
Ask HN: How to hire when your company and Glassdoor reviews are genuinely bad? - hkai
The company I&#x27;m working for right now is genuinely bad. They started 10+ years ago as a small software vendor and they&#x27;ve kept their engineering practices since that time.<p>There is no agile, no source control, no meetings, no discussions about projects, nobody heard of automated code testing.<p>Since we are profitable (because the in-house IT of our clients is even worse), we decided to use that money to branch into an AI startup but they have been unable to hire anyone but one person in the last 6 months.<p>However, we do have trouble hiring developers because 1) Glassdoor reviews are bad 2) compensation is small 3) work is frustrating 4) you don&#x27;t learn anything from colleagues, unless you learn it yourself and push others to follow suit.<p>I am about to leave the company (which was my first developer job) and I want to give advice to the management at my exit interview on what they should be doing to hire the people they want.
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cweagans
> However, we do have trouble hiring developers because 1) Glassdoor reviews
> are bad 2) compensation is small 3) work is frustrating 4) you don't learn
> anything from colleagues, unless you learn it yourself and push others to
> follow suit.

You just identified all of the things you need to fix.

1\. Glassdoor reviews are bad because the company is bad.

2\. People (usually) don't work for the fun of it. Pay your people more.

3\. Figure out where the frustrating things are in a given persons day, fix
them, rinse, and repeat. Maybe start with adding version control and tests.
Those are two big quality of life things that can make things substantially
less frustrating for any developer.

4\. Set up a required lunch and learn or something. Have the company buy
pizza, and have one or two people every week teach the team something new and
how it could make your lives better internally and/or how it could make your
customers' lives easier.

You're not gonna get good engineers for an AI startup if you don't have your
ducks in a row first, IMO. Backburner the AI startup, fix your company first,
then re-evaluate.

All of that said: don't try to give advice in an exit interview. If the
management cared about this stuff, they'd proactively ask about it. Telling
management why their company is bad on the way out the door is a good way to
burn bridges, and while you probably won't ever go back to this company, your
managers might go to other places where you'd want to work.

~~~
archi42
Just to be clear: The first half should be obvious to the asker, and you're
totally right about it. But the real reason I upvoted you is the "All of that
said:" paragraph. That's the real lesson to be learned here.

~~~
cweagans
Sadly, this is a lesson that I learned more directly than I would have liked.
Hopefully OP learns from a helpful HN comment instead. I imagine it's a much
easier path.

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pavel_lishin
> I want to give advice to the management at my exit interview

Your management probably doesn't want to hear any of your advice. You're
welcome to tell them whatever you want, but be cognizant that it'll be about
as effective as going to a confessional, or complaining to your bartender.

You're about to quit. Why are you taking on the task of improving the company
hiring process? Are you out of personal projects to work on? These people are
busy digging their own grave, don't knock the shovels out of their hands,
they'll just hit you with them.

~~~
linuxlizard
> These people are busy digging their own grave, don't knock the shovels out
> of their hands, they'll just hit you with them.

That is just beautiful. Beautiful.

------
gjvc
You owe them nothing. Keep your good advice to yourself. You will not get
anything from them in return.

~~~
logfromblammo
There is nothing you can say at your exit interview that will help them, and
plenty that could hurt you. Just say you saw a better opportunity elsewhere,
and politely decline to elaborate.

This is especially relevant for a company that does not give honest feedback
to interviewees after a no-hire decision.

If the company had a working process for self-improvement, you probably would
not have such a strong desire to be leaving. Once you are gone, the you-shaped
hole in their roster is entirely their problem, not yours. If they really
still need your help, you can charge them for it at consulting rates, and they
might even value it more because it wasn't "free".

------
neffy
I once had an interview with the partner of a major consultancy who did
turnaround kind of work. I had been in your kind of situation, and at the end
of the interview I asked him how this kind of situation was handled.

Without missing a beat, he said "you have to completely replace the senior
management" \- which I thought at the time seemed a bit extreme - but some
number of years and experience later, I fear I now have to completely agree
with.

Management is making the decisions that lead to these situations, they know
it, and for whatever reason - probably money they can´t or won´t fix it.
There´s nothing you can tell them that will change that.

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matfil
_There is no agile, no source control, no meetings_

If you stop there, it really doesn't sound so bad... Is there a way to present
this as an opportunity for reasonably experienced introverts to "own"
something without too many interruptions? Or is there enough incidental stuff
that it doesn't work like that in practice?

