
Assessing a startup’s culture before joining - prostoalex
https://thinkgrowth.org/strategies-for-assessing-startup-culture-before-joining-7afbc7dfc5ba?_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9FM7vOw_9U7cpP7J9edFXDMMD-RXYvXHhfKbRKscg5EWYuf8ToK_yPA4iUw3QBGVokzuGbIGeKNVkyUbKFsexiihL6dQ&_hsmi=60533979
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montrose
Some other questions that seem to have been omitted from this list:

1\. Is there an atmosphere of energy?

2\. Is the company bureaucratic?

3\. Does the company do good work?

4\. Are the people good at what they do?

5\. Are they happy?

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CSMastermind
This is a garbage article.

If you actually want to evaluate a startup's culture this is what I'd
recommend:

1\. Do they respect your time during the interview process?

If they give you a 'take-home assignment', an automated coding exercise, or a
written test that's a huge red flag. Why? Because there's an asymmetry of
effort. When you're interviewing with a software developer the company is
devoting the same resources to your interview that you are. If they don't
respect your time _before_ they hire then there's no way they will after they
hire you.

On the same token, I've seen some companies do interviews where they require
devs to come onsite and actually work with the team on a real project for an
entire day. To me, that goes too far in the other direction towards not
respecting my time.

2\. Do they have competent leadership?

Insist on speaking to someone in a leadership position as part of your
interview process (C level, director of engineering, etc). Do they have a deep
understanding of their position? What was their background before they took
this job? Are they a leader or just a manager?

3\. How does the company evaluate performance?

Both yours and their own. If they can't give you a concise and well-defined
answer avoid them like the plague.

~~~
zimpenfish
> 1\. Do they respect your time during the interview process?

This is an A+ point (but I'd apply it to all companies, not just startups.)

> 2\. Do they have competent leadership?

How can you tell that from a brief conversation when corporate headhunters and
boards frequently spend days talking to potential leaders and still manage to
hire incompetent boobheads?

~~~
CSMastermind
It can be difficult to identify a competent leader as you pointed out. Here
are some of the things I've learned to look for:

1\. They don't tell they show.

 _CEO 1_ told me his company has a culture of honesty and transparency.

 _CEO 2_ told me, "This is an ambitious project. We've only got 18 months left
of runway if we keep hiring at the rate we need to in order to get the product
to market. We're confident that if we launch this year we'll be profitable
enough to get further investment. It's high risk and high reward but I'm in
the same boat you will be. If this doesn't work I'll be looking for a job too.
I wouldn't be here if I didn't think we could do it."

CEO number 1 told me they were honest, CEO number 2 showed me.

And it's not just telling the truth, any statement they make about their
company you should think about afterward and ask yourself what they did to
demonstrate that statement.

2\. Honesty deserves its own point.

When I interviewed at an internal startup of a Fortune 100 company the CTO
told me, "The technology we're building is going to replace a lot of people at
<parent company>. That means we have to be very careful about what we say and
how we release things. I do my best to shield this team for the corporate
politics above us but sometimes it slips through. They do pay the bills after
all."

Every company has its benefits and drawbacks. It can be a legacy system that's
difficult to work with, an industry that's heavily regulated, a bureaucratic
organization, a codebase written by contractors, a talent shortage, or
something else. They're hiring you to solve a problem. If they don't tell you
what that problem is and the difficulty you'll face overcoming it then you
should be highly skeptical.

If the job seems too good to be true it probably is.

3\. They know where they add value and their limitations.

"How did I get my job? Basically, I was friends with the co-founder. Before
this, I did market research at <large tech company>. I don't know enough about
software development to build a tech org. That's what I want to hire you to
do." \- How one CEO started a conversation with me.

If you ever talk to an executive that thinks they're smarter than everyone
else run like hell. Likewise ask what their day normally consists of
(seriously, you'd be surprised by most answers).

