Comment by GekkePrutser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by GekkePrutser | Hacker News Reader

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My experience is totally different. The company I've worked for for the last 20 years has always done the right thing by me. They allowed me to work from my home country for half a year when I needed to be with my family, they paid to move me to yet another country when my team was made redundant so I could do the job I really wanted.

And I really love learning obscure tech :) always have.

Some companies really are better than others. But tbh it's more the people you work for directly that matter. They're the ones with the capability to shield you from the worst crap. That fight for you with HR when your job is on the line. When I look for other teams to move to I always take the management into account too. They may not stick around forever but if you have a good relationship they might bring you with them anyway.

When I do an interview I always ask to see the workplace. Just to get a feel for the place I'll be spending my days. It's usually viewed as a very peculiar request when applying externally but usually granted. I've rejected a job once because the team really looked burned out and literally stuffed in a corner.

Another place I was shown looked amazing and fun. I still work for that company today.

I would like obscure tech if it had a future - like when I thought the company would do the right thing.

I do think some companies are better than others, but I don't think any company is really good. They all lie. My company has a reputation for being great and caring. On paper it's true. For over 90% of people, that might be true. But they don't follow their own policies, screwing over a small percentage. So I think if you don't fall into that small percentage, then you just don't see it.

For example, my company says they don't compare people except for the highest rating. So you have to meet the "standards" (which are poorly defined btw). I know departments in the company where if you gave someone the highest rating, then you have to "pick" someone for a low rating.

I feel like your perspective is very narrow. You’ve had a bad experience at one company that you admit has done well for almost all their employees, therefore all companies are evil and your chance of happiness is zero? That doesn’t seem reasonable or even likely. May I recommend “Feeling Good” by David Burns? It has helped many people in situations like yours.

"therefore all companies are evil"

Not evil, but that they lie and screw over employees. Are there any companies on Glassdoor with 100% positive ratings (with n>100)?

Glassdoor is a terrible metric for measuring companies.

Like any rating system it is biased towards people with grievances, as they are motivated to look for an outlet to express that grievance.

And it's likely thar at least some of those grievances where born out of misconduct by the company. Bringing us back to my position that all companies lie and screw over workers, that the ones that look good just mean you aren't witnessing it.

Find me any situation anywhere in the world where there are no bad actors.

Companies are made up of people, this happens everywhere. You're just describing life. This is not a problem specific to "companies".

Or, on the other hand, I've seen companies offering to enter you into gift card drawings to relate your positive experience with them on glassdoor, etc. :eyeroll: To me, glassdoor and the like are similar to Amazon reviews, you can't trust them, but it sometimes feels like the only way to _possibly_ get the information you're seeking.

Would you ever expect that for anything? There are always going to be disgruntled employees/customers. if I see 100% positive, I'm usually looking for the scam.

I recall thinking that my friend who had decided to gamble on Objective-C as his specialization in '95 was being foolish, because NeXT wasn't doing that well, and the hazard pay for being one of the last N experts was probably fraught.

Less than 2 years later NeXT merges with Apple, and Steve Jobs has begun the biggest comeback in tech history, including switching Apple to Objective-C. Well then...

This sort of thing is a lottery ticket. You likely will not win, but if you do it could just make a couple extra car payments, or you could be set for life.

True, but I don't see Filenet and Neoxam ever getting big.

No, and any framework that your architectural astronaut coworkers created is most definitely not going to ever be used anywhere else you ever work. And in fact the decisions it made may well be counter to industry accepted practices outside of that company.

I have specialized on Pascal, XPath, and causal (Bayesian) networks

I do not know how to make a career out of that :/

Obscure tech is also an opportunity to be one of those rare specialists in a field. A Linux expert still gets rewarded more than a Windows one in a desktop management role, though it's certainly harder to find a job in the first place.

But this is also a personality thing. I prefer being a specialist on something unique over one of many on a big team.

I agree with you that when the obscure tech is simply the wrong one for the scenario, it's bad. If you don't believe in it yourself it's really hard to commit to it. In that case it's probably better to find another position or even another company..

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