mess of things (no more salary negotiations, fired popular moderator, asked job applicants what they thought of "diversity", etc.) and ultimately quit or was made to quit.

So a website based on Ellen Pao... nope.

And, like you, I'm not a fan of surveys.

I will add one more:

- There's no onboarding process for new hires

I've been in this situation twice and it sucks...

To what extent are these things true? To me the infographic looks a bit exaggerated. Or are there people here that saw some of these points in their own experiences while being interviewed?

(studying @ uni myself)

my #1: the company posts clickbait on HN

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