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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?

#171

Post by urda »

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.

Outside of unicorn "SF / Silicon Valley Land" you don't see these perks at other companies. So this advice only applies to a very small subset of people.

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

#173

Post by ccdev »

shimon wrote: post #54

One simple thing missing in most of these replies: ask questions. Ask your boss, ask your peers, ask the CEO now and then. - How is the company doing against its goals for the year? - What does our runway look like? - What signs of product success are we expecting? What are we seeing? Note that in any company, and especially in a startup, all of these questions are rife with uncertainty and stress. You should expect…

This is one of those things where you usually have to go through the school of hard knocks to experience the "fun" parts of working for a small company. When I was a new grad and my first job was at a company of 10-20 people, I only thought about how I'd be interacting with almost the entire company all of the time, and the idea of small, younger companies being a bigger risk to employees never came across my mind.

The warning signs I started to pick up were employee churn, company seemingly not growing in staff size as well. People found their company's practices questionable and they jumped to better places to work at. Managers were sometimes hush-hush with projects being carried out. When I worked there as a consultant, I was working on websites that most of the company's programmers, designers, and managers didn't even know existed on the agenda. I don't know if that is normal for consultant work, but this division of knowledge felt strange for a company small in size.

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

#174

Post by khedoros1 »

Bartweiss wrote: post #141
mljoe wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this often happen? Saving money on lunch might delay a company's failure for a week at best. My perspective is most startups will maintain all benefits until the bitter end explicitly to avoid giving their employees this kind of impression. Hints like this might cause critical employees to jump ship during a financial crunch time.

Interestingly, I've mostly seen this happen in the other direction - with successfully growing companies. Weekly lunch for a whole company isn't a huge deal at a startup, and it's not going to shorten the runway much. But when you've suddenly got 10x or 100x the original employee count it starts to look less pleasant. By the time a company is spending several salaries worth of money on free lunches, it probably looks…

I work in a division of my company that was acquired by it 10 years ago (about a year or 2 before I started working here). When I started, there was "pizza Friday" every week. About a year later, it was every month (and headcount was much higher). A year later, we were building out into another part of the building that we took over when the previous tenant's lease came up. Fast forward. Now, 2/3 of the office it gone, offshored. There's a monthly bagel Wednesday. I've only stayed this long because my manager is pretty awesome.

But I feel like I've seen both sides: Growing out of childhood and falling into senescence. The next time I see this pattern, I'll leave a couple years earlier.

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

#175

Post by khedoros1 »

zelos wrote: post #108
kogepathic wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How often do salary reviews generally occur for someone working as a developer (or IT I suppose?) It's served me well to have at least one interview per year with a different company in your field to see what they're offering. Doing this has really helped me understand what the market is willing to pay for my skills, and has more than once caused me to shift the direction of my career because the work they were doi…

> It's served me well to have at least one interview per year with a different company That sounds like really good advice: finding out what's out there, getting interview experience and stopping that "fear of change" feeling you can end up with when you work for one company for a long time.

> and stopping that "fear of change" feeling you can end up with when you work for one company for a long time.

That's what I'm dealing with right now. I've been 9 years at the place that I started at, right out of college. Missed some signs of a downward slide that I should've recognized, and I feel like my current team is a "dead team walking", just waiting for the company to find a way to get rid of us.

So I've got pressure to move on, and my most solid options mean moving my family. If I'd been searching over the last couple of years, I'm sure I could've found something cool and suitable, but still in my current area.

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

#176

Post by dreamcompiler »

One indicator I use is the bullshit level and its derivatives. You can define bullshit any way you like; my definition is "activity that adds no value to the company, or (worse) actively impedes people who are adding value to the company."

If the bullshit level is high, I think about leaving. If the first derivative of the bullshit level is also positive (bullshit is increasing) I lean heavily toward leaving. (If the first derivative is negative, the company might be healthy and pivoting after a setback.)

If both the first and the second derivatives of bullshit are positive (bullshit is not only increasing but accelerating) it's time to leave immediately.

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

#177

Post by ParameterOne »

trhaynes wrote: post #153
futhey wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to discount what you're saying, but there are several sets of “men in suits” that appear long before you lose your office space. Some are your investors (or work for them). Some are consultants or advisors, promising to solve all your problems. The service provider you're re-negotiating payment terms with. Potential acquirers, etc.

Must they be men?

Yes. they must. be men. If there were a bunch of women in suits cruzin around I would be kinda stoked. haha. I almost didn't reply to this because I understand that you're trying to make a point but because your post has no value I decided to reply with a post of equal value.

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

#178

Post by ParameterOne »

trhaynes wrote: post #153
futhey wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to discount what you're saying, but there are several sets of “men in suits” that appear long before you lose your office space. Some are your investors (or work for them). Some are consultants or advisors, promising to solve all your problems. The service provider you're re-negotiating payment terms with. Potential acquirers, etc.

Must they be men?

and they the men in suits should get paid more. Keep downvoting see if I care.

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

#179

Post by nandemo »

fnbr wrote: post #111
fao_ wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeah, but grandparent's claim is incorrect. Freebies aren't about compensating for overtime exemption.

For what is worth I'm in Japan so YMMV but I think this generally applies anywhere: if you switch from overtime-exempt to a hourly contract and keep working the same hours, your base monthly salary + overtime pay will be (in average) the same as your current salary.

The catch is "in average". Most corps will avoid having you do overtime if they have to pay extra for it, and conversely will try to switch off-hours support work to salaried employees. So you might end up working less hours and earning less as a contractor -- and sometimes that's what you want anyway. In other cases workers manage to game the system; in some orgs I know the contractors work longer hours than most non-manager salaried employees.

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

#180

Post by throwthisawayt »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #124
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…

Please be aware how many executives, lawyers, physicians, finance & trading experts expense meals in restaurants and hotels, go to "trainings" on cruise ships, fly in business class. Giving engineers free peanuts (so they don't walk out of the building to by some) is hardly a perk.

I'm really surprised about the physician comment. My gf works in the largest medical system in the Bay Area and her "perks" (discounted cafeteria food) are drastically below what I've had at any company in the tech industry for the last decade. They don't even pay for flights for residency or fellowship interviews so doctors have to pay thousands during these times while they are huge debt. She actually has to rotate between hospitals and they don't even subsidize her parking. They don't even support pregnancy for fellows, you have to take state disability.

Which hospital / medical systems give great perks to doctors ?

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