
Ask HN: Tools or sites you use to scope out a workplace before taking a job? - bwb
I&#x27;d love to know what everyone is doing to scope out a workplace before they take a job there.<p>Do you email people who work there?<p>Do you just jump in and hope for the best?<p>Are there apps or sites you like?
======
motohagiography
Crunchbase to get current and former founders/execs, last rounds etc. Company
website for investor relations page if exists, SEC and regulatory filings to
get financials, technology roadmaps, prospectuses, etc. Then avoid pinging
anyone on linkedin other than to find who the core informal network that runs
the company is.

Find out:

1\. Revenue and runway before next funding round or profitability. This trumps
all in product decisions. Long runway means they can invest in new platforms
and techs with bet on huge growth. Short runway means getting prestige brands
into the sales pipeline to woo next investment round, and leveraging technical
debt to survive. Would argue tech debt burden can be estimated as a function
of remaining runway.

2\. Whether board members and executives still have skin in the game and
holding their stock. If board is full of early shareholders who have already
been made whole, chances are you aren't their next unicorn, there is no
explosive growth, and they've checked out. Expect executive level bullshit
politics related to their short term compensation milestones.

3\. Informal network: Who went to school with/worked with whom, and whether
this role will-be / needs-to-be in that fold, or out of it. If you are not in
the fold, you are a dilution target, and someones tool for meeting executive
compensation milestones before changing the world. Do the work and take the
money, but keep your dreams in check.

IMHO, these factors are what determine the company culture.

If the company is private, check out the other companies in the lead VCs
portfolio web pages and what kinds of cultures those companies have. People
move between them and you can get a better data set for glassdoor searches. If
the other companies suck, this one probably will too.

What makes a company a great place to work is its real opportunity for growth
because that means people are growing with it, and that brings them into work
everyday. This creates a trajectory that defines its culture.

Good luck.

~~~
kelvin0
Is this advice for employees? Or VC's? I've NEVER had to do this for any of
the jobs in my 20+ years as a software developer ... but there are some
interesting points indeed.

~~~
itake
What is the difference? Employees invest their time and careers into a
company. For career growth, it is much better if your company is also growing.
Grow or Die.

~~~
jamaicahest
The difference is that for a lot of people, a job is just a way to pay the
bills and for them, it matters very little what a potential employer's future
plans are, beyond knowing that they will still have a job in a year.

------
lynnetye
If you're a software engineer (or will work closely w/ engineers), I built Key
Values ([https://www.keyvalues.com](https://www.keyvalues.com)) to help w/
this.

Before building KV though, my research process included looking for and
reading:

\- the company's career and about us pages

\- an active blog w/ recent posts (w/in the last 2 months)

\- LinkedIn / Twitter / GitHub of founders and existing team members (I'd also
look for any old blogs written by (or press written about) these folks
_before_ they joined the company)

\- checking to see if the company hosts meetups or hackathons I can attend

\- seeing if I know anyone who currently works there or worked there before
and then reaching out

\- cold emailing or Tweeting current team members

~~~
OJFord
Nice idea, but I'm very confused what I'm doing or how it works - it starts
with non-zero matches, and then for each thing I click it _increases_ the
number of matches...

I'd expect it to start large, and then filter down with more things selected.
But it's not even like it's acting the other way, including only companies
that match at least one thing I clicked, because it started non-zero.

~~~
lynnetye
I'm using OR logic until I have enough companies for AND logic to provide a
good user experience. I'm looking forward for that day to come, too, trust me!

If you select multiple values, the results will be ordered by number of
matches and prioritize the companies who ranked those values highest.

~~~
OJFord
OR is fine (hopefully the sort order is by most matches first though?) -
what's confusing to me is that it starts on a non-zero number. Is that the
number of companies that don't match anything? Is there any value in listing
them at all, if that's the case?

~~~
lynnetye
Highest number of matches and the ranking of those matches. For example, if
you select values A and B, a company that lists A as #1 and B as #2 will show
up before a company that lists A as #7 and B as #8.

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by it starting on a non-zero
number. Perhaps you have one of the tags selected?

------
Rooster61
Used to use Glassdoor, but it has become progressively more rude/pay-walled
over the years, and they allow more paid employer astroturfing than they used
to.

I suppose that's just a sign of the times, and I don't necessarily have a
grudge against the company for doing so. It does however mean that the site is
no longer useful to this end, at least for me.

As for directly contacting a company, I tend not to. Sometimes this works out,
other times not. I thought I would hate my current job and thought I was quite
unqualified, but it turned out to be pretty fantastic. Just going with the
flow sometimes works out that way.

