I work at Mercury Banking Solutions, and I've loved my time there. Everyone is whip-smart and helpful. I both feel like I'm playing up, but also get the support to rise to the challenge.
Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
381–390 of 447 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#382One challenge is that even in sucky workplaces, there always seem to be champions that will tell you how great it is. In part because it's a hard life focusing on how your job sucks and many people get good at being outwardly optimistic. That said, it would be nice to see more authenticity than what mostly gets posted in the hiring thread, and on company websites. I'm sure we each have our own criteria of what kind o…
I think it also just depends on the person. I've been in workplaces that felt great to me, and seen people leave because they found it sucky. Similarly I have also left due to suckiness despite some people seeming to enjoy themselves. Though of course that may just be an act.
Often the people making it sucky have no idea.
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
There must be a HUGE pay discrepancy. I mean millions of dollars over the course of a decade. Too much opportunity cost, and for what? What is the value of the loyalty shown by the owner?
For many, it is happiness and focusing on other things in life once they have the means. Millions don't really matter if that's not a motivator in life.
I understand what you’re saying, but focusing on non-work things and working at a big tech company are not mutually exclusive. You can do the same amount of work and make a lot more money.
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#384I've been at Facebook for about a year and a half. Before this I was at startups in the marketing and financial industries. We've been under scrutiny for the whole time that I've been there, and the company is pretty unpopular from a vocal population on here, but it's been really nice to work for. We obviously have job security, and I've been very impressed with the management chain above me. At least on my team, the…
I find this very interesting...
'I get paid a lot, and they treat me well, so who cares about anything else'
Pull your head out of the sand and realize that when people talk about Facebook, they are talking about each and everyone of you. You are a representation of your company and your company is a representation of you.
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#385In my experience small companies tend to be the best to work for, but this varies wildly. Large companies are more reliably mediocre across the board, but bad small companies can be outright abusive (usually you can detect these with a few questions in an interview... for example, ask how often employees work outside of regular hours).
As soon as I hear "work hard play hard" I know it's a company that expects long hours for mediocre pay, and then the boss likes to go to the strip club on the weekend.
"Word hard play hard" is one of our mottos. The office is empty by 5PM. I guess we're doing it wrong?
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
counter point: after working for small owner-run companies where the owner took everything personally, I will forever only work in big tech. The owner ran the show and was emotional. Every time a competitor launched something new, they would change course and race to copy them. Ended up delivering nothing and eventually laid off after 1.5 years. At a big company, everyone is spending someone else's money and the peop…
There's a middle-ground. Aim for 50-200, and private. Small enough to be treated like a person, big enough to have an HR department.
There's probably a lot to be said for that approach. Isn't there some known-number for "above this population, organizations suffer?"
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#387Haven’t seen this mentioned in the top comments:
How’s your network ? Usually that’s a good way to go - find someone you enjoyed working with and see were they are
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is good advice, with the caveat that the owner needs to not be a dick. I've worked in environments like this both with amazing owners and with truly horrifying owners.
Yeah, watch out for small companies that are desperately trying to get big but have been small or oscillated between 10-40 people seemingly from the beginning of time. There's a particular type of person who runs these businesses and that person is extremely common. They cannot delegate and micromanage everything so once they get beyond their ability to manage every facet of operations themselves, their leadership ab…
In my current role, I've been lucky because we're in a market that IS very financially viable, but isn't HUGE. There's no push to grow crazy big or fast; the push is to keep the product ahead. And we're doing that, with a small team.
We will need to grow a bit in the next couple years, but mostly in (I'm guessing) testing and support.
Before this I was in some other small orgs with generally good management, but they failed. We had lean years at this firm -- there was a furlough period, with 4-day workweeks and 80% salary, and I thought about leaving but honestly also enjoyed the extra day off, too.
We made it over that hump, and are now doing well. My main concerns at this point are leadership succession at the top, and also at the top of the actual dev group. The latter is more easily addressed than the former.
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#389What I'd love to know is how to find the smaller more "hacker" oriented shops. I've worked at a few over the years... the kinds of places where everyone in engineering uses Linux desktops because that's the best choice for the work at hand and everyone's comfortable with it. Where the product is good, makes money, but is maybe kind of niche so the company isn't adding 10 people a week.
> I've worked at a few over the years...
Have you reached out to your network ? Those that worked at those same places with you
Re: Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
#390I enjoyed working at Google, but it was incredibly team dependent. Spent two stints there (4y and 2y), on three separate teams. First team was frustrating, second two teams were wonderful.
I feel like a lot of interviewing is figuring out if the company is good to work for. The one time I jumped right into a job, I had the above experiences like you did (small startup). Since then, I try to spend an hour with most of the people that would be in my decision tree. Quickly discover if they a) know where the product should go b) I get along with them culturally c) they are good at their jobs.