Ask HN: What are you looking for when considering applying for a job? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are you looking for when considering applying for a job?

5 pointsalexgotoi10 comments

I am wondering what others are looking for when discovering a job at a company and doing their research about it:

I'll write my own list here - company culture - salary range - recruitment process (how many interviews, how long it takes...) - glassdoor reviews

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Compensation, prestige, tech stack, culture - in no particular order.

Excelling in one could make up for lacking a little in another. i.e. I'd be willing to take a small pay cut to work for a highly prestigious company (though odds almost guaranteed they'd offer more than what I'm making now).

Backwards culture (highly bureacratic, strict dress codes, being a non-tech company where tech is a costcenter) would have to be compensated for by exceptionally high monetary compensation.

In fact, I'm pretty much ruling out any non-tech company for my next role, unless compensation is absolutely exceptional.

I'm open to most tech stacks, with the exception of .NET and Angular which I'd prefer to avoid. Would still consider a .NET or Angular job if compensation is beyond astronomical. This ties in with the culture aspect - .NET typically implies a certain kind of culture. I don't have anything specific against .NET from a technical standpoint.

> prestige?

I fervently avoid prestige. Why? In my experience it tends to attract the self sacrificing over achiever types that make the workplace a ego battlefield. In addition the strong competition can drive down wages and benefits.

That said it feels great to be able to mention to people I meet the popular projects I've worked on and have them not only recognize it, but appreciate it.

But, it's not worth it to me, in the long run, at this point in my career.

Different strokes for different folks, but interesting you mention that about wages and benefits. Aren't the most "prestigious" companies the ones that also pay the best? FAANG being the classic example, but other famous and well known companies in the SV tech sector and some niches of finance also tend to pay far better than most companies that aren't well known.

The one example I can think of that might be otherwise is the game industry.

On your second point, other than just feeling great, having worked at "prestigious" companies and/or projects also opens doors to future opportunities. I guess that sort of falls under recognition and appreciation.

The most prestigious might be FAANG + Microsoft. The highest paying seem to also be recently IPOed "startups": Pinterest, Lyft, Snap, Stripe, LinkedIn. [1]. Google has been known to undercut unless they're matching the pay of another company; there are multiple comments on HN of people who took a low salary from Google for the name so they could jump to a better job. And it seems that Oracle pays some of the lowest salaries outside America, though it seems they have a lot of benefits.

I do agree that opens more opportunities later. It's like graduating ivy league, everyone will pay top tier salaries if it's on your resume.

1: https://www.levels.fyi/2019/

I would say even with undercutting, Google is still likely to significantly pay more than the greater majority of companies out there, especially outside the tech sector.

I work as a senior SWE equivalent at a non-tech company. Pretty much any mid tier tech company is likely to pay me significantly more without any negotiating at all. Junior engineers at the top tier companies probably make close to what I make as a senior (if not more).

> game industry.

yup, visual effects, same thing

Top concern is how productive I can be. I really just want to spend my life building things that people use. Project management is also a major concern. Scrum is harmful more than helpful in many companies. Some have some kind of waterfall disguised as agile, and ironically the company I'm in has agile disguised as waterfall.

I've worked on a project that spent 70% of their R&D trying to do a page flipping animation for PDF only to realize a minute later that it was a bad idea. I want to avoid ever wasting my time on something that pointless.

Culture should support building and selling things the user wants. It's not to show off how awesome the CEO is, nor appeasing one investor after another. I dislike team building activities and extensive vacation. Ideally let me work when I want - first thing in the morning, from home, with a siesta, and log off when I'm tired. Work life balance should be taken into account; I'll score paternity and maternity leave very highly, as well as any benefits for depressed/handicapped employees, even if I don't intend to take any of these.

Recruitment process: They have to respect me and my time. Interviews in other cities are compensated for travel. Response is quick. They notify you of the process if it's more than one interview. It's not for ego or anything, but companies that don't respect you also tend to exploit you and pay as little as possible.

Glassdoor reviews matter; I check for all these, and things like sexual harassment, but otherwise criticism doesn't really matter.

I want to know what I'll be doing, the sort of problems I'll been working on, etc.

What I absolutely cannot stand is job descriptions that are just a complete drab HR keyword dump listing every technology you might potentially see tangentially related to your day to day work. I can't stand see overly vague descriptions of what I'll be working either.

I mentally filter out companies that are obviously spam agencies that all seem repost from the same pool of jobs. Unfortunately job boards seem littered with that crap.

I'll try to scour the internet to get a little bit of info the things you mentioned, Glassboro seems fine for that, and if thr company is well known enough, I'll try things like reddit.

Salary and the recruitment process are an obvious, I look into other things as well like culture, tech, what the product is or the level of bureaucracy but I take everything with a grain of salt- reviews have a lot of bias in them for good and bad, and at the end what matters is your team and direct manager (and possibly skip manager in big companies).

I have worked at MS and the difference between teams, sites, projects and managers is huge.

Culture & personal freedoms would be the most important part for me and the one almost all recruiter requests fail to communicate in any meaningful way. Pay & tech are next. If culture is fine i am confindent that the recruitment process won't be too horrible.

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