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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?

#301

Post by phibz »

I'm really enjoying my first 4 months at Two Sigma as a senior SRE with promises of movement into the management track.

Nearly everyone is extremely highly skilled. It's not like most past jobs where a handful of people are highly talented. Here most people are extremely proficient.

And then there's a culture of healthy boundaries and communication styles.

I thought that being a quant (using computers to selectively buy and sell financial securities) they would work us to death but the typical work week is at or below 40 hours. And starting at the VP level netted me over a month of vacation.

Their hiring process is a bit much and quite slow. They took almost 4 months to hire me. But typical is about a month from initial contact to offer.

Maybe consider Two Sigma. We need smart, professional individuals.

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

#302

Post by Ocha »

bovermyer wrote: post #200
smoldesu wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Try DuckDuckGo. Who uses google nowadays?

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

#303

Post by brundolf »

itake wrote: post #153
ubermonkey wrote: post #62

I've never worked for a big famous tech firm, but I will absolutely tell you how I've managed to avoid hating work for 30 years: Find a relatively small firm, still owner-run and controlled. Avoid public firms. A corporation cannot show loyalty, but a HUMAN can. A manager has no real control -- their manager can reverse them. When you work for the owner, you can trust things a bit more IF you're working for a trustwo…

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…

There's a middle-ground. Aim for 50-200, and private. Small enough to be treated like a person, big enough to have an HR department.

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

#304

Post by Kaze404 »

domh wrote: post #79

I work at a small API doc company called ReadMe, we're ~40 people currently and I've been here since we were 5 people. It's been incredible to see the company grow over the years. We hire excellent people who tend to stick around. We treat people with respect and give them the tools to succeed. We interview a little differently than most other startups ( https://blog.readme.com/designing-a-candidate-focused-interv...…

That blog post was a fun read. I identify with many of the things said there, and it's always interesting when a company can make interviewing sound like a good time. I'll definitely apply soon

Edit: also, pardon my French but the owl is fucking adorable

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

#305

Post by RNCTX »

yibg wrote: post #193
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.

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

Did you not happen across the predatory soliciting of new content? In that by attending a Netflix "screening event" you give Netflix a right to use your film in perpetuity, royalty free?

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

#306

Post by n8cpdx »

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.

For the folks reflexively downvoting because they don’t want it to be true…

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-28/facebook-...

I guess there is a difference between actively genociding and _just_ shielding genocidal regimes from facing justice.

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

#307

Post by Infinitesimus »

rp1 wrote: post #247
ubermonkey wrote: post #62

I've never worked for a big famous tech firm, but I will absolutely tell you how I've managed to avoid hating work for 30 years: Find a relatively small firm, still owner-run and controlled. Avoid public firms. A corporation cannot show loyalty, but a HUMAN can. A manager has no real control -- their manager can reverse them. When you work for the owner, you can trust things a bit more IF you're working for a trustwo…

There must be a HUGE pay discrepancy. I mean millions of dollars over the course of a decade. Too much opportunity cost, and for what? What is the value of the loyalty shown by the owner?

For many, it is happiness and focusing on other things in life once they have the means. Millions don't really matter if that's not a motivator in life.

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

#309

Post by cjbprime »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #207
vmception wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

At the FAANG level, it's sometimes possible to have your offer include a buyout of unvested RSUs which you would lose by accepting the new offer.

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

#310

Post by ab_testing »

dsr_ wrote: post #211
mraza007 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious if you don’t mind can you share the name of the company you work for

I work for Smartleaf -- www.smartleaf.com

Are these salary ranges correct. https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Smartleaf-Software-Engineer...

Looks like a software engineer would need to pick up a second job to make up for Boston's cost of living.

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