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Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

Some of the best advice I've ever gotten, and I'm so glad I followed it, is to ignore details like what the product is entirely, and pick the team to join solely based on the manager. It's worked out very well. There was a survey I remember reading earlier this year about how the single biggest factor causing dissatisfaction at work is having a bad boss.

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How do you identify a good manager? I ask because I've had both good and bad but no indication of which is which at the beginning. Some seemed super engaged when interviewing but disappeared once I started working.

Its much easier if its within the same org, of course, but even in another company, you can possibly talk to the people who will work with you under the same manager and ask them. Unfortunately, there isn't any surefire way of knowing whether you will work under a good manager, just as there is no surefire way for the company to know you will be a stellar employee.

Personally, what I look for the most is honesty. Even if the product/company is crap, if the people working on it are honest about their current state and where they want to be in the future, I find that much more interesting than a well-known established company whose manager is just OK.

I had a thirty minute chat with each potential manager during the hiring process, and I went with the one that I felt I had the best rapport with. It turns out that the initial impression was correct. Now of course this is far from foolproof, but oftentimes you can learn a lot about someone from just a thirty minute chat (and asking the right questions).

So...what do you think are the right questions?

It depends on what you value most in a working relationship. What I want in a boss isn't necessarily what you want in a boss. General questions that might apply to most people would include things like "What kind of working hours do people on your team keep", "How do you help build the careers of people on your team", "Why did you choose this project and what do you find exciting about it", "If you were to start this project all over again knowing what you know now, what decisions would you make differently", "How are relations between the tech side of the team and the business/product side of the team", "Why should I join your team in particular", "How well do the members of the team get along and what does a typical day look like -- do people sit together and chat frequently? Not interact in person much?". You see where I'm going with this.

Is this a consulting role like Accenture? (Asking because not all companies let managers choose their projects?)

  pick the team to join solely based on the manager

My experience too. Of course there are other factors, but this is (arguably) the most important factor of all; the rest are just constraints, and this is like the objective function.

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