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Ask HN: As an employee of a company, how do you assess its health?

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Ask HN: As an employee of a company, how do you assess its health?

#1

Post by dpflan »

What indicators do you look at to determine whether the company is in good or bad health or trending in a direction?

Do you have anecdotes (or even more significant data!) about signs or events or shifts in culture that ended up foretelling a change to the company?

[Update(s)]

I mainly meant "startup" (i.e. not Fortune 500) when I said company. But I don't want to prevent discussions about larger entities, so perhaps we can preface comments with which type of company you're talking about if necessary. :)

Re: Ask HN: As an employee of a company, how do you assess its health?

#3

Post by indigochill »

My company's CEO says he looks at the survey answers to "Would you recommend Company X as a good place to work" as a health indicator of how the company's doing. Which makes sense to me, since if the employees overall would recommend it as a place to work, it's probably reasonably stable and rewarding, has reasonably trusted managers, etc.

I've never delved deep into actual statistics on this, though, so consider this just an anecdote.

Re: Ask HN: As an employee of a company, how do you assess its health?

#4

Post by draz »

- Employee turnover: a large layoff - Retention: some many know something you don't, especially at the high levels. - Restructuring/reorging: there are companies that view this method as a panacea for all ailments (rather than treating the underlying issue(s)). - Projects funded: a concentrated focus on projects that "reduce cost" or "introduce efficiencies" rather than on growth and R&D may be indicative of either a contraction to make a company more palatable for a buy-out, or a simple general state of the money in the bank.

Re: Ask HN: As an employee of a company, how do you assess its health?

#5

Post by robhunter »

"Company" is a broad word, and can include a wide variety of different types of organizations - but if you're talking specifically about startups, look at the following:

Cash in the Bank / Burn Rate - How much cash does the company have? How much of that cash is it spending each month? How long until the company reaches profitability? Could the company be profitable now if it wanted to be?

Headcount - LinkedIn actually tracks this now. How has the total headcount of the company changed over time, particularly recently? Headcount is certainly not a measure of success, but a significant decrease in headcount may be a red flag.

Growth Rate - How fast is the company growing? Ideally you're looking at this in terms of revenue.

Unit Economics - Even if the company is growing, is it making money from every sale? Or is it "spending $1 to earn $0.95" ? Getting a handle on the bottoms-up unit economics of whatever the company is selling is important to really getting a picture of its overall health.

Grit of the Founders - This may be more important than everything else on the list! Every startup is going to feel - frequently - like it's in "bad health." Founders with determination, grit, and the ability to fight through the tough times will overcome a lot of the problems presented by other items on this list.

Re: Ask HN: As an employee of a company, how do you assess its health?

#6

Post by champagnepapi »

I guess it would depend on the size and status of the company. What I mean by that, you would judge a startup 1-10 people that is privately held substantially differently than 1000+ employee publicly traded company. These indicators that you are looking for are going to be vastly different along the size spectrum of companies.

Re: Ask HN: As an employee of a company, how do you assess its health?

#8

Post by le-mark »

One company I was at shipped a hardware product. The hardware would come in from the manufacturer, the techs on site would flash the firmware, apply stickers, and ship to customers. When I started they were shipping 10-15 boxes a day (this was easy to judge, they sat by the entrance and the UPS guy would come in and get them). Then a few month later, the senior sales guy left, and a new vp of sales was brought in. Over the course of a year, outgoing devices went to near zero. That's when I started looking. A year later the company was still alive, but limping with a skeleton crew of devs and techs. Most who stayed were fired.

Re: Ask HN: As an employee of a company, how do you assess its health?

#10

Post by hammock »

le-mark wrote: post #8

One company I was at shipped a hardware product. The hardware would come in from the manufacturer, the techs on site would flash the firmware, apply stickers, and ship to customers. When I started they were shipping 10-15 boxes a day (this was easy to judge, they sat by the entrance and the UPS guy would come in and get them). Then a few month later, the senior sales guy left, and a new vp of sales was brought in. Ov…

The sales team are at the leading edge of product-market fit. I've found that their level of engagement, or success, or retention, is a great metric.
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