51–60 of 169 posts
Crunchbase to understand the company's funding Github to see if they have open source stuff Company blogs I've told companies I want to remeet the team after interviews and they've scheduled lunches for me to talk with them in a more low pressure situation
However for me, one thing I really like doing is reaching out to employees who quit/left. Ask them for honest information about why they quit and what the existing problems are.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't lie about a crisis, but it's business. It's not unheard of to take a better offer and offer to work as a consultant at the previous employer.
The lying about the crisis is the part that I was referencing was shady. Working as a consultant for a previous employer is completely acceptable and provides mutual benefit.
If anyone feels like this is dishonest what do you tell your new employer about why you are truly leaving the old position. Do you tell them the owner was rude and you told him off or do you say you left because of a bad personality fit? You are not lying but perhaps a little dishonest. You can have a personal crisis and that could be the new job.
I would do the same if I were looking at a small company with potentially astroturfed Glassdoor ratings.
Find out:
1. Revenue and runway before next funding round or profitability. This trumps all in product decisions. Long runway means they can invest in new platforms and techs with bet on huge growth. Short runway means getting prestige brands into the sales pipeline to woo next investment round, and leveraging technical debt to survive. Would argue tech debt burden can be estimated as a function of remaining runway.
2. Whether board members and executives still have skin in the game and holding their stock. If board is full of early shareholders who have already been made whole, chances are you aren't their next unicorn, there is no explosive growth, and they've checked out. Expect executive level bullshit politics related to their short term compensation milestones.
3. Informal network: Who went to school with/worked with whom, and whether this role will-be / needs-to-be in that fold, or out of it. If you are not in the fold, you are a dilution target, and someones tool for meeting executive compensation milestones before changing the world. Do the work and take the money, but keep your dreams in check.
IMHO, these factors are what determine the company culture.
If the company is private, check out the other companies in the lead VCs portfolio web pages and what kinds of cultures those companies have. People move between them and you can get a better data set for glassdoor searches. If the other companies suck, this one probably will too.
What makes a company a great place to work is its real opportunity for growth because that means people are growing with it, and that brings them into work everyday. This creates a trajectory that defines its culture.
Good luck.
Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and emailing previous employees. Current employees aren’t going to give you the low down.
How do you get names and contact info for previous employees?
If you end up needing their email address because you can't send a message on LinkedIn, there's a slew of ways to find someone's email. They might list it on their Twitter, Github, or blog. Companies out there will help you guess it (Clearbit, Hunter, VoilaNorbert, etc.). And if all else fails, googling your best guesses as to what their email is (including their gmail) will often yield a match in some random mailing list, press release, or what have you.
https://levels.fyi to make sure the level/comp accurately represents what i'm looking for
Then you see someone at a place like Lyft with four years of real world experience and one year with the company pulling 300-400k a year without breaking a sweat. And now they’re about to jump onto the IPO rocket ship. I want to clarify that I’m not jealous of these people: it’s great. I just gotta stop and ask myself sometimes what the fuck I’m doing wrong.
Then again this is crowdsourced and might be a load of shit.