(The "no source control" would probably bug me a bit, but presumably not much
stopping someone running their own?)

~~~
toast0
There are a solid group of people who seek out jobs with no agile and no
meetings. No source control is a bit out there, I don't want code reviews, but
I do want to be able to rely on the source code for what's running on prod to
be in the repo within some reasonable time (before it gets to prod is better,
but after is ok too, as long as its consistent).

Edit to add:

> hiring developers because 1) Glassdoor reviews are bad 2) compensation is
> small 3) work is frustrating 4) you don't learn anything from colleagues

Of these, only one is important -- compensation; pay more and people will be
willing to put up with a frustrating work environment. Especially if "no
meetings" means no meetings. (unlike where i currently work where "no meetings
wednesdays" means everybody has room on their schedule on wednesdays, which
means that's where the meetings are scheduled)

~~~
matfil
Precisely.

------
PeterisP
The obvious solution to half of these problems is to bring in good, qualified,
experienced people and give them enough free reign to turn the ship around and
improve the environment.

The way to get such people to join despite the problems is a) be truthful
about the problems before hiring them; b) explicitly hire them for the job of
changing these problems (so, management support for these changes); and c) pay
them a lot of money. There are people who are up for a challenge and mess
cleaning, and they can be hired if the management wants to.

However, from your story it does not appear that the management wants to fix
these issues and is not willing to invest nontrivial effort and money into
such changes. In that case, they won't fix them, and as they're profitable,
they'll stay that way forever or until (if!) more efficient companies start
pushing them out of the market.

------
lewisflude
Why do you think anyone would want to go and work there? One easy way is to
lie, but that's pretty unethical.

If the lack of ability to hire hasn't stopped the companies ability to make
money, is it really a problem (in their eyes)?

~~~
hkai
I think people may want to work there either by accident or because they can't
get hired anywhere else. So there is this good chance that by accident people
of average capability who are not aware of better options will stay there.

Then, the more they stay there, the less marketable they are, so they stay
longer.

I think it is a problem in the management's eyes because they are trying to
hire a new sort of people (startup-minded, not software vendor-minded) but
they are failing at that.

------
jerkstate
Why do you still work there? Lots of companies are hiring. You don't owe them
anything.

~~~
hkai
It's hard. I do feel I owe something.

~~~
maxxxxx
You have to get over that quickly. The company doesn't feel that way.

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caconym_
I don't think it should be a mystery to management why employees hate working
at their company.

Maybe you can help them figure it out by explaining that working at company X
is miserable and enumerating the reasons why, in specific and actionable
detail. Then the HR person who conducted the interview can duly note your
thoughts down and file them away, never to be seen again, as the gravy train
keeps rolling, but you will have honestly done your best.

Congrats on your escape, and best of luck at your new job. Employment is a
business relationship; don't feel like you _owe_ company X anything.

------
LifeQuestioner
Guess Glassdoor is doing it's job.

------
codegeek
Exit interviews in my opinion are stupid. The time to give constructive
feedback is when you are employed with that company. At the time of leaving,
just say goodbye with a smile and move on.

~~~
jiveturkey
Exit interviews are not for the company to learn and grow from your feedback.
It's for them to remind you of your NDA obligations and that they own
everything you worked on. That kind of thing.

So they are not stupid, they are just not for what you think they are for.

~~~
user5994461
If only they were used to remind you of any NDA and not to ask stupid
questions like "if you had a magic wand that could do anything, what would you
change in the company?"

------
randycupertino
My old company which was a horrible place to work run by evil corrupt rich
scumbags. The glassdoor reviews were poor and justified. The owners daughter
started dating someone high up at Glassdoor and bragged to us in a meeting how
she got him to take down the good reviews. Overnight all the bad reviews
disappeared. They also started forcing HR to write 3 fake positive reviews for
every new bad review that came up. So you could try that.

I've since left that place and am a lot happier now, but every once in a while
I check on them and am disappointed to see they still failed yet and their
Glassdoor suppression war still carries on. The biggest tell for a fake HR-
created review is they write, "Keep doing what you are doing!" in the advice
to management section. No actual employee will ever really write that... even
the happiest employee probably still has an opinion about advice to
management.

~~~
sloaken
Throw us a bone, which company?

------
clubm8
Do _not_ give honest frank feedback in your exit interview. Your company is
almost certainly well aware its tech stack is out of date, that compensation
is low, etc. All that will happen is you risk angering your reference. You owe
them nothing.

------
scottlamb
If the existing codebase and development practices are poor, you hire people
who are excited to remake them, and you get rid of existing people who fight
against this. Or you hire/retain only mediocre developers and muddle along
forever with mediocre software. (Which I think is really what many companies
do, though they won't say so.)

