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

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

#21

Post by beaker52 »

I look at a few things. Company structure is quite telling. The relationship between teams, how teams work together. I usually get a good feel for any potential dysfunction in an organisation by this. The more splitting up and dividing there is going on, the more unhealthy it usually is. If the company is small enough, it should be self organising to some degree of success.

Other questions to consider:

- Are staff able to be honest?

- Is the company able to be honest with itself?

- Does the company have a vision that actually sells itself?

- Is the company actually pursuing that vision with it's actions?

- Does the company leverage the intelligence of it's employees, or does it just hand them work to perform?

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

#24

Post by erikb »

Also relevant should be the question how to act in different phases. An unhealthy company is not necessarily dying. And even a dying company is not necessarily bad for you. It's like with real people. When someone dies some others start to check out the valuables to get the best for themselves. If you are working in a brilliant team inside a dying company, you may all get picked up, get a raise, and be welcomed into new arms. That's one way to get into Google for instance.

For figuring out the current health status, I'd check:

the product line - is it understandable? is it modern? is it efficient?

the customer base - do they have customers that wouldn't easily change to alternative options?

the management team - do they have visions? are they cooperating? are they lying psychopaths, ambitious inventors, calm survivors (thinking Merkel here), idiotic burocrats?

HR - HR is managements comm channel to the employees. Does the promo material look good? How close is the promo material to the actual day-to-day work?

People - are there smart people you like to work with? How many of them are currently joining? How many of them are currently leaving?

Hiring - you are either new and just got hired or there for a long time and probably at least hear things about the hiring process at the water cooler. how reasonable does it sound? does it filter out idiots? does it assess quality attributes like culture? Does the feedback from the interviewers have influence on the hiring decision (more often than you think they actually just hire anybody, if they are hiring at all).

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

#25

Post by le-mark »

blowski wrote: post #20
UseofWeapons1 wrote: post #12

The easist method is by trend in employee count. If headcount is rising, that's a good indicator, if it's falling, that's generally bad. Stable can be perfectly fine, or bad, depending on the company. You may have concerns about the magnitude of growth, or claim lay-offs were justified or turnover is natural, but the trend generally holds. You should also pay attention to other employees; ask yourself why folks who l…

Rising headcount is not necessarily a good sign. To the contrary, it's often a sign that the company is haemorrhaging cash, hoping that if they hire enough staff something magic will happen before time runs out.

There's also the idea that head count can signal revenue, or expected revenue. Companies looking to be bought can go on hiring sprees to appear more healthier to potential buyers. I experienced this at one company, when the new owner installed their CEO, the first thing he did was slash head count.

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

#26

Post by corobo »

I generally work for smaller companies, Health note: Employee churn when churn is not the norm.

Health warning: Certain people leaving with enough business knowledge it's noticeable they're gone

Health crisis: Multiple health warnings in quick succession (within 2 years).

At warning level I make sure my CV is updated and start setting up job alerts. At crisis I'm actively applying for jobs to keep my options wide open.

Edit: Ooh reading another comment - I watch the public docs of the company I'm working for. It's a year or so out financials-wise but you can get some info from it.

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

#27

Post by jermaustin1 »

draz wrote: post #4

- 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…

I saw all of these in a single year in the IT department of a former client.

- A new CIO, - Then within his first week, a layoff of all the network engineers (except the manager) right before an all heads meeting - An all heads meeting where we were to provided an "accounting of our yearly hours" and it had to equal to 2080 and a reorganization of IT to be instead of a solutions provider to the company, a help desk. - Then over the course of the next three months, a lot of new projects that combined the various services we consumed (hr, payroll, etc) under one single product, beefed up helpdesk staff count (all temp/contract workers) and layoffs from various orgs in IT: security, development, and helpdesk (employees). - Then over the next two months, employee staff count dropped further bringing the total at the beginning from 60 heads to 12. And all the employees were replaced with contractors.

That said, the company gave out larger bonuses because the bonus pool had already been agreed to, and the employee count was almost non existent, so bigger bonuses spread around to the managers (since they were all that was left). Also the company is still growing elsewhere, just shrinking the places that are "cost centers".

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

#30

Post by angelofthe0dd »

A key indicator I've seen in past companies was when "top skill" or "top manager" level people suddenly submit their resignation and then spend two weeks calmly walking around the office with an ear-to-ear grin. Not too long after that, whisperings of "Why?" start circulating. And shortly after that, I got an upbeat email from HR about "Exciting new company direction" and "Rethinking our core strategies for better customer alignment." In all seriousness, shake-ups and re-alignments are frightening and kill everyone's morale with fears of uncertainty.
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