PDFTron in Vancouver is alright. I didn't vibe with my manager or the rest of my immediate team well, but the rest of the company is alright with not much bureaucracy and some smart people working on a niche product. I burnt out in part because they had me do customer support while trying to deliver features, so I was terminated, but they're still alright if they can figure that out. I have ADHD and my manager didn't seem to understand how I couldn't get back to people on time, so I quickly learnt to resent coming into work.
Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
121–130 of 447 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#122I work for Esri and it's great. (we do GIS -- geospatial information systems. Our customers include all 50 (US) state governments, like half the Fortune 500s, most national governments...) Virtually everyone has an office, no open office nonsense. There's no pressure to be a 10x developer or whatever, you just do your job. Nobody gets let go for being a mediocre developer. Everyone's hourly, so if you want to work 40 hours a week and go home, that's fine, or if you want to work 60 hours a week and get 50% more money that's fine too. It is, for the most part, a very chill, relaxed work environment.
The owner is a good person. Big into environmental activism. The big company conference is mostly about all environmental conservation (also we added new features to our product). It's weird to work for a big company and get an e-mail from Jane Goodall at Christmas thanking us for the work we do.
The money isn't great though, that's the biggest downside. But personally the money isn't that important to me.
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#123As a developer: Transloadit. Profitable. No investors looking to twist arms to make short term gains. Founders are in it for the long haul and developers so there’s appreciation and time made available to refactor and write tests. Small team, large footprint. Remote. Open. 80% of resources are spent on open source. Disclosure: founder.
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#124The flip side of "management don't know what they want the product to be" is "management decided what the product should be 3 years ago and won't adjust to the current reality, even though the company is failing." Be careful what you ask for.
Or management lets the latest big customer decide what the product will be.
That's at least epsilon better than constantly letting the next big customer decide.
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#125Google is amazing.
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#126There are very few companies (and sometimes few teams in large companies) who are driven to actually produce something better.
Typically, these companies are startups/midsize pre-ipo companies that are determined to reach somewhere. Until the product(s) are well established, the engineering there is highly regarded - but often loaded with tech debt.
Once the product is well established, it becomes a game of meetings where everyone just looks after their own self.
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#127Grafana is incredible. I was pleased with the conscious and clear hiring, the apparent calm and emotional safety exuded by those who interviewed. And then when I joined by the integrity and leadership, which has a strong vision and great execution, coupled with real empathy for engineers and our customers. I'm loving it and it stands as a very stark contrast to my previous roles, and I hear similar from my colleagues at all levels too. Lots of autonomy, space to do a good job, a learning and personal growth culture. The way above average number of smart people to learn from. It's always been remote so they get this right.
What is more individual is that the rapid growth creates a lot of change, and that isn't for everyone so do bear in mind that YMMV depending on who you are but it really is a great place to work.
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is good advice, with the caveat that the owner needs to not be a dick. I've worked in environments like this both with amazing owners and with truly horrifying owners.
Yeah, watch out for small companies that are desperately trying to get big but have been small or oscillated between 10-40 people seemingly from the beginning of time. There's a particular type of person who runs these businesses and that person is extremely common. They cannot delegate and micromanage everything so once they get beyond their ability to manage every facet of operations themselves, their leadership ab…
I feel there is a story here...
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#129VMware has a lot of different teams working on very different and interesting problems. It's not listed with the FAANG companies, but it pays well and you won't feel like you're making the world worse off than it is. You'll probably see some complaints about some teams in VMware, but it's been mostly a great place to work.
Agree, VMware it's a very nice place where to work.
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#130> There's an offshore team in Traansylvania busy making it a legacy codebase As someone working for a US company in Mexico, I take offense at that :(.
I've been in similar situation and I don't take offense at all, as I saw both side of the coin.
I worked for an US based company through a Hungarian company. We were handled like normal employees. I was part of a US based team and reported for the team's manager. The only difference was that I had to go to my Hungarian manager for pay rises. The company got Mid/Senior employees for a Fresh Grad/Junior wage, which is still a great pay in my country. We delivered high quality software in a timely manner. Everybody was happy.
But the company got greedy. They decided they can get engineers even cheaper from other countries and they went for the bottom of the barrel ones from those countries. The new engineers didn't cared about quality, they wanted to merge everything ASAP as the payed for delivered story points by their employers. Madness.
The moral of the story is you always get what you pay for and the only ones who should take offense are the bean counters