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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?

#371

Post by Cazafr »

lasciastare wrote: post #362

LEGO A/S Denmark - Denmark location Positives: + Great product that kids of all ages (1-99) all around the world like and will want to talk to you when you say you work for LEGO + Healthy work life balance + Company really cares about it's employees (not just on paper) + Family owned + Huge emphasis on doing this in legal, ethical ways + Profit gets reinvested in renewable energy and similar projects and in significa…

I've been looking into working there for quite some time. Is there a possibility of working remotely if you're on an IT team ?

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

#372

Post by specproc »

nickd2001 wrote: post #367

The right place in the public sector (govt', academia etc), can be awesome. If the place has an important mission, that'll attract intelligent idealistic people, who make very nice colleagues. If you get to work on up to date (or in some cases actually ahead of the game e:g open source that's not yet widely used) tech, while sufficiently relaxed environment that you've time to learn properly and retain those skills,…

Yeah, I'm a non-profit boy. Similar sort of setup. I'm never going to get crazy money, but the work's super interesting and I'm treated like a wizard.

Plenty of downsides. You're often project-funded and subject to the various whims of donor-funded project cycles; and without the sharp discipline of the profit motive, lots of organizations end up being a bit of a bloated, navel-gazing mess.

That said, having done this for many orgs for fifteen years or so, I can count the number of colleagues I've actively disliked on the fingers of one hand; have gotten a tonne of exposure to some really interesting places, people and ideas; and have found the sector as a whole incredibly supportive, friendly and fun.

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

#373

Post by normalpersons »

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?

Most developers have lifetime earnings of that kinda figure. Earning a million dollars total (adjusted for currency differentials) over a decade is an absolutely insanely huge number. that is closer to my expected lifetime earnings than decade earnings. 300-500k$ of value in total in a decade is more realistic for an average value, with a small company to large company difference being maybe 100k over a decade.

All in my location, country, etc.

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

#374

Post by exikyut »

nomendos wrote: post #149

From 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…

Reformatted, because very interesting:

---

From 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 the end and then raising the bar to force you out before main RSU chunk gets vested) is a mixed bag

- Intel is with a royally broken culture, rampant nepotism and crooked HR (just try to google HR flagging employees "THIEVE" just so they do not get re-hired regardless of their performance and also read in the Oregonian news about age discrimination where they mopped large number of actual best engineers - no wonder they lost the edge and are sinking further, not sure if the current CEO who is the best thing that happened to them can save them anymore. My bet if he does not do HR and culture cleanup, he won't be able to do much. The only hope for Intel is geo-political move of the fab manufacturing to the US but even that will have mixed effect.)

- Apple is mixed bag, with some teams better and some worse and all suffering from culture of secrecy

All in all in each company you can find a good team with a good manager/director/VP as well as you can find bad ones. All pay competitively, where Intel is at the bottom followed by NVIDIA although case by case for higher grades both can compete if needed.

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

#375

Post by lasciastare »

Cazafr wrote: post #371
lasciastare wrote: post #362

LEGO A/S Denmark - Denmark location Positives: + Great product that kids of all ages (1-99) all around the world like and will want to talk to you when you say you work for LEGO + Healthy work life balance + Company really cares about it's employees (not just on paper) + Family owned + Huge emphasis on doing this in legal, ethical ways + Profit gets reinvested in renewable energy and similar projects and in significa…

I've been looking into working there for quite some time. Is there a possibility of working remotely if you're on an IT team ?

From what I know, you can't. I'm guessing you are asking if you can reside in another country. They do have liberal work from home policy but you will be hired in Denmark and that means you have to be residing in Denmark and have valid Danish Yellow (social security) card.

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

#376

Post by almeria »

xyzelement wrote: post #196
almeria wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 total…

I mainly found that people who are miserable at a job were miserable at every other job too.

That's not what I find at all - I can't even count the number of times I've been a shoulder to cry on for friends caught in miserable work environments, going all the back to grad school. And BTW I do mean literal crying in some of these cases - in others, it's been "merely" confessions of deep anxiety, hopelessness, insomnia and thoughts of self-harm.

Yes, there have been a few "miserable everywhere" cases, but at most they've been 10 percent of the batch. For the other 90 percent - it's clearly and objectively a result of the shitty environment they've been thrust into.

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

#377

Post by bovermyer »

Ocha wrote: post #302
bovermyer wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Try DuckDuckGo. Who uses google nowadays?

I tend to float between DDG, Google, and Bing, depending on my mood and whose interface/results irritate me least at the time.

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

#378

Post by hello4353 »

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…

Agreed. I work for a company whose products are widely used but many might consider it morally wrong. On the bright side there is no guilt at getting raise at every opportunity possible.

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

#379

Post by vborovikov »

I'm trying to imagine an ideal day at work for myself and then during the interview process I ask questions to understand how far it's going to be from that ideal day working in this company.

I ask about meetings and their durations, performance reviews, bureaucracy levels, project management software, spyware used by the employer, the number of lines of code, and other potential red flags.

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

#380

Post by rp1 »

normalpersons wrote: post #373
rp1 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Most developers have lifetime earnings of that kinda figure. Earning a million dollars total (adjusted for currency differentials) over a decade is an absolutely insanely huge number. that is closer to my expected lifetime earnings than decade earnings. 300-500k$ of value in total in a decade is more realistic for an average value, with a small company to large company difference being maybe 100k over a decade. All i…

Developers at a large tech company in the US can easily earn 300K per year. This is US specific, but working at one of these companies isn’t particularly stressful.
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