~~~
devrod
It seems pretty obvious that something is off when a company has 50/50 good
and bad reviews, with the bad ones offering a ton of detail, and the good ones
way too positive and overly "corporate" with no detail.

~~~
khyryk
Yep, the fastest way to spot a fake positive review is to notice those seem to
be written from the perspective of HR, focusing on things like "fast growth"
and "lots of opportunities" that are of little to no concern for the typical
person, especially if they're listed as the sole positives. A typical dev is
less concerned with the growth rate of the company and how many offices are
opening in places thousands of miles away -- they're more concerned about
their local delivery team, their local office, etc.

------
ddebernardy
> Do you email people who work there?

No. They'll rarely tell you anything useful because they'd risk their job.

Focus on former employees instead if you really must. (And only stick to
recent ones if you do, because companies change.) But IMHO you don't actually
need to do this nowadays.

> Do you just jump in and hope for the best?

Absolutely not.

At the very least check out their website, their execs, and your future boss.
Google whoever you think is relevant and check their respective LinkedIn
profiles, blogs, social media, etc.

Even more importantly, pay attention to any hints of company culture or
technical red flags during interviews. Ask soft questions as you run into them
to keep the interview process flowing; and dig deeper when you're in the
negotiation phase.

> Are there apps or sites you like?

Glassdoor was interesting in the past. It still is, but there's a strong
sampling bias and a lot of astroturfing. IMHO it's mostly useful to check for
recurring, obvious red flags. YMMV.

CrunchBase is sort of useful to get funding data -- when it's accurate. (IMHO
you're better off asking this type of data point blank during the interviews.)
The important bit here is how they'll approach things like risk taking and
technical debt, as already noted in an excellent sibling answer.

AngelList and LinkedIn are useful to get a feel of who the execs and your
future boss are. Personally I wouldn't touch a company whose exec team is all
20-somethings with a 10-foot poll. Some youngsters are brilliant but I'd
rather see a few adults in the room too. But that's just me...

Google is the most useful tool overall. You'll sometimes be surprised by what
comes up when you google some exec's name and go through a few results pages
or their social media accounts.

\---

Last point: don't underestimate the value of this research. If you're going to
move to some new location and/or change jobs thinking you're going to stay
there for more than a few months, take an afternoon to do this research to
avoid getting ugly surprises.

~~~
souprock
I think there is some sort of anti-astroturfing on glassdoor. The salary that
they have for us is absurd. It's something like the starting pay at In-N-Out
or Chick-Fil-A, for an experienced and specialized software job.

I wonder where that comes from. Perhaps it is from Glassdoor itself, trying to
force companies to enter into some sort of business arrangement to correct the
nonsense. Perhaps competitors are trying to make us look awful. I'd like to
think that the culprit overplayed their hand, and that everybody will
disregard the nonsense, but probably some people believe it.

------
itamarst
You can (sometimes) use GitHub to figure out if the company has bad work/life
balance, e.g. if you see lots of employees committing code on the weekend on
the same dates: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2019/01/31/does-company-have-
wo...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2019/01/31/does-company-have-worklife-
balance/)

~~~
bauerd
You'd just end up mistaking commits to my private repositories for work. Also,
private contributions have to be enabled in order to show up there.

~~~
abhishekjha
Isn’t it a bad idea to use the same account for work as well as personal
projects?

Currently I have a separate ‘home’ account for personal projects and I never
touch the work ID from my home.

~~~
morpheuskafka
That's the whole idea of Github Teams. You just add/remove users to teams and
subteams as an organization Owner, and you never get access to anything else
on their account or even see their private repos or other organizational
memberships.

~~~
amarshall
Except that one is still likely using a company-owned laptop/desktop to access
that account. Any data or activity on company hardware (such as private keys
or cookies) should be considered visible by them as there’s likely to be
remote management software, an IT admin account, encryption key escrow, etc.
The legal precedent (in the U.S., anyway) gives an employee no expectation of
privacy on a company computer or network.

~~~
morpheuskafka
It would still be a CFAA violation for the employer to use those keys to act
as the employee against a third-party serivce like Github. So the employee
might not be able to object to them seeing that, but they would have no right
to use them to access the employee's account on a remote server. Just like if
they found a check on your desk they can look at the numbers, but they can't
just use them to take money out.

Also, you could and probably should create a new SSH key on the company laptop
or a personal access token for HTTPS access so that it can be easily revoked
when you leave.

------
galazzah
[https://levels.fyi](https://levels.fyi) to make sure the level/comp
accurately represents what i'm looking for

~~~
whalesalad
This is absolutely fascinating. I don't know how folks are earing this kind of
cash when you can go to a recruiter, with more than decade of hands-on startup
experience, and when you want more than 200k a year they look at you like you
just kicked their cat.

