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Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

Do we need some kind of industry certification for "this company isn't being run by psychopaths"?

Wouldn't it be nice if you saw a job ad that said "Hey, we're 'Decent Employer' Level 1 Certified!" and you knew that meant: 95% of work weeks are under 45 hours; everyone gets at least 3 weeks vacation per year; Our hiring practices conform to standards to avoid age/gender/race/class biases; etc.

How do I look at a company from the outside and know that they're not a frat-bro culture, so I can avoid even talking to their recruiters?

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Back when StackOverflow had job listings, they also had an optional Joel Score (https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-s...) that employers could fill out.

Too bad that's dead. But would be great to generalize and standardize across companies and industries. It'll never happen, but that's what you're looking for.

I'm not sure what you mean by "frat-bro culture", but the overworking thing is generally pretty straightforward. If a company has any employees who talk about "seven days a week onsite... putting in 10-12 hours almost daily", it's a high-pressure overworking kind of company that's not going to give you much vacation time. SpaceX doesn't exactly keep this aspect a secret, and as the author says he was an enthusiastic participant in it.

Discrimination is harder to avoid because it's not tremendously correlated with overworking or other observable qualities of a work environment. IBM is the epitome of a work-life balance company - didn't stop their executives from secretly plotting to get rid of the "dinobabies".

Avoid companies where the CEO has multiple families and doesn't spend time with any of them.

For very big companies, it's often well-documented. For smaller companies, kind of luck of the draw; unless you know someone who works there it's hard to find out too much, in general.

This is one of the things you're (supposed) to learn about during the interview processes. Lots of companies absolutely will flag as "run by psychopaths" during the interview process. But it also helps to look up the company/founders and see what their general reputation is. Lots of places are an obvious "no thanks" after a bit of googling.

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