The mentality that you want is that of a team. Everyone has their role to play
and everyone they hired is a critical piece. I've found this also comes with a
'whatever it takes, just get things done mentality'. I've seen CTOs who
personally refilled the office snack collection for months until they could
hire an office manager.

4\. They understand what skills are and are not transferable.

Ask them how they hire their managers and product owners. Look through the
backgrounds of every executive at the company.

Equifax's Chief Information Security Office spent her entire career managing
call centers. She had no background in either technology or security.

You might be tempted to say, 'so what management is a skill of its own.' True.
But it's not a sufficient skill in and of itself. Hiring a manager for their
management skills alone or a product owner just because of their experience
being a product owner is like hiring a teacher just based on their experience
teaching. Sure there are transferable skills every teacher has but you can't
just throw that German History professor into a Nuclear Physics course and be
like 'what it's all teaching'.

If there are any non-technical managers in charge of a technical worker's hard
pass on the company. If any of the executives don't have a background in their
field, hard pass. If they have product owners who are non-technical and have
no background in the company's industry then get the fuck out.

5\. Differentiate between managers and leaders.

Management and leadership are completely different skills. You want the
latter.

Listen to how they tell the story of their company. Are they the center of
attention or do they spend their time praising others? Ask how many people
have left the company and why. Ask the lower level employees you interview
with a question and see if the executive's answers match. Ask any technical
manager when the last time they wrote a line of source code was.

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ihsw2
> 1\. How is bias handled?

What did they mean by this?

It deserved mentioning and it took up a couple paragraphs but at no point was
it ever made clear what exactly needs to be mitigated or handled, other than
vague statements about how it is undesirable in a start-up.

~~~
tomalpha
The bias bit comes across (to me) similarly to the rest of the piece and seems
to boil down to: ask questions and make observations to make sure that it’s
the right fit for you.

That is to say there isn’t necessarily a single right answer but there’s
probably a right answer _for you_. Not that there aren’t plenty of pretty
universally wrong answers too...

~~~
ihsw2
Well, after giving it some thought, it seemed the author was trying to
encourage awareness of emotional decision making.

Being too attached to a product that has no business model, for example, and
deluding yourself into thinking "I just have to explain it the right way and
people will love it!"

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avip
I wish we had less of these empty PR pieces lending on HN frontpage.

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tomalpha
There’s nothing in here that’s specific to startups IMHO though that doesn’t
mean it’s bad advice. As others have mentioned it doesn’t feel like a complete
list of stuff.

Just to pick one I really do connect with: I’ve always paid a lot of attention
to how employees treat their kitchen and also toilets. I had an eye opening
experience in between interviews on the trading floor of a certain large
investment bank that scared me off them (way back when).

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qaq
A somewhat unpc question do people really consider those 4 questions the most
important criteria ?

~~~
ihsw2
I don't think so, this is basically a fluff piece about identity politics.

There isn't any mentioning of basic things like:

* salary/equity rationing policies

* work-life balance and when/where crunch time is necessary

* growth/expansion planning (ie: from whom are the ideas coming from, from where are quantitative traction measurements coming from) and investment expectations (eg: business connections, networking, etc)

* how management is handling product hiccups (eg: pivoting), turn-over (eg: burn-out/mental health), public image blunders (eg: Uber-level PR nightmares with massive loss of face)

* communication channels between executive/non-executive decision making groups (ie: company direction transparency)

* mentoring and on-boarding new team members

* company's relationship with the tech community (eg: open-source contributions, meet-up hosting)

~~~
cholantesh
>this is basically a fluff piece about identity politics.

What does asking "What do departures look like?" have to do with identity
politics?

Or encouraging readers to view Glassdoor reviews, speak to employees,
observing the pride employees take in their working environment, or assessing
the leadership of the org, for that matter?

The amount of defensiveness three sentences about diversity can draw out of
people blows my mind a little bit.

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bvm
I may be being dumb here, but what does bias refer to in the first point? Is
it a social thing, or does it refer to being dogmatically biased towards
certain frameworks/methodologies? Perhaps both.

