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Comment by iamdave | Hacker News Reader

Whether or not a company encourages burn out probably has nothing to do with whether or not they put this or that boilerplate on their job ads.

Interesting you put it that way, since I've learned to be on the lookout for boilerplate in job ads as a personal filter. Usually I've figured this out by just copying and pasting select texts from their ad into Google and seeing how many other job ads from different companies for similar (and in a few cases wholly different) roles.

You say "spiting yourself" I call it doing due diligence because you can best bet those companies are gonna be scrutinizing the hell out of whatever resume I give them, turnabout is only fair.

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If the wording of a job ad determines whether you want the job or not, then you're doing it wrong. Here's the process I follow when looking for a job:

1. Choose a company that does something interesting and meaningful.

2. Try to understand what they are looking for, and if that's really what you want to do for 8+ hours every day.

3. Put everything on your resume that will maximize your chance to get the interview. This has nothing to do with your actual experience. Remember that you only need to be better than the rest of applicants, and usually it's not hard if you're good.

4. During the interview, evaluate the people. This is the most important step. These are the people who you will spent more time with than with your spouse, so choose carefully.

You can't get any idea about those people from the job ad, because they might not have even seen that ad. And even if they wrote it, phrases like "passion for what you do" mean different things for different people. Ultimately, yes, you should be somewhat passionate about what you do. If you're not, go to step 1.

then you're doing it wrong

What's right and what's wrong in this case here? I'm gainfully employed now, at a company I actually have come to really enjoy working for, making arguably the most I ever have in my career so far.

The method worked for me, doesn't mean it's universal, also doesn't mean this success can be directly and completely attributed to screening out copy/pasted job ads (nor any of the other criteria I look for in a potential employer). Only that I have a method that I've stuck to for deciding who I want to work for, and haven't found much of a reason to change it. Personal financial and professional goals are being met, and supported by my employer.

It works for me, if your system helps you succeed as a job seeker, more power to you-but if people here have systems that are working for them and getting the outcomes they're looking for in a career, I don't know if we should be so eager to tell these individuals they're "wrong".

The difference between your method and mine is that you arbitrarily reduce the pool of potentially great jobs available to you. If that pool is large, then sure, keep filtering. You can also close your eyes and pick one from the list without looking at the job ad at all, I bet you will have similar success rate.

Well sure, if you want to get into the weeds of actively measuring what success looks like across different methods of screening out potential employees then that conversation can break down to the atomic level. A part of me feels like the number of people who do this as a conscious and deliberate part of their job hunt is going to be smaller than those who don't.

And that's perfectly fine, for both parties.

I'm deliberately trying to stay as high above ground here and proffer that individual choices kind of matter here, and taking the broadly utilitarian viewpoint of: if the way you look for jobs results in you getting the kinds of jobs you want and opportunities you're looking for-not to mention satisfies the financial goals you have for yourself, great.

That's where it begins and ends for me personally.

By adding extra steps you are also greatly limiting the openings you consider. Any large company will have good and terrible teams, overall culture has far less impact than you might think.

But, critically you can only go to so many interviews. Thus missing out on a few openings is just not a big deal.

The company in general doing something interesting does not imply I will get interesting position. And overall boring product does not imply I will have boring position either.

Mine position is going to be different then position of other people in same company, so it makes a lot of sense to evaluate things that signal what my specific position is going to be about.

I call it spiting yourself precisely because I don't think you can forecast the behavior of the modal company from that line being on its job ads. That you cannot, in fact, "best bet" anything about them based on that line is exactly why I think you're doing a disservice to yourself by avoiding them.

It's just generic filler. That makes for a very arbitrary filter when you're choosing which companies to avoid.

Sure but this can be said about nearly any aspect of evaluating who you want to work for, hindsight will always be 20/20 once you sign the offer agreement.

I'm sure most if not all of us have taken jobs where all the things on our personal checklists were checked off in the interview only to discover the place didn't live up to expectations and certainly probably the opposite has happened.

What may be arbitrary for some might be the difference between accepting or declining a job offer for others. At the end of the day the only person who knows if what they see in a job interview matches what they're looking for in a workplace is that individual, and no one else.

No, it cannot be said for nearly any aspect of evaluating who you want to work for.

You are giving up on companies based on a generic line in job offers, which is fairly standard recruiter/PR speak. It's like quitting a book after reading 5 sentences, or judging a full course meal based on the first appetizer.

You cannot accurately extrapolate from that one sentence.

You simply cannot have any idea of what the company culture or expectations are until you speak with someone related to the position you'd be working in. At that point you can begin to paint a fairly accurate picture of the company–doing that from one sentence in an ad is completely guessing. It's a night and day difference.

What recruiters regurgitate into an ad is often completely different than what the people you interview with show.

You really are doing yourself a disservice by being judgemental and automatically rejecting a position that has one sentence in an advertisement that is not written by people you'd actually be working with. The fact that you succeeded doesn't matter, because all you did was reduce potential opportunities. You succeeded -in spite of- arbitrarily choosing to limit your opportunities.

The fact that you succeeded doesn't matter

You don't get to determine that for someone. It is not my nor your, nor anyone else's place to tell someone what matters to them as an individual in their career goals or decisions.

It's fair to assess a choice as one you perhaps would or wouldnt take because your situations or living requirements may be different but one does not have any right or any authority telling someone what matters to them or why they are right or wrong for making decisions they feel are in their own best personal interests.

Especially if that individual is satisfied with the outcome and has found it beneficial for their career goals.

I don't think there's much that's going to change my mind on this.

While this can depend heavily on the size of the company, unless you're exclusively looking for jobs at companies with <30 employees, you're not filtering for company values, you're filtering for specific individuals in the HR department. You might well be applying to horrible company that just happened to have a particularly spirited and considerate HR employee draft that particular ad on that particular day.

I still think this is a counter-productive rule of thumb.

Companies are made up of a constantly changing pool of individuals. People leave, new people are hired. Even if a company has a policy of not including that boilerplate in their job advertisements, there's a solid chance that they will hire a new recruiter at some point who doesn't know about that policy and falls back on what they used at their last company.

If you rule companies out based on boilerplate in job ads, you risk missing a great opportunity because that company hired a new recruiter and hadn't yet got them up-to-speed on their in-house standards for job ads.

> you can best bet those companies are gonna be scrutinizing the hell out of whatever resume I give them

Trust me, nobody does that. Resumes are quickly skimmed by 97% of people who gets them.

You are projecting your own competent and careful mindset onto them. Almost all companies, "passion for your job" included, give only a cursory look at resumes. It's a culture signal, not an actual requirement.

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