As a senior engineer with a good job who has been in this industry for a while, here's what really matters for me when I look at new jobs:
- Does your company allow WFH schedules to everyone? There's debate about full remote vs full onsite, I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about working within driving distance, but having a 3-2 or 4-1 weekly schedule of onsite vs WFH. There's really no excuse to not offer this at this point in communication technology. Some excuse like "more collaboration" doesn't apply if everyone is still going to the office regularly. And this has to be allowed for everyone, not just special exceptions for a few. It must be a culture where everyone is WFH regularly.
- Will I have to write code on a whiteboard? If yes, then goodbye. Even a chromebook with a html page that has nothing but a <textarea> element is better than a whiteboard for writing code. Will I have to study leetcode for weeks to pass your interviews? Then also goodbye, I don't have time for that and it's a stupid way to do interviews. A fizz buzz type question to just see if someone can write any code, that's ok. Leetcode stuff is not ok. Take-home test? It better be really short or also goodbye.
- Compensation, it's actually ok if you're not at FANG level, few companies can be. The other things like offering regular WFH schedules are very valuable and this is how non-FANG companies should compete. But it needs to be still a reasonable amount of compensation. Guidelines are really difficult here due to so many factors such as cost of living. But I know a bad offer when I see one so don't try to trick me.
- Well defined on-call process that doesn't burn out engineers.
- Minimum of 4 weeks vacation. If it's less to start, you better have a schedule that increases that quickly (not some 1 week for every 5 years bullshit). And if you're doing no vacation (AKA "unlimited vacation"), you better have something really convincing that shows people do take long vacations in your office. Like an official policy to encourage this.
I don't care about free lunch, video game consoles in the office, all that silicon valley "perks". Tell me about the stuff that really matters.