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Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?

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Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?

#191

Post by xtracto »

stevage wrote: post #80
zippergz wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Product management and project management are very different career tracks (or at least, they should be); it's much more common to find technical backgrounds in product managers than project managers. I'd almost go so far as to say that if a company has project managers working with software teams, I'm not really interested in working there. Some situations do benefit from it, but my experience is that it's usually a…

I'd say that the best project managers I have encountered were non technical. They were able to defer to technical people when needed but always kind of kept an arms length from it and it worked well.

The best project manager I've worked with was a lady in MissionCloud. She was PM of the consulting project that mission did for our startup. I wish I could find someone as skilled as her.

Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?

#192

Post by vmception »

dbancajas wrote: post #68
jedberg wrote: post #53

I loved every minute of my time working at Netflix. Great, talented coworkers who I could constantly learn from, management chain from bottom to top of former engineers, so they understood when you would say, "I worked on this for a week but have no results because it didn't work". Plenty of resources to do what you needed to do, and lots of autonomy to do what you thought was right. Very little process and upper man…

why did you quit?

All FAANG/MANGA are two years stints. Its a common experience but of course many people stay longer and are comfortable with that traditional view of being married to a corporation.

A) Netflix is an ideal first company in the Silicon Valley circuit because their compensation package is a simple formula of , which makes negotiating the next place much easier because you’re more liquid already and already know what the total compensation should be - or would balk at any other base salary because the cash portion is so much lower, forcing companies to entire you with more shares than they were prepared to. And B) because you simply made enough money to attempt something else in your life.

Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?

#193

Post by yibg »

jedberg wrote: post #53

I loved every minute of my time working at Netflix. Great, talented coworkers who I could constantly learn from, management chain from bottom to top of former engineers, so they understood when you would say, "I worked on this for a week but have no results because it didn't work". Plenty of resources to do what you needed to do, and lots of autonomy to do what you thought was right. Very little process and upper man…

I’ll second this. Netflix was one of my favorite places to work as well for mostly the same reasons. Having said that I do hear they are getting bigger and things have changed somewhat recently. So YMMV.

Edit: it’s also nice to not have ethical concerns with your choice of employer.

Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?

#194

Post by araadt »

fartcannon wrote: post #166
distrill wrote: post #58

I've been at Facebook for about a year and a half. Before this I was at startups in the marketing and financial industries. We've been under scrutiny for the whole time that I've been there, and the company is pretty unpopular from a vocal population on here, but it's been really nice to work for. We obviously have job security, and I've been very impressed with the management chain above me. At least on my team, the…

Memed? It's being accused of assisting with genocide abroad and culture destruction locally. Memeing is a bunny with a pancake on its head. Facebook is accused of helping dictatorships hunt and kill actual humans. Good paycheque though eh.

RIP Oolong rabbit.

Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?

#195

Post by omoikane »

dmitrygr wrote: post #14

I've been having a great time at Apple. I joined a bit over two years ago (coming from a 7.5-year-long stint at google). The people are great, the work is very interesting. Highly recommended. Google used to be a non-sucky place to work, but from what I hear from friends still there, it's not at all like it was in 2012

Google is still a nice place to work overall, but as with most large companies there is probably some variance in the working experience depending on where you are and when you got there.

Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?

#196

Post by xyzelement »

almeria wrote: post #138
xyzelement wrote: post #96

One thing quick - this is incredibly subjective. I've worked in some amazing companies but there were always people on Glassdoor or Blind who found something to complain about. People are fundamentally different. Someone may really enjoy structure and being told exactly what they have to do. Others want ambiguity and open-ended challenges. Some want stability, some want opportunity. So when you hear someone complain…

The flip side of this sentiment is expressed quite eloquently in a sibling comment. In fact, we might even say the commenter is "crushing it": One challenge is that even in sucky workplaces, there always seem to be champions that will tell you how great it is. If I hear people say they are (or were) miserable at a certain job - I tend to take their word when they say there's a reason for it. Your take seems to be...…

>> If I hear people say they are (or were) miserable at a certain job - I tend to take their word when they say there's a reason for it

Like I said, there's an objective and a subjective here. I mainly found that people who are miserable at a job were miserable at every other job too. Doesn't totally mean it's "them" but it's kinda like "the only common in all your failed relationships is you."

Then there's the totally subjective. Example: two people get the same constructive feedback, one person goes "wow, I am getting feedback that will make me grow" and the other person goes "ouch my boss wounded my ego, I hate it". (I am not asking you to say one is good and one is bad, just making a clear example of situation that someone may like and another person may hate)

Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?

#197

Post by distrill »

fartcannon wrote: post #166
distrill wrote: post #58

I've been at Facebook for about a year and a half. Before this I was at startups in the marketing and financial industries. We've been under scrutiny for the whole time that I've been there, and the company is pretty unpopular from a vocal population on here, but it's been really nice to work for. We obviously have job security, and I've been very impressed with the management chain above me. At least on my team, the…

Memed? It's being accused of assisting with genocide abroad and culture destruction locally. Memeing is a bunny with a pancake on its head. Facebook is accused of helping dictatorships hunt and kill actual humans. Good paycheque though eh.

it is also memed heavily. zuck with too much sunscreen, zuck in Congress drinking water, there are many

Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?

#198

Post by phillipcarter »

I started out at Microsoft out of college and spent 6 years there.

Yes, it was a pay cut compared to some job-hopping a few peers did. But the environment was great, my coworkers were wonderful, and I got to develop deep expertise to the point where I'm legitimately a world expert in a specialized domain now.

Like any big company, results vary by division/org/team, but if you land in a good place, you'll have the pleasure of working with great people who care about your growth and well-being. Not a bad deal.

Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?

#199

Post by bedobi »

Expedia has treated me well and has been great for me and my career, but I think with huge orgs like that, it varies wildly depending on the team, even in the same location.

I like my team because we're:

(actually) diverse

extremely progressive with tech (eg Kotlin + Arrow and sane frameworks instead of 90s style run of the mill Java with Spring) and always open to trying out new things and tech

comp, benefits, work life balance and remote opportunities are excellent

last but not least, everyone is super friendly and encouraging, with zero tolerance for toxic tech-bro attitudes

I'm in Brisbane, Australia =)

Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?

#200

Post by bovermyer »

smoldesu wrote: post #91
bovermyer wrote: post #74

Apiture. Fintech startup. Tech stack's recent. People are genuinely good and capable humans. Based out of North Carolina with an office in Austin, but 100% remote. Truly awesome benefits. I'm on the platform engineering team. And yes, Apiture's hiring. Let me know if you want to apply - pretty sweet referral bonuses, haha.

I'll start with some free QA: the Apiture website's favicon is still the WordPress logo on the search engines I checked :p

Well that's strange... I don't see that, at least in Google.
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