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Ask HN: What do you REALLY look for in a new position?

29 points by lamroger ↗ HN
For myself, I realized perks like free food and laundry service are nice to have but are not the reason you stay or move.

Things I'm looking for now are attitudes towards professional and personal growth, contributing towards a meaningful goal, and people I enjoy working with.

What are some thing you're looking for when searching for a new job?

I'm trying to collect a list of questions for companies similar to The Joel Test for software. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html

41 comments

[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 84.0 ms ] thread
chrisbennet
I don't see this mentioned but...I look for happy, non-stressed out interviewers and managers.

I had a nice manager (who was trying get me to work for his company) mention how his hair had turned gray during his last project. I told him "If you're trying to get people to sign up for you diving tour, um, you might not want to show them your shark bites." It wasn't the main reason I passed on that job but it didn't seem like a desirable situation.

bbcbasic
Upvoted for having the balls to say that.
tdb7893
Try to get the interviewer comfortable and realaxed and then just ask them about their job and the position that you are interviewing for. I've found that 90% of the time you can get a pretty decent feel of a company after having a relaxed conversation with a few employees. I've found if you go in with a bunch of canned questions they just answer with canned answers.
borplk
Sadly what I have found is almost anything worth knowing is not possible to know early on.

Curtains fall after 6 months and that's when you know some real info.

Especially true if the company/team is not a large or well known one so you can't read reviews or anything.

Mostly turns into a gamble at that point.

romanovcode
Well, you know some things like your salary and vacation days.
nicomfe
freedom!, not being tide up to a strictly daily schedule 8 to 5, 9 to 6, or whatever, thats bullshit, as long as you meet the goals (and being present in some boring meetings), I always look for the freedom to decide when to get in and off work. Among other stuff of course, but the main one is that.
JSeymourATL
#1) The People - is the team good? Will they elevate your game? And help move the agenda forward?

Having a solid boss, and senior reporting relationships is huge. Here's a good list questions for a potential new boss> http://www.inc.com/alison-green/how-to-interview-your-prospe...

romanovcode
Really? People come and go all the time.
AnimalMuppet
Yes, but culture changes more slowly. If the culture is good, it (probably) won't break because one or two people leave.
jrgifford
Respect. Everyone says "Oh, we respect our team members!", but few do when the rubber meets the road.

I've always insisted on going out to lunch with my potential boss, and watch how they treat the servers. I've never regretted working with the ones who treated everyone with courtesy and politeness. I've regretted working with those who weren't.

ace03150
I've seen this before but on the flip side. There was a CEO that would take candidates out for lunch, and would prior tell the waiter to intentionally mess up the order to see how the candidate would react.
j4_james
This is probably not the kind of answer you were looking for, but for me the number one criteria is location. If it's going to take me 2 hours each way to commute to a job, I'm not even considering it. So I find it frustrating how difficult some companies make it for you to find their office location. I really wish the Hacker News "Who is Hiring" threads had zipcode/postcode as a required field.

And for something like a job board, being able to register my location and have it display approximate commute times for each job listing would be a dream come true.

deckard1
Money. Remote work (freedom). Location.

Equally important, IMO, is what I stay away from:

Ping pong/pool/foosball offices. Free soda offices. Creepy culture cults. Open floorplans.

Basically, all the infantile ways IT companies like to placate younger, naive employees while cargo-culting Google and Facebook. If your office resembles a college dorm, then you probably need to grow up.

bbcbasic
Open floorplans?

I'm yet to see a company that offers your own office for a Engineer position. Exception is one that used to until they scaled up.

I am yet to see a cubicle office plan, everything I have seen is open.

Where I work now it is 10 or so people in a room so being open plan isn't too bad. Previously had 300 open plan that wasn't fun IMO.

toomuchtodo
Remote or bust. There are so many remote gigs now, there's almost no need to take an office gig unless the money is off the charts.
ThePawnBreak
It's very hard to get a remote position if you're not a web developer. I tried, and it feels twice easier to get offers at Google or Facebook than to get a decent remote job.
toomuchtodo
What sort of position are you looking for? I do DevOps and both orgs and recruiters are constantly reaching out.
ThePawnBreak
Any development position that doesn't require me to touch Javascript, HTML or CSS (I hate frontend). I am merely a junior, but I do have 4 internships under my belt (Microsoft, Google) and I would say I am quite decent at programming. I am familiar with both low level software (I wrote some C and x86 asm at Microsoft) and high level software (Python and automation at Google), Linux, operating systems, distributed systems, algorithms and data structures, and most things you would expect a good CS graduate to know about.

I am Romanian, but I would say my English skills are quite good, so communication shouldn't constitute a problem. I applied to about 30 remote positions and didn't get any interviews. I'm going to leave my country soon for this reason (trying to get a job at Google atm).

toomuchtodo
Sorry to hear you're not getting much traction with those remote positions you've applied for. My advice would be to keep trying. Always Be Interviewing; it costs you time, but the reward is enormous. Good luck with Google; if it doesn't work out, here are some resources to use:

https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job

https://remotebase.io/

https://whereverjobs.com/

https://weworkremotely.com

https://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/remote

https://www.wfh.io/

http://jobmote.com/

_RPM
My last internship was a cubicle farm, not open. I had no real collaboration
djb_hackernews
I work for a well known software company and have my own private 120sqft office (4 floor to ceiling walls, door, personal thermostat, etc).

All engineers have their own office. Sometimes they are double offices, most interns have 5ft? tall cubicles.

This isn't so uncommon once you get out of the "startup"/frat house employers.

bbcbasic
Really! Never worked or interviewed for a startup but never seen a place where engineers get their own office. Been working 15 yrs
byebyetech
I could take 10% cut in my salary if they offer me my own office.
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sheepmullet
Money and a core tech/domain I want to learn.

