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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?

#61

Post by jasode »

VLM wrote: post #39

Many answers are negative assuming decline, or provide an extremely complicated answer to a simple problem. I'd propose based on decades of observation that you model the behavior and personality of all of management as if it was one person. Now is that imaginary merged individual person a lunatic deep in cocaine addiction psychosis? That might be a bad sign. Is that imaginary merged person a reasonable good leader?…

>I'd propose based on decades of observation that you model the behavior and personality of all of management as if it was one person.

The problem I see with this advice is that many technical people (e.g. presumably many HN readers) are not good at "reading people". It's very similar to socially-inept engineers asking "how can I tell if a girl would be ok with me asking her out on a date?" We then respond with more well-meaning advice, "if she smiles at you, that's a good sign." And then the engineer might ask, "well, how can I tell if her smile is genuine affection or just politeness?" ... and so on and so on ... into a sort of infinite recursion into the mysteries of "people behavior".

If the engineer is the kind of person that can read Ribbonfarm's Gervais Principle[1] and say to him/herself, "that was a waste of time because that's all obvious information", then yes, he can follow your advice. He/she can evaluate the managers as if they were chess pieces and figure out the health of the company.

If you're the type that's not "tuned in" into how people exhibit implicit behaviors, you'll need a Plan B. E.g. look at the financials or other strategy.

[1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

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

#62

Post by jdavis703 »

* Late payments to employees (checks, expense reports etc)

* Banker-looking people coming by

* Drawn out fund raising periods with promises every month that next month something will be announced.

* Churn in the C-suite or at VP level.

* Plants being carted away

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

#63

Post by kzisme »

majewsky wrote: post #50
booleandilemma wrote: post #31

I've read that a good way to get an early indicator of future health is to pay attention to the spending on the small things. Does your company have paid lunches? Does it have a snack vending machine or something similar? A coffee machine with k-cups? Other little perks that seem insignificant but are nice to have. If these things start to go away, the company is experiencing financial stress.

However, if these things never were there in the first place, it just means that you're not in the SV bubble.

While I think that the OP is correct - I also agree with this. Working in the mid-west I've never seen stuff like this first hand :(

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

#65

Post by Benjammer »

bennyp101 wrote: post #48

The last company I worked at before it was acquired went through a phase of making everything 'legit' - which looking back on it now makes sense. - Making sure that everybody had their work laptops/phones properly secured, requiring RSA tags for VPN access etc. - Lots of new policies, mainly things that we did anyway, but just fully documented and meetings to make sure that everybody understood their roles in them. -…

Pretty sure things like this can happen for other reasons as well though, like when a company is going for it's next financing round.

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

#66

Post by danpalmer »

We have a weekly all-hands where major issues (good or bad) would be mentioned, and where we get an overview of all core metrics. We have a monthly all-hands where we go into detail on all the metrics and how each team's metrics build up to the overall company performance. We know how much we're targeting/getting in funding rounds. We can ask questions about any of this in one-to-ones with managers that happen fortnightly.

Basically we're pretty good at transparency, so most people just know all of this. It's a nice environment to work in!

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

#67

Post by fnbr »

There's a great article on this topic from Steve Blank:

https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...

He argues that a leading indicator is when free food/drinks are removed, as it's a sign that the company is moving from a growth, "we're all in it together" mentality to a cost-cutting one.

I, personally, focus on who's getting promoted and who's leaving. If a company is promoting internally and retaining people, then it's typically in a good place; if a lot of people are getting hired above others, and new employees aren't staying long, then it's in poor health.

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

#68

Post by kevinmannix »

When growth numbers are consistently not hit. Always push for transparency at a smaller company - if there isn't one already, attempt to implement an all-hands meeting at least bi-weekly that reviews goals for the quarter / year and the company's progress. If direction is constantly changing at a 1 or 2 month cadence, it's likely that there may be a shakeup coming sooner rather than later.

It's wise to have a bit of cynicism when discussing company goals, progress, outcomes - things may not always be as bright as they seem. It's a good exercise to take these numbers and reduce them by a certain percentage, and see if those numbers are still good for company growth & stability.

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

#69

Post by just4themoney »

kzisme wrote: post #58
just4themoney wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually once or twice a year for a seasoned developer, more frequent for jrs. That's been my experience.

I've been at my current position for about ~1.5 years almost without one (I think they are starting to do them soon?). Last time I asked they had said they are implementing a formal process for them. I've just been looking forward to it.

So you haven't gotten a raise in a year and a half?

(In my experience, if someone really deserves it then either a bonus or an out of cycle raise or promotion will be given, I've gotten both.)

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

#70

Post by awkward »

pgt wrote: post #18

Cutting of catered lunches is a strong signal that the company is in a cash crunch. You can try to propose a weekly catered lunch at your company to "encourage communication" and watch it is a signal. In the past I instituted weekly catered lunches at a company, which were halved from weekly to bi-weekly the moment finance knew there was trouble. Other indicators: delayed salary reviews, senior staff leaving (and not…

Any rollback of free food perks is a bad sign. It's not always a sign of bad health, but if it's not it means the company is softly lowering the status of it's rank and file in order to put in another layer of management.
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