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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?

#251

Post by jimmyed »

loxias wrote: post #227
dsr_ wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're interested, I have an email address in my profile here.

That Junior Financial Engineer position looks exciting to me! I think I'd qualify for the Sr. one, in terms of C/C++, the math, and the Linux experience, but I'd never held a "financial" job before. Having to move back to Boston wouldn't be ideal but I lived in Cambridge for 7 years and could do it again. I also really dig lots of the topics I see on the company blog, and will be reading them later. Are the compensat…

(loxias has an mit edu address)

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

#252

Post by JohnBooty »

fbanon12341 wrote: post #239
loxias wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really true that once you pass the interview and orientation you get to choose the team you want to work on?

For general role hires, this is true, although it's a subset of all teams - teams with high priority roles pitch to you, you choose a couple to try out tasks for a few days. They stack rank, you stack rank, matches are made. Internal transfers after 1 year are pretty easy. I've seen people transfer earlier, if it's clear the fit between employee and team isn't there.

      if it's clear the fit between employee and 
      team isn't there.
This is very interesting to me. How good is management at discerning between...

a: "employee 12345 has been here for one year and probably wasn't a good hire"

and...

b: "employee 12345 has been here for one year, and they were probably a good hire, but they're not a good fit for their current team so let's get them to a new one!"

???

On a human level, I'm a firm believer that (b) happens a looooot. Personally, I've been anywhere from a turd to a star depending on company culture and team fit, and it wasn't me that was changing.

But I am amazed there are organizations that manage to spot (b) and actually correct it rather than cutting a person loose or just pidgeonholing them as a low performer.

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

#253

Post by xiphias2 »

tedsanders wrote: post #180
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've had a pretty excellent time at Netflix myself. The business model is refreshingly simple: people pay to watch shows they'll enjoy. As a result, our work is pretty aligned with our customers. No annoying ads, no selling data, no focusing on whales, no anti-consumer dark patterns (or at least not many). And Reed is an excellent CEO, imo. He's tried his best to build a culture that treats everyone as human and inte…

,, The business model is refreshingly simple: people pay to watch shows they'll enjoy''

I believe that this is true, but I also have a feeling that the main goal for netflix is maximizing views, and not maximizing the experience per supscriber weighted by user spend.

In other words I would prefer less, but very well thought out and executed movies that focus on having a great story (like House of Cards until the main character was kicked out of the series). I would still pay the same amount of money for those few movies than a person who's binging on all new lower quality and lower budget series. I loved the movie Dune for example, where the story made sense, in opposed to Netflix's Brave new world, where even my girlfriend who read the book said that the movie doesn't make any sense, and it has nothing to do with the book itself, and totally ruined it, as the movie series had no story.

Can you tell me if Netflix focuses on total views for a movie, or rather tries to estimate the revenue by dividing user spend by the number of movies the user watched?

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

#254

Post by laingc »

When I worked there a few years ago, Xero was a pretty stellar employer. Lots of really lovely people, lots of opportunity to explore different avenues in your career, and active attention paid to employee wellbeing.

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

#255

Post by Exorust »

I loved working at Microsoft. From a management that actually cares and understands dev struggles to great code review practices that don't waste dev time with bs.

Plenty of opportunities to learn, switch teams if needed. I've seen people shift from team to team just because they wanted to add their expertise to another product.

I'll admit, if you're a startup kinda guy you might find things a bit slower than you're used to. Focus is kept on extreme quality.

I hate the fact that Microsoft gets a bad rep coz of the older practices from Gates and Balmer's time. As a company it's really changed and they've embraced open-source finally.

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

#256

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

leetcrew wrote: post #246
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are they two year stints when usually you're getting RSUs as part of your package that often have a 4 year vest?

four year vest doesn't mean you get all the RSUs at the end of four years. or if it does, that's not how it actually works at google, facebook, microsoft, etc. typically you get an offer with a certain amount of RSUs, and then you get 25% of that each year. amazon is an exception; you get most of the RSUs in the third and fourth year. but you also get a large signing bonus paid over the first two years that mostly ma…

I know it doesn't mean you get all the RSUs at the 4 year mark but if you leave after 2 years, you only get 50% of your RSUs. Why leave potentially hundreds of thousands on the table to jump after two years? I've never heard of this two-year stinting.

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

#257

Post by RickJWagner »

Oooh, oooh! I know!

It will be an employer that's not pushing lame woke initiatives. Those pretty quickly divide the workforce and lead to a witch-hunt environment.

Look for a good, solid workplace that sticks to good business principles while quietly treating a diverse workforce with respect. (In other words, they walk the walk instead of talking the talk.) That'll bring you happiness.

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

#258

Post by jimmyed »

pieix wrote: post #188
sneak wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means they don't hire non-Americans, which tells you something else about the company.

What else does it tell you?

"folks are diverse...in terms of background" Tells me they don't have any other diversity (hopefully not due to a deliberate policy)

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

#259

Post by jimmyed »

Exorust wrote: post #255

I loved working at Microsoft. From a management that actually cares and understands dev struggles to great code review practices that don't waste dev time with bs. Plenty of opportunities to learn, switch teams if needed. I've seen people shift from team to team just because they wanted to add their expertise to another product. I'll admit, if you're a startup kinda guy you might find things a bit slower than you're…

Can you be more specific? Microsoft is big, I am guessing you don't mean Microsoft Lahore?

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

#260

Post by quadrifoliate »

Unfortunately, I don't have a recommendation.

But I have a suggestion for the community – could we make this a monthly thing? A "Who's not sucky to work for" thread on the 3rd of every month might be interesting and help us understand the complex reality of employer versus employee preferences.

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