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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?

#111

Post by fnbr »

fao_ wrote: post #101
arien wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read things like this, I like to take a moment to realise how fortunate we are to work in a sector where something like freebies is almost considered to be a sacred right. Is there any other profession or sector where they get the same treatment? I don't think removing or reducing these benefits is a sign of poor health. I think it's more a sign of turning into a proper business (which needs to answer to the p…

> I like to take a moment to realise how fortunate we are to work in a sector where something like freebies is almost considered to be a sacred right. Bear in mind that, most programmers do not get paid overtime, and are expected to work like horses. The reason freebies are sacred rights are because those are, in part, the unofficial payment for working in such conditions.

Yup. I would take getting paid overtime over freebies hands down. 1.5x for every hour worked over 40? Sign me up.

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

#112

Post by erikb »

avisser wrote: post #38
erikb wrote: post #24

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…

re: the product line - also, is it sticky/easy to migrate away? I've worked for places with products that were not great but had institutional customers who required acts of god to change vendors. We were okay.

The list is meant more as a list of variables to compare, not as a list of possible red flags. If one or two factors are totally bad it still doesn't necessarily mean that you would call the patient "sick", especially when corresponding factors are fine.

Strong market position with bad products is usually okay. But if you know that and then hear about a deal that may risk decreasing the market position, then you know that there's a good chance it will get a lot worse and you can already start screening the job market for alternatives.

Also there are some factors, like good colleagues, which can compensate a lot for you personally, like bad HR department and bureaucratic leadership.

And sometimes things that are bad for you personally are actually good for the company. For instance if your customer is the government then bureaucratic leadership may actually be a market advantage over the competition.

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

#113

Post by tmaly »

Communication, how well are groups within the company communicating? Do groups tend to re-invent the wheel because they do not know about what other groups are doing?

Learning, what types of opportunities are employees given to develop skills and learn new skills?

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

#114

Post by touristtam »

fao_ wrote: post #101
arien wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read things like this, I like to take a moment to realise how fortunate we are to work in a sector where something like freebies is almost considered to be a sacred right. Is there any other profession or sector where they get the same treatment? I don't think removing or reducing these benefits is a sign of poor health. I think it's more a sign of turning into a proper business (which needs to answer to the p…

> I like to take a moment to realise how fortunate we are to work in a sector where something like freebies is almost considered to be a sacred right. Bear in mind that, most programmers do not get paid overtime, and are expected to work like horses. The reason freebies are sacred rights are because those are, in part, the unofficial payment for working in such conditions.

ye like fat food and high content sugar drinks.

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

#116

Post by hodgesrm »

gwbas1c wrote: post #87

TLDR: You assess health by if you're getting paid what you think it's worth to stay in the job. If you're okay with the pay, and you like the job, be a pro and stay as long as the pay comes in. A big warning sign was that my employer interview great candidates, make offers, and then the candidate didn't accept. The problem was that we weren't paying competitively. I tried to express this to upper management, and then…

"There's a lot to be said for sticking through a few months of uncertainty when it works out to be a great job in the long run."

This. You have to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em. It's not easy with startups to decide which way to go due to the uncertainty inherent in new businesses. I would tend toward hold if the following is true:

1.) The company is meeting a real market need even if it's not doing it very well. The tell: customers 'get' the problem you are trying to solve and want to talk to you. If they stick around but complain a lot about the product that's actually a good sign.

2.) You can afford to lose your job. Getting to a payoff involves some tolerance for risk. Investors take the same risk with their money.

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

#117

Post by unoti »

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. -…

Being focused on customer satisfaction is probably always a good thing. Many of the other things you mentioned will also need to happen for other reasons, such as for EDP auditing and various kinds of certifications. Such certifications can be important for selling the company, but they can also be important for marketing and attracting customers.

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

#118

Post by awshepard »

Some other warning signs:

- When you get rid of your QA team in the name of "quality" with everyone being responsible for testing, but then never provide adequate testing resources or environments. And when quality and velocity inevitably drop, and everyone claims they want to improve quality, but it's never actually prioritized.

- More generally, when your company is saying one thing and doing another.

- When your executive team flat out lies, and doesn't even blink when questioned about it.

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

#119

Post by blahyawnblah »

At my last couple of jobs my raises and bonuses were getting smaller over the last year or two I was there even though the company was supposedly taking in more revenue. We weren't expanding or hiring anyone so I started looking for new jobs. Both went under within a year of me leaving.

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

#120

Post by logingone »

Employee experience. The biggest problem at the company I recently left was inexperience. The company thought they could hire cheap and simply cross train and up-skill everyone. A FTSE 100 company. Eg a dev manager was a js dev now managing half the 200 odd dev dept. Hired mostly PHP devs who were all going to be cross trained as Go devs. My last manager had no management experience and was also the dept's Go tech lead, with no Go experience - a PHP dev, now starting at amazon, should be entertaining. Another Go dev on the team an ex-lawyer with two years dev experience as a ruby dev. The place was disorganised, frustrating, and not delivering. Toward the end of last year people started leaving, then more, then more - exodus. The dept has effectively collapsed as it's now a fraction of the size and a significant proportion of the remaining devs are new. It won't absolutely collapse because like all big corps they'll just keep hiring replacements and eventually paper over the cracks. They're now "restructuring", but the same rookies are still running the show so they're probably just going to botch it all over again, just in a different way.
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