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Ask HN: What current companies have the best software engineering culture?

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11–20 of 226 posts

Re: Ask HN: What current companies have the best software engineering culture?

#11
This is a fairly hard question, and inherently ha bias. What I will say is this, I believe every company from Google to the startup down the street will have some fault.

However, one of the largest faults I've seen in my years working is the arrogance. I have personally found startups to be some of the most humble in that regard, they'll push you to make design choices other shops won't have you make, and if you mess up, your job is much more on the line. This humbles many engineers, and in my opinion creates a better culture.

Larger companies breed arrogance, people learn their niche, there's "in breeding" so to speak. Engineers learn and specialize, and believe they are the smartest or most knowledgeable. This will create arrogance. Where as startups will train everyone to be tricks of the trade, masters of none. And people will learn to improve generally.

Re: Ask HN: What current companies have the best software engineering culture?

#13
post #5

There is no universal scale. Some people prefer to work at big companies such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook... some at smaller fast moving startups and everything in between. There are for sure better and worse companies in each category, but even within big companies there is huge variance and it depends what you are looking for. Though some generic observation: 1. Product companies tends to have better culture tha…

These are all very accurate in my experience, especially the first 2.

Re: Ask HN: What current companies have the best software engineering culture?

#14
post #5

There is no universal scale. Some people prefer to work at big companies such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook... some at smaller fast moving startups and everything in between. There are for sure better and worse companies in each category, but even within big companies there is huge variance and it depends what you are looking for. Though some generic observation: 1. Product companies tends to have better culture tha…

> Good litmus test is to ask employees, do they have hackathons

I'm a designer rather than an engineer, but I've always been a bit puzzled by the popularity of intra-company hackathons. It seems like a great way for management to keep employees working longer hours for less pay – an overnight hackathon that results in, say, 80 hours of additional work from a small team only costs the company some pizzas.

Re: Ask HN: What current companies have the best software engineering culture?

#17

Accenture and Infosys

I'm assuming you're kidding, but if not, would you be willing to elaborate?

I don't have direct experience, but, judging by what I've heard, they're probably "best" by some measure. ;)

Re: Ask HN: What current companies have the best software engineering culture?

#19
post #5

There is no universal scale. Some people prefer to work at big companies such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook... some at smaller fast moving startups and everything in between. There are for sure better and worse companies in each category, but even within big companies there is huge variance and it depends what you are looking for. Though some generic observation: 1. Product companies tends to have better culture tha…

> Good litmus test is to ask employees, do they have hackathons I'm a designer rather than an engineer, but I've always been a bit puzzled by the popularity of intra-company hackathons. It seems like a great way for management to keep employees working longer hours for less pay – an overnight hackathon that results in, say, 80 hours of additional work from a small team only costs the company some pizzas.

We had an internal hackathon at my company recently. It was a Thursday/Friday + optional weekend thing, but nobody was pressured to work excessive amounts of hours to get their project done.

Re: Ask HN: What current companies have the best software engineering culture?

#20
post #5

There is no universal scale. Some people prefer to work at big companies such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook... some at smaller fast moving startups and everything in between. There are for sure better and worse companies in each category, but even within big companies there is huge variance and it depends what you are looking for. Though some generic observation: 1. Product companies tends to have better culture tha…

> Good litmus test is to ask employees, do they have hackathons I'm a designer rather than an engineer, but I've always been a bit puzzled by the popularity of intra-company hackathons. It seems like a great way for management to keep employees working longer hours for less pay – an overnight hackathon that results in, say, 80 hours of additional work from a small team only costs the company some pizzas.

it depends on what hackathons are geared to doing - if it's _actual_ client/business work that they'd be doing normally, then it's not a proper hackathon, and just an excuse to get more hours out of the employees.

But if it's a free for all, do anything you want style, and participation is optional (truly optional, not fake-optional via management peer pressure), then it's a good sign.

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