What information should include?
If you were to create the job description page (or careers page) for your company what will you put there?
What information will you add there?
Most tech jobs I've seen don't have any photos at all. When they do, it's usually the lobby and kitchen and ping-pong table. Why are you trying so hard to hide the place I'm going to be spending 95% of my time? You wouldn't buy a car without ever having seen the driver's seat, and I spend way less time in my car than at my computer.
When I saw photos of Fog Creek's offices (with programmers sitting at their own desks), I didn't need to read any marketing fluff to know that programmers are treated better there than at any tech company I've seen in Seattle, and if I lived near NYC I'd be beating down the doors to work there. They're not architecturally 'pretty' but seeing 20 desk-level outlets per person shows they've thought about all the little annoyances that developers have.
Of course, on the hiring side, this only works if your workspace is a differentiator for you. If it's a generic open-office floor plan, then it's not, and you probably should hide it from applicants and push salary/benefits and "interesting problems" instead.
It also makes it slightly more equitable, since employees are no longer reliant on playing salary poker in order to determine their pay rate. This tends to reduce the salary gap.
I don't like the negotiation game either, but I don't really see how to avoid it.
I don't count bonuses as part of compensation when I am considering jobs. I've been burned too often by the promises of a bonus.
I also discount 401K matches that don't immediately vest. The longer they take to vest, the less I count them.
I also don't negotiate for raises. Either they keep up with market rates or I look for another job.
Neglecting to publish a salary range seems more like a negotiation tactic on behalf of companies of not wanting to be the first to name a number. Either that or you know your company can't compete on salary, which is my typical assumption when it's a company I've never heard of and I don't see a range provided.
Just me but I'd rather know salary up front and not spend an entire interview just to be low-balled. Wastes everyone's time.
For things like programming where there’s a lot of variety, some stuff indication of typical working environment is really nice. Daily standup? Lots of pairing? This isn’t a right/wrong thing but will help people with strong preferences avoid wasting time.
What’s the office environment like? Single offices? Team rooms? Cubicles?
Remote-working policy.
Dry lists of bullet points are a turn-off; they give the impression that the company just wants a warm body.
I also avoid companies that rely on hyperbole in their job ads--"rockstar," "ninja," "guru," etc. They give the impression that the one who wrote the job ad and/or the hiring manager have no idea how to truly quantify good talent.
True, but you have to be a little careful with "required skills". At my last job, the CTO asked me to check out a job posting, and the "required skills" list had our entire tech stack (maybe 20 items, including several rare ones). We were literally asking for a single person who knew as much as our entire company did!
This can be especially problematic because not everyone sees "required" the same way: https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-dont-apply-for-jobs-unless...
When you buy your own food, you pay with post-tax income. The employer can provide that food for less money than it takes to pay you the extra money to buy the food. Alternately, you can get better food.
Travel time can be hours. You may need to struggle with traffic or wait for a train. You may need to get all dressed up for the cold and then shovel snow off your car.
The whole point is all that stuff costs much less than any meaningful pay raise.
Is there a good word for an experienced person who is better at shutting the door and working through problems rather that doing things in a team?
One of the hardest time for me is on-boarding a guy or girl who is poorly informed about their role. Not any better when I am the new-joiner.
Job Title - Department
Description of Company
Description of Job
Tech Stack
Requirements
How Interview Works
Salary Range
Benefits
[Click to Apply without having to retype your whole resume]
Appearances of avoiding or deferring that discussion frustrate me immensely, as it seems like the company is trying to compensate with fluff before getting to the facts of it. This is because - at the end of the day - salary is simply the most important thing. It is how you provide for yourself and your family. It is how you build wealth and stability and safety for your life, and nothing else comes close. When my company provides me, via a solid salary, this financial security, I am 200% invested in making its mission successful, whatever the tech stack or other details of the role.
What are the required skills and nice to haves.
401K match and vesting schedule.
"We don't hire for specific roles, we just hire good engineers" (read: your job is whatever we say it is any given moment).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16283252
It has that attribute you are complaining about, but without the problems you presume. Suppose we hired you. Perhaps a couple months pass between when the job ad is posted and when you physically show up for your first day of work. We aren't going to put projects on hold while waiting for you; we'll assign those to other people. Once you show up, we'll get you started on a project.
That project assignment won't last forever. We may decide that you are more valuable elsewhere, perhaps after you get a security clearance. (another reason we can't say much, along with plain ordinary proprietary information) Projects tend to last a year or two.
It's not as if we have no idea. We can say in general terms what kind of stuff you could work on. Telling you about a project that might be done before you start your first day of work would make no sense at all.
I wouldn't call it wildly disorganized, but the details are not perfectly predictable. There are people managing a pipeline of upcoming projects. They propose things to customers, get feedback, place bids to do the work, get contracts, set things up for doing the work, and then match up employees with projects.
Pick Florida or Texas to live in a place with solid gun rights and no state income tax.
Why do I care about gun rights when I'm applying for a job. That implies a culture that is always bringing politics into the job -something I avoid like the plague.
We proudly fly the American flag. One in our cafeteria looks to be about 8x15 feet. Our veterans hold an annual Flag Folding Ceremony in honor of Veteran's Day.
I respect veterans (my father is one) but along with the gun rights statement it still feels like bringing non work related stuff into the job. I just want to do my job and go home.
Many employees choose to go shooting together, but there is no pressure to participate. It's just a normal all-American activity.
Another red flag....
