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How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

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Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#111

Post by nunez »

DeWilde wrote: post #85

Glassdoor does it for me. Most reviews have a bias towards negativity (those with hard feelings will usually take the time to let everyone know), so if the reviews are extra negative it is a good sign to steer clear. Reddit and HackerNews for more larger companies. Also, recently discovered a Chinese language forum 1point3acrees where there is some real candid talk about the larger/FAANG companies and their offices a…

Glassdoor can be amazing at finding dirt on a company. ALWAYS sort by new. Many companies (unfortunately) incentivize their employees to write five star reviews. Those will show up first if sorted by Best.

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#112

Post by ajmurmann »

plorkyeran wrote: post #100
WithinReason wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if we're headed to a point where this kind of self-selection basically creates companies consisting of either people who are all about DEI, or people who only care about skills/qualification, then the market will decide which one is the winning strategy.

There's a lot more groups of companies than that. There's companies which primarily select for people from the most prestigious school or for people with connections to people who already work there, or actively avoid the candidates the DEI people would prefer even if they're clearly the best option. Companies full of people who genuinely care only about skills and qualifications are very rare and generally don't sta…

Also, laziness/efficiency or maybe constraints that the real world imposes on hiring. It's very hard to effectively gauge skill during a few hours with someone or initially during a few seconds with their resume. If you find an effective proxy metric for skill and aptitude (like a degree from a league university) and after applying that simple filter still get a sufficient number of strong hires it will be very tempting to go down that path and save time interviewing. This usually will mean dismissing people with unusual backgrounds.

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#113

Post by totalZero »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #76
samatman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> diversity is often lacking in situations with bad people Do you mean, like, ethnic crime gangs? Those come in white flavors too. You, and GP, are just making stuff up that confirms your prejudices. You have no evidence of what you're saying whatsoever! All you're doing is stringing sentences together. What if I find one team of ten whites who are great to work with (say you're, I dunno Tongan?) and a team with ever…

I completely agree with you. Where is the proof?

Proof of what? Racism in the workplace? Or bawolff's "in my experience" anecdote?

In this thread I think almost all of the non-fact-based commentary came from Sam, lol. I guess he feels strongly about the topic, but I think bawolff's argument isn't so easily disposable as Sam asserts. And telling someone that their experience is not valid is kind of strange on the internet because there's no easy way to know what bawolff's set of work experiences includes.

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#114

Post by totalZero »

tacitusarc wrote: post #89
totalZero wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point was that diversity is often lacking in situations with bad people, because those bad people behave in ways that undermine heterogeneity...especially by mistreating the people who are different. Since racial heterogeneity is a more easily observable situation than, say, diversity of opinion, it's a healthy sign of a tolerant culture. That doesn't mean that a workplace lacking racial heterogeneity is…

I’ve generally enjoyed working with diverse teams. But the people who push DEI really hard tend to be insufferable.

Agreed on both points.

Regarding the latter, I feel that people in tech or finance who design their work personality to carry a sociopolitical banner are allocating brainpower away from the core business. At the very least, that can be annoying to colleagues who have to pick up the slack.

But to be circumspect about ethics in general...it's nice to work with good people, and good people often find it difficult to divorce their ethics from their actions because the alignment between the two things is part of what makes them good.

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#115

Post by geoduck14 »

totalZero wrote: post #106
samatman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> diversity is often lacking in situations with bad people Do you mean, like, ethnic crime gangs? Those come in white flavors too. You, and GP, are just making stuff up that confirms your prejudices. You have no evidence of what you're saying whatsoever! All you're doing is stringing sentences together. What if I find one team of ten whites who are great to work with (say you're, I dunno Tongan?) and a team with ever…

Huh? I'm not stating any personal opinions about race in the workplace here, and I don't appreciate you casting me as having done so. I was saying that you seem to have misinterpreted other guy's post as a false contrapositive. Note the "I think the point was," and also the "If I'm interpreting GP properly." Let me make it clearer for you: "If the canary is alive, there's oxygen." That was the GP argument. It's not t…

>I'm not stating any personal opinions about race in the workplace here, and I don't appreciate you casting me as having done so.

I, too, interpreted your original comment as "agreeing with" the original poster.

Your line about "If I'm interpreting GP properly." Came at the very end - after I (incorrectly) assumed you were aligned with GP

My conclusion is that this format isn't very good at difficult conversations

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#116

Post by aaomidi »

65 wrote: post #105

It's interesting to me how trendy "diversity" is these days, and it's always in the context of race. It's interesting how we don't ever think of diversity in terms of class, wealth, disability, etc. An Ivy League educated black person and an Ivy League educated white person are far more similar than a poor white person and a rich white person. And yet, it seems as though we don't really care about hiring people from…

Diversity is always thought about in the contexts you mentioned. If you've had experiences that they haven't been, then those companies have fucked up D&I.

Anyway, good thing remote work exists. And not opening up to remote work already says a lot about inclusion in the company. So a company in Duluth wouldn't really have an excuse for having an all ablebodied, neurotypical, white straight men workforce.

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#117

Post by wly_cdgr »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #37
anticristi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you enjoy working here? I wouldn't ask non-factual questions. Of course the default answer is "yes". I wouldn't be able to answer such a question honestly in front of a stranger.

Well, I am looking for a bit more than just "yes". Some context has to be given. In my last interview, there was a lovely, slightly panicked pause as the interviewers all looked at one another. Then the main interviewer said something like "Well, there are times it can be frustrating, it's not always a smooth ride. But I like the people I work with, the company is supportive and I get a kick out of it.". I appreciate…

Cacklin'

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#118

Post by wly_cdgr »

DeWilde wrote: post #85

Glassdoor does it for me. Most reviews have a bias towards negativity (those with hard feelings will usually take the time to let everyone know), so if the reviews are extra negative it is a good sign to steer clear. Reddit and HackerNews for more larger companies. Also, recently discovered a Chinese language forum 1point3acrees where there is some real candid talk about the larger/FAANG companies and their offices a…

Glassdoor is super useful & also just great entertainment

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#119

Post by wly_cdgr »

froggertoaster wrote: post #84

I feel like qualifying companies as either "good" or "evil" are as unhelpful as the whole diversity section of the article.

There're two kinds of people: those who think life is a melodrama, and those whose moral opinions might be worth taking seriously

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#120

Post by evv555 »

65 wrote: post #105

It's interesting to me how trendy "diversity" is these days, and it's always in the context of race. It's interesting how we don't ever think of diversity in terms of class, wealth, disability, etc. An Ivy League educated black person and an Ivy League educated white person are far more similar than a poor white person and a rich white person. And yet, it seems as though we don't really care about hiring people from…

>And yet, it seems as though we don't really care about hiring people from poorer backgrounds, maybe without college degrees, etc.

That's why these narratives are so attractive to the already rich and privileged. It deflects fault/polarization from their own classism. It's not your rich parents that are the benefactors and perpetrators of socially corrosive capitalism. It's some amorphous "whiteness" that is usually a proxy for poor white people.

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