Then you see someone at a place like Lyft with four years of real world
experience and one year with the company pulling 300-400k a year without
breaking a sweat. And now they’re about to jump onto the IPO rocket ship. I
want to clarify that I’m not jealous of these people: it’s great. I just gotta
stop and ask myself sometimes what the fuck I’m doing wrong.

Then again this is crowdsourced and might be a load of shit.

~~~
titanomachy
If you're serious: get a job at a well-known tech company. You might have to
move for this unless you're already in a top-tier tech city (NYC, SF, and
Seattle, definitely qualify; maybe Zurich, London, Toronto, and Sydney). Work
there for two years. Move to a better tech company. You are now worth
$300-400k per year.

If you're not already considered top-tier talent, I think Amazon is the
easiest way into this right now. They are hiring at an incredible rate, and
their engineers are generally considered good hires by Google, Facebook, etc.
The lifestyle and working environment is generally considered acceptable if
not exemplary.

Also, invest some time to become an expert at technical interviews. They are
somewhat orthogonal to everything else that we do, but they are a near-
universal shibboleth at top companies and it doesn't take _that_ much time to
get good at them. Most of the questions fall into a few broad categories that
you can learn to recognize with practice.

This worked for me. YMMV. The key was relaxing the requirement that I stay in
my childhood city, although luckily I only had to move a couple hours away.

~~~
balfirevic
> You are now worth $300-400k per year.

Are you sure this number still applies if you're outside of US (London,
Toronto, Sydney)? My understanding is that numbers in Europe are nothing like
those in the US.

~~~
thundergolfer
It doesn't apply to Sydney for sure.

I make $50k-100k AUD less in Sydney compared to Bay Area, with all the same
HCOL problems.

A very, very good new grad total comp figure in Sydney is say, $150k AUD.
That's $106K in USD, which is less than the _salary_ for a new grad at Google
or Facebook in the Bay Area. Throw in RSUs, signing bonus, and performance
bonuses, and a new grad is making $50-100k AUD more.

~~~
jacques_chester
The quirk here is that due to the E3 visa, it's about as easy to hire
Australians to work in the US as it is to hire them to work in Australia. So
why pay more for folks who stay at home?

~~~
thundergolfer
> So why pay more for folks who stay at home?

What do you mean by this? I could imagine a scenario where the E3 visa puts
positive pressure on Australian Software Engineer salaries, causing them to
rise.

~~~
jacques_chester
Put another way: why pay the same price in Australia?

Most companies want to have folks in the same timezone, preferably in the same
office. There's really no substitute for being onsite with your peers.

------
godot
The question is a bit weird to me because the things you suggest seem like
what you would do before you even apply. But when you say "before they take a
job there", it seems to imply after the interview, and offer on hand.

When you're interviewing, you're not just letting the employer assess you;
you're also assessing the company and the team. You should be asking questions
about working there. There's no need to "email people who work there" to ask
because you should be asking them during the interview!

My current job is the first time (out of 6 jobs over 14 years) where I am
joining a company without _anyone_ I know there -- as in, I responded to a
recruiter pinging me, interviewed, and got an offer. I didn't have a friend
refer me or anything. It was a risky leap, and made more risky by the fact
that it's fully remote (my first remote job), so I had no idea if it was going
to be like everyone being overworked, or feeling completely disconnected, or
anything. One thing I did that may have appeared weird but was worth doing
was, after getting an offer, I asked to speak with yet one more engineer on
the team, in a sort of reverse-interview. I extensively asked about working
there.

Like someone said, because people don't want to risk their jobs, most of the
time they won't say anything negative in such a scenario. But as long as you
learn to read between the lines, you can still get useful information out of
it.

On the other hand if this is before you interview, none of this matters. Just
go interview and decide from there.

------
gxs
I work at a company of 10.5k employees.

Even considering global offices, there are ~5k employees here on campus.

The problem is that every single team, organization, every executive and the
functions that roll up to them, are of course different.

The best advice is what others have said here: go into the interviews bright
eyed and try as hard to get a sense of the people who interview.

Are they good people? Is there a good mix of people who are task oriented vs
relationship oriented?

At the end of the day, looking at things like Glassdoor, LinkedIn, will only
give you a very high level picture so the interviews are your best bet.

Also, if you're anything like me, I value money quite a bit over other
conditions, so asking