When someone asked about salary range, the response was
We are hiring at multiple levels and in multiple locations, so it's a big range. You don't want an upper bound on it, do you? That would be limiting. :-)
Another red flag....
I suspect that "always bringing politics into the job" and "bringing non work related stuff into the job" are not the real cause of your dislike. Can you confirm that you would reject both Google and Facebook due to being excessively political? We're far less political at work than they are. We didn't fire our Bernie supporter.
There are no red flags. We exclusively fly the American flag.
I keep seeing that people suspect a lack of a salary range indicates nefarious intent, but it's not like that. User rb808 had it right in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16555622 when he commented that "if you put a typical range you wont get the best people. If you put a high number out you get every nutter in town applying."
I did drop a few hints which you ignored, but the salary range spans more than 6 dB. Everybody seems to underestimate us, and glassdoor's obsolete data doesn't help, but that isn't totally a bad thing. I have no interest in wasting time on people who just spam all the job ads that offer large salaries. I get enough spammy stuff as it is... no, web development experience isn't going to cut it.
The value that you provide to one company is not the same as the value that you provide to another company. Consider two companies and two developers. One developer does C++11 and one company wants that. One developer does C# and one company wants that. Applying to the matching companies, perhaps both people are offered $200,000. Applying to the non-matching companies, perhaps both people are offered $100,000. There is no reason to be offended or assume nefarious intent when you get a low offer during a career change. Heart surgeons and stock traders may both get paid well, but a heart surgeon who switches his career to stock trading should not expect prior experience and pay to be at all related to value in the new career.
I never see on their job postings that they have Bernie rallies every week.
But I am not a big company person. I've worked for over 20 years and have only worked for one company that anyone has ever heard of -- a company that at the time was a Fortune 10 company.
And salary, salary, salary!
Vacation policies.
Candidates want to know about as much as possible before investing hours/days/weeks interviewing at a company. Who wants to waste all that time trying to get an offer from a company they don't even want to work at?!
Here are things candidates might want to know about:
- office layout
- on call schedule
- lunch traditions
- support for personal development
- organization/structure (ie. pods vs. teams)
- engagement with the greater community
- participation in meetups/conferences/hackathons
- ability to move between teams and change projects
- culture of promotion (external or from w/in?)
- hiring goals for the next 6, 12 months
- composition of team (X frontend, Y backend, Z data, etc)
- interview process
- employee retention
- diversity goals and metrics
- flexibility of working arrangements
- frequency and duration of meetings
- opportunities to mentor interns or junior devs
- code reviews
- post mortems
- tooling (ie. for revision control)
- how often do people pair?
- channels to provide feedback to executives
- contributions to open source
- average age?
- support/benefits for parents
- "busy times" or "peak seasons" for the company
- runway
- hobbies/interests of current team members aka future coworkers
- level/amount of interaction between me and users/customers
- ability to work remotely
- support for IC vs. management tracks
- amount of collaboration between departments
- is this job available because they're fortifying existing teams or spinning up new ones?
- general, day-to-day working hours
The list goes on and on.
I also wrote tons of questions for candidates to ask during their job interviews to get information about all of the above: https://www.keyvalues.com/culture-queries
But the bigger issue for me is that a "value" for me is either something that ought to be universal (like racial/gender equality), or a deliberate choice between valid options. For most of these values, I have no idea what the opposite choice might be. For example, GitHub picked "CUSTOMER COMES FIRST" (ironically, as their #2 value), but I'm not sure what the alternative would be. Investors come first? Make art, not products? Do any software companies have such values?
You mention on the "About" page an example of a value you originally wanted to search for, "whether they favored speed or perfection when it came to shipping code", which I think is a perfect example of a value I'd want to search for, too. Unfortunately, in the list of 50 values, I can't find any that represent either of these positions. The closest I can find are "HIGH QUALITY CODE BASE" and "FAST-PACED ENVIRONMENT", but they're not exactly opposites, and sure enough several of the companies picked both of these values, in adjacent positions. I don't see any way for companies to indicate they hold the opposite of one of these values.
Here's one possible goal for anyone writing a new software engineering job search site. Every month or so, someone posts a link to "They Write the Right Stuff" here on HN, an article about the Lockheed space shuttle software group. Make a job site that would let me find that as a career, never having heard of it and not having any prior interest in the field. For example, it could have a "speed"/"perfection" dial, and show me aerospace jobs if I turn it all the way to "perfection".
A study by TheLadders.com showed that candidates spend on average 49 seconds on a job description before deciding if it's a fit or not. The majority of that time is spent above the fold.
JDs should include the most vital information about the role above the fold. Which languages should the candidate know? What certification is required? Any specialized training? Location? Education? All above the fold. No need to lead a candidate on only to reveal in the last sentence: "Must speak Mandarin".
Salary. Mention salary. Every candidate wants to know. At the very least, give a range.
Once you get past the basics, add in required skills with context. Avoid the temptation to use cliche "communication skills" or "customer service skills" without adding additional context.
Simple formula: You will use [skill name] to [desired result] within/using [time frame/technology]
A great example of a very effective JD is from 37Signals a few years ago: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2544-were-looking-for-an-offi...
It's pretty difficult to read that JD and be confused about the role. They avoid ambiguity at all costs and keep everything tied to specific duties/tasks/outcomes.
Finally, give candidates insight into not just your company, but the people doing the work. Their stories and experiences are tremendously more effective than marketing copy written by legal or a content team.
We're actually working on this exact problem at https://www.Ruutly.com -- converting text-based job descriptions into contextual candidate experiences, above the fold.
edit - formatting