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Ask HN: Tools or sites you use to scope out a workplace before taking a job?

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Re: Ask HN: Tools or sites you use to scope out a workplace before taking a job?

#91
Glassdoor, and filter by most helpful, since it's an open secret that startups write their own fucking reviews.

You always get the down lo when you read a highly upvoted review.

I know this one startup CEO he was caught lying publicly about writing his own glassdoor reviews. It was quite obvious (everybody in the company knew except the CEO).

Re: Ask HN: Tools or sites you use to scope out a workplace before taking a job?

#92
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Can you elaborate on that?

... especially how one might go about finding that information.

crunchbase, google/yahoo finance, annual reports if they have them, news search... If they're small and low key this may be hard to come by, but in most cases, who senior executives and board members are is public information.

Re: Ask HN: Tools or sites you use to scope out a workplace before taking a job?

#93
post #78

Crunchbase to get current and former founders/execs, last rounds etc. Company website for investor relations page if exists, SEC and regulatory filings to get financials, technology roadmaps, prospectuses, etc. Then avoid pinging anyone on linkedin other than to find who the core informal network that runs the company is. Find out: 1. Revenue and runway before next funding round or profitability. This trumps all in p…

>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. Can you elaborate on that?

Scenario I refer to is a bit complex where board members from the first couple of rounds have majority votes about the company and can hire/fire the CEO and influence make up of the key executives.

Later rounds at higher valuations let these members recoup most of the value of their investment, so their downside is now covered and they have all the votes. Nice spot to be in.

To me, this board no longer represents the parties with the most to lose, and what was previously an investment partnership is now just a one-sided gamble. Where when it is founders making decisions, there is skin in the game.

The effect I'm trying to articulate is the board not holding executives accountable for anything other than positioning the company for a sale, and that the incentives can be apparent from the board makeup. Conversely, if massive later stage investors were really interested in the long term prospects of the company, they'd have got board seats.

Point being, as an employee, the day to day at a company that is being positioned to sell to a greater fool is very different from one positioning itself for explosive growth. The make up of the board, assuming it is fit for purpose, may be a tell for which strategy the company is pursuing, and hence, culture.

Re: Ask HN: Tools or sites you use to scope out a workplace before taking a job?

#95
Generally just the company's site, any other stuff they have posted publicly, news stories about them, etc. I rely mostly on my own personal impressions of the team and leadership. I have only worked for one public company and with that one I did also have a look at some financial returns, but I can't say it mattered terribly to me as long as they were not losing money.

Re: Ask HN: Tools or sites you use to scope out a workplace before taking a job?

#96

https://levels.fyi to make sure the level/comp accurately represents what i'm looking for

Holy shit that is depressing - as a senior engineer in the UK working at one of the largest UK tech based companies I struggle to earn even $100k.

Re: Ask HN: Tools or sites you use to scope out a workplace before taking a job?

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t it a bad idea to use the same account for work as well as personal projects? Currently I have a separate ‘home’ account for personal projects and I never touch the work ID from my home.

That's the whole idea of Github Teams. You just add/remove users to teams and subteams as an organization Owner, and you never get access to anything else on their account or even see their private repos or other organizational memberships.

Except that one is still likely using a company-owned laptop/desktop to access that account. Any data or activity on company hardware (such as private keys or cookies) should be considered visible by them as there’s likely to be remote management software, an IT admin account, encryption key escrow, etc. The legal precedent (in the U.S., anyway) gives an employee no expectation of privacy on a company computer or network.

Re: Ask HN: Tools or sites you use to scope out a workplace before taking a job?

#98
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice idea, but I'm very confused what I'm doing or how it works - it starts with non-zero matches, and then for each thing I click it _increases_ the number of matches... I'd expect it to start large, and then filter down with more things selected. But it's not even like it's acting the other way, including only companies that match at least one thing I clicked, because it started non-zero.

I'm using OR logic until I have enough companies for AND logic to provide a good user experience. I'm looking forward for that day to come, too, trust me! If you select multiple values, the results will be ordered by number of matches and prioritize the companies who ranked those values highest.

OR is fine (hopefully the sort order is by most matches first though?) - what's confusing to me is that it starts on a non-zero number. Is that the number of companies that don't match anything? Is there any value in listing them at all, if that's the case?

Re: Ask HN: Tools or sites you use to scope out a workplace before taking a job?

#99

If you're a software engineer (or will work closely w/ engineers), I built Key Values ( https://www.keyvalues.com ) to help w/ this. Before building KV though, my research process included looking for and reading: - the company's career and about us pages - an active blog w/ recent posts (w/in the last 2 months) - LinkedIn / Twitter / GitHub of founders and existing team members (I'd also look for any old blogs writt…

how do you determine the key values for each company?

Re: Ask HN: Tools or sites you use to scope out a workplace before taking a job?

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely fascinating. I don't know how folks are earing this kind of cash when you can go to a recruiter, with more than decade of hands-on startup experience, and when you want more than 200k a year they look at you like you just kicked their cat. 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…

If you're serious: get a job at a well-known tech company. You might have to move for this unless you're already in a top-tier tech city (NYC, SF, and Seattle, definitely qualify; maybe Zurich, London, Toronto, and Sydney). Work there for two years. Move to a better tech company. You are now worth $300-400k per year. If you're not already considered top-tier talent, I think Amazon is the easiest way into this right n…

> You are now worth $300-400k per year.

Are you sure this number still applies if you're outside of US (London, Toronto, Sydney)? My understanding is that numbers in Europe are nothing like those in the US.

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