These are unlikely to change and are reasonably transferable.

Perks come and go. Co-workers come and go. Culture changes rapidly. Companies move office locations. Corporate policies change. Etc.

I just got a new boss and he has insisted everyone arrive for 9am stand-up. Goodbye flexible working hours.

The last place I worked had a top of the line coffee machine and free lunch. Unfortunately when the coffee machine broke they replaced it with a cheap pod machine and they switched lunch providers to a (IMO) much worse provider.

Another company I worked for in the past moved office locations and doubled my commute (only 10km further away but it meant I had to take a train and then a bus).

In these cases the company I was working for removed $10-20k/year in benefits without consulting me.

I've never even been approached about taking a $10-20k/year pay cut.

billconan
I want to work for a position that requires domain knowledge (for example, deep learning which is what I'm currently interested in).

Or a job that I can make theoretical breakthroughs and those breakthroughs are connected with industry, can be productized .

I'm sick of solving engineering problems. I'm working on a large code base with lots of people. the difficulty of my job comes from unfamiliarity and complexity. for example, I need to add features to some undocumented code, I have to debug it to understand it. or I need to hack a piece of existing code to add some feature in, because the feature wasn't previously planned in the architecture. these skills I gained via the job enable me to quickly understand complex code, but I don't think it's actual "knowledge".

byebyetech
We software developers are practically knowledge trash cans. The knowledge we acquire decays faster than unrefrigerated meat. If wish I paid attention on my math classes, I would have been doing something cool like Deep learning rather than pull my hair, debug unknown codes and plug apis. The only intellectual stimulation I get is when I am preparing for technical interviews.
sotojuan
Heh, I feel like this sometimes. Unfortunately math also bores me :/ I've tried many times.
codeonfire
Is the company making enough money to pay me at my experience level but not so much that it is runaway money politics. Are there lots of inexperienced people at the company that just want to be in charge. The scene in There Will Be Blood when Plainview has to walk out of the town meeting and walk away from the oil because of the chaos describes it. Lets find something reasonably profitable that the power hungry noobs and politicians will stay away from.
sbank
Autonomy over my work and how I solve problems. Not having to deal with the customer directly or provide support. Few meetings and business waste. Quiet working conditions with few interruptions.
navyad
For new position, Whatever technology it is you will learn on the go But I look forward to work with smart peoples to learn from them. I look for flexible hours, foosball games, lunch or dinner outing. And most importantly open and transparent environment which helps professionally and personally .
AnimalMuppet
I look for a balance of several things:

Money. My life is kind of expensive right now (kids in high school and college), and I really need money.

But I also need time. I can't give you 80 hours a week for very many weeks. I've got a life outside of work.

And when I am at work, I don't have time in my life for people with toxic personalities, or for a ton of political BS. I expect people to be grownups at work; I've got enough teenagers at home.

marmot777
Opportunities to learn and grow. Stagnation is the worst. If you've been there you know what I mean.
thecupisblue
Not in any specific order. If a company offers me one more of these than the current one, I'll jump.

0. Ability to influence

I don't want to work somewhere where I'm just a gear without a say. I'm a developer that loves exploring, tinkering, learning. If I find something that I think could make us work faster, better, more efficient, I want to be able to suggest it and it having a chance to become a part of our process. But, I'm also someone who loves exploring design and UX topics, business, marketing (and especially platforms I as a 23 yr old use and approaches older people usually don't see). I want to be able to have a sitdown with the design team and say "hey, I think this doesn't work, what do you think?" or with marketers "hey, why don't we make deals with influencers in this niche and have them shout us out?"

1. Flexibility in time/location

I don't want to stand on point for 8 hours on a chair so someone thinks I'm productive. I've been doing more and more travel and talking and I want to say "Hey, I've been invited to be at this panel at this time and place, I'll be out of the office" or go home after 6 hours of work because I'm having a lousy day in the IDE.

2. Ability to learn, teach and promote myself.

I want to learn from my team, with my team, teach my team. I want to be able to go to conferences and have the company pay for some of them, I want to write blog posts on the company blog, write a library out of something we use.

3. Ability to hire.

If I know a developer that's awesome and want to hire him, I don't want to go through a ton of red-tape and have him go through whiteboard interviews and HR bullshit.

4. Work on interesting problems

I don't want to write the same thing and fix the same bugs for the rest of my life, that's why I prefer startups over corps and agencies.

5. Equipment of choice and software.

Yes, I want that new Macbook Pro that's gonna come out in a month. I want the new Nexus, Note 7 when it stops blowing up, new iPhone 7 or whatever is your weapon of choice. Not being able to get it is like not buying your mechanic new tools because "hey this wrench is okay, kinda used up and could break but fuck it".

6. Being a part of the team and doing team stuff

I want to have lunches with my team, go drinking, skateboarding, diving, travelling, team-building. The more expensive the less it needs to occur, but a team building once a year on some new location should be a thing.

7. Perks

Gym, free lunch, great coffee, beer in the fridge, games to play during relaxation time.

8. Compensation and ability to earn more.

If I'm bringing consistent value to the team, you're able to grab new talent because of me, I improve your processes and workflows, of course I will go elsewhere if I can earn more there. Stay in the competition by bumping my salary.

9. Transparency

I want to know what's going on in our company, especially if you put me in a leadership position. If I'm required to shelter my team from the storm of shit, I wanna know if I should carry an umbrella with me that day.

10. Pride

I want to be proud of the product I build, of the company I work for, of the team I am part of. All of the above contributes to that.