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Ask HN: What do you REALLY look for in a new position?
11–20 of 42 posts
Re: Ask HN: What do you REALLY look for in a new position?
#12Money and a core tech/domain I want to learn.
These are unlikely to change and are reasonably transferable.
Perks come and go. Co-workers come and go. Culture changes rapidly. Companies move office locations. Corporate policies change. Etc.
I just got a new boss and he has insisted everyone arrive for 9am stand-up. Goodbye flexible working hours.
The last place I worked had a top of the line coffee machine and free lunch. Unfortunately when the coffee machine broke they replaced it with a cheap pod machine and they switched lunch providers to a (IMO) much worse provider.
Another company I worked for in the past moved office locations and doubled my commute (only 10km further away but it meant I had to take a train and then a bus).
In these cases the company I was working for removed $10-20k/year in benefits without consulting me.
I've never even been approached about taking a $10-20k/year pay cut.
Re: Ask HN: What do you REALLY look for in a new position?
#13I want to work for a position that requires domain knowledge (for example, deep learning which is what I'm currently interested in).
Or a job that I can make theoretical breakthroughs and those breakthroughs are connected with industry, can be productized .
I'm sick of solving engineering problems. I'm working on a large code base with lots of people. the difficulty of my job comes from unfamiliarity and complexity. for example, I need to add features to some undocumented code, I have to debug it to understand it. or I need to hack a piece of existing code to add some feature in, because the feature wasn't previously planned in the architecture. these skills I gained via the job enable me to quickly understand complex code, but I don't think it's actual "knowledge".
Re: Ask HN: What do you REALLY look for in a new position?
#14I don't see this mentioned but...I look for happy, non-stressed out interviewers and managers. I had a nice manager (who was trying get me to work for his company) mention how his hair had turned gray during his last project. I told him "If you're trying to get people to sign up for you diving tour, um, you might not want to show them your shark bites." It wasn't the main reason I passed on that job but it didn't see…
Upvoted for having the balls to say that.
Re: Ask HN: What do you REALLY look for in a new position?
#15Money. Remote work (freedom). Location. Equally important, IMO, is what I stay away from: Ping pong/pool/foosball offices. Free soda offices. Creepy culture cults. Open floorplans. Basically, all the infantile ways IT companies like to placate younger, naive employees while cargo-culting Google and Facebook. If your office resembles a college dorm, then you probably need to grow up.
Open floorplans?
I'm yet to see a company that offers your own office for a Engineer position. Exception is one that used to until they scaled up.
I am yet to see a cubicle office plan, everything I have seen is open.
Where I work now it is 10 or so people in a room so being open plan isn't too bad. Previously had 300 open plan that wasn't fun IMO.
Re: Ask HN: What do you REALLY look for in a new position?
#16money
Re: Ask HN: What do you REALLY look for in a new position?
#17Money and a core tech/domain I want to learn. These are unlikely to change and are reasonably transferable. Perks come and go. Co-workers come and go. Culture changes rapidly. Companies move office locations. Corporate policies change. Etc. I just got a new boss and he has insisted everyone arrive for 9am stand-up. Goodbye flexible working hours. The last place I worked had a top of the line coffee machine and free l…
Cash is king.
Re: Ask HN: What do you REALLY look for in a new position?
#18Money. Remote work (freedom). Location. Equally important, IMO, is what I stay away from: Ping pong/pool/foosball offices. Free soda offices. Creepy culture cults. Open floorplans. Basically, all the infantile ways IT companies like to placate younger, naive employees while cargo-culting Google and Facebook. If your office resembles a college dorm, then you probably need to grow up.
Open floorplans? I'm yet to see a company that offers your own office for a Engineer position. Exception is one that used to until they scaled up. I am yet to see a cubicle office plan, everything I have seen is open. Where I work now it is 10 or so people in a room so being open plan isn't too bad. Previously had 300 open plan that wasn't fun IMO.
Remote or bust. There are so many remote gigs now, there's almost no need to take an office gig unless the money is off the charts.
Re: Ask HN: What do you REALLY look for in a new position?
#19Money. Remote work (freedom). Location. Equally important, IMO, is what I stay away from: Ping pong/pool/foosball offices. Free soda offices. Creepy culture cults. Open floorplans. Basically, all the infantile ways IT companies like to placate younger, naive employees while cargo-culting Google and Facebook. If your office resembles a college dorm, then you probably need to grow up.
Open floorplans? I'm yet to see a company that offers your own office for a Engineer position. Exception is one that used to until they scaled up. I am yet to see a cubicle office plan, everything I have seen is open. Where I work now it is 10 or so people in a room so being open plan isn't too bad. Previously had 300 open plan that wasn't fun IMO.
My last internship was a cubicle farm, not open. I had no real collaboration
Re: Ask HN: What do you REALLY look for in a new position?
#20Is the company making enough money to pay me at my experience level but not so much that it is runaway money politics. Are there lots of inexperienced people at the company that just want to be in charge. The scene in There Will Be Blood when Plainview has to walk out of the town meeting and walk away from the oil because of the chaos describes it. Lets find something reasonably profitable that the power hungry noobs and politicians will stay away from.