Earlier quoted context omitted.
Startups obviously. Less obviously look for "SBIR" shops if you're ok with a little bit of weird gov contracting overhead.
SBIR shops often pay abysmally (with bad benefits) even if the work is interesting.
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Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
181–190 of 447 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#182Yourself. 13 years, 14 in December, as freelancer, I get to work directly with people who have problems, my software really helps them instead of being an internal tool that will get reinvented in 5 years at big corporations. I choose my own projects, I am constantly learning in different industries, meeting (both virtually and in person) people from all 5 continents and while the pay is great my biggest motivator is that I can spend time with my family and raise my own kids. I do realize I'm one of the lucky few.
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#183From my experience: - NVIDIA seems to have best balance of culture of competency, work satisfaction vs how well is run, although it is getting more bureaucratic as it grows - Google used to be good in many aspects but now things are deteriorating - Facebook is mixed bag, where Oculus part is more of a wild west and main FB is still ok better than Google - Amazon other than "hire to fire" (loading your RSUs towards th…
You worked for all of these places?
At two years per that's only twelve years worth of experience.
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#184i'm enjoying my time at VMware (in the MAPBU org, i.e., the one doing all of the Kubernetes stuff). the benefits are great, compensation is great, everyone is wicked smart, leadership are engineers and/or scientists (mostly), and we're building things that the company is deeply invested in
generally, i've enjoyed my time the most at startups or small consultancies
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
counter point: after working for small owner-run companies where the owner took everything personally, I will forever only work in big tech. The owner ran the show and was emotional. Every time a competitor launched something new, they would change course and race to copy them. Ended up delivering nothing and eventually laid off after 1.5 years. At a big company, everyone is spending someone else's money and the peop…
The hard part about choosing the small business route is you have to do a really good job (and somewhat get lucky) at screening the owner and company. I had only ever worked at mega corps my entire carrier until my latest job at a Now I could have missed some red flags or just had bad luck and regretted it/had a bad experience but just passing a year in I'm happier than ever with work and really excited about the fut…
This. I work for a narcissist piece of sh. Everyone is leaving because he's incompetent. I've been doing startups for most of the 20+ years of my career and I thought Marc Pincus was the worst I'd ever suffer through. This is worse. He smelled off (metaphorically) when I spoke with him but the goal made sense. He has f'ed it up completely by micro managing every aspect of the company, despite his lack of knowledge in almost all areas. Now I'm moving to part time for this place (for the sake of the eng team, I'm not doing a hard cut) and I'm consulting until I find an org that isn't run like a dumpster fire on meth.
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#186One challenge is that even in sucky workplaces, there always seem to be champions that will tell you how great it is. In part because it's a hard life focusing on how your job sucks and many people get good at being outwardly optimistic. That said, it would be nice to see more authenticity than what mostly gets posted in the hiring thread, and on company websites. I'm sure we each have our own criteria of what kind o…
I think it also just depends on the person. I've been in workplaces that felt great to me, and seen people leave because they found it sucky.
Similarly I have also left due to suckiness despite some people seeming to enjoy themselves. Though of course that may just be an act.
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#187Yourself Being your own boss is freakin' awesome. I'll never go back.
when was the last time you slept? :p
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#188Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#189VMware 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.
I've been envious of the VMware campus in Palo Alto - seems like an ideal environment if WFH isn't an option.
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a non native English speaker, why is that offensive?
So the OP said that there was "a team in Traansylvania making it a legacy codebase". The literal meaning is that there is a team of developers in a foreign country being paid less to do the same job. The other guy said it was offensive because he's implying something similar. He's also working in a foreign country for a US business. More of a joke about being offended. At least that's how I'm reading it.
Right ... I was trying to be funny / tongue-in-cheeky . Text is terrible for that and i leaned on HN guideline of "use the best interpretation " .
The fact is that there is great and terrible people in all countries. And a cheap company will be cheap no matter where.