If execs don't support fair compensation, hours, benefits, psychological
safety, physical safety (sexual assault is a thing...), and such, you don't
hire. You watch the company burn.

------
tiredwired
They can try rebranding and get a clean Glassdoor profile under the new name.
You don't even need to change the legal company name or move offices. They
will still be a bad company though.

------
electricslpnsld
No Agile and no meetings sounds like a plus, to me!

------
DrNuke
There is not much to say, it seems a no-frill business that stays afloat doing
grunt work, just like the majority of b2b IT ventures out there. Managers are
probably having their perspectives a bit skewed by recent fashionable fields,
something they will not be able to sustain economically.

~~~
hkai
Oh, good point. So just to confirm, it's probably unrealistic for them to
venture into B2C AI business without a competent team and a clear vision?

~~~
PeterisP
Going from B2B to B2C by itself is a major turnaround in company policy, it's
easy to fail (and crash the existing business doing so) even for a very well
run company.

------
jiveturkey
don't waste your breath. they aren't listening. get over your emotional
attachment and move on with a clean break.

also, exit interviews aren't for that. exit interviews are an exercise in
liability control. the company doesn't care about your feedback.

------
lordnacho
Give them the Joel test as something to strive towards. I know not everyone
loves it, but you gotta start somewhere, and if they can't at least implement
some of those items, why have any sympathy?

After all they may have damaged your capacity to get new work.

------
SerLava
Advice to management: Improve. Then your past employees will not communicate
to prospective employees that you have not improved.

Alternative advice to management: Murder everyone who works at Glassdoor?
Murder the next employer review startup that replaces it? Murder the people
who report on the murder?

That's really the two options. I'm serious. Put up a kanban board, or
overthrow the government and install a totalitarian dictatorship.

------
thrill
If they wanted your advice, they'd pay for it - seriously. Find your own
acceptable path, and don't look back.

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brokenmachine
Seriously, you have put in more than 10 years hard labor at a genuinely bad
company where it's frustrating work and you don't get paid enough, and you
actually want to help them?

Ridiculous. Get out of there! Don't let the door hit you on the way out, and
don't look back. You owe them precisely nothing.

------
Jade_Jet
You didn’t specify how many people they are looking for but if it is multiple
people, you could reduce the headcount and double the salary. This makes the
pay more competitive and will attract more engineers.

With that being said I’ve always avoided giving real feedback during an exit
interview to prevent accidental bridge burning.

------
aidenn0
Low compensation with frustrating work and poor colleagues? That seems kind of
obvious what's wrong, no?

As far as things that are easy to do, the two choices would be offer higher
compensation or lie to your recruits.

------
pcglue
Nothing you say in an exit interview can help you in any way, but can only
harm you. The company does not give a damn about you. Just say, "Thanks for
the experience", and leave.

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rajacombinator
As others have said, don’t give advice - they don’t care. If they cared they
would have taken steps to address things by now. Just keep it cordial but
tight lipped.

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maxxxxx
Fix 2), hire a few good people and they will fix the rest if they get left
alone.

------
baq
tell them to compare glassdoor reviews of their company with the competition.

------
ideatostartup
Hi hkai, We can help you hire the best remote developers from India. Contact
details are in profile. Cheers!

------
lkrubner
From the description, the startup where you work is similar to PrivCo:

[https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/PrivCo-
Reviews-E659519.htm](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/PrivCo-
Reviews-E659519.htm)

Except PrivCo encourages its employees to post positive reviews, so PrivCo
maintains a fairly good rank on Glassdoor. You'll notice that all of the
reviews are either 5 stars or 1 stars.

The company that you are currently with could encourage its employees to post
good reviews on Glassdoor. While this may sound dishonest, I think most
companies do this, so you are not being any more dishonest than most other
companies.

I see some comments in this thread on HN where people saying "leave there, go
work somewhere else." But such startups can be interesting turn around
possibilities, especially if you are experienced enough that you can pitch
yourself as a senior level tech consultant who can turn the company around.

That was my experience at PrivCo: I actually had a good time when I was there,
because I was brought in as part of a turn around effort. When I left, a year
later, the place still had problems, but it had improved.

~~~
lkrubner
This comment is getting a lot of upvotes and downvotes. I wonder why? Every
time I check, it's score has gone up or down a bit. Whoever is downvoting it,
can you say which part made you decide to downvote this? I wasn't aware that I
was saying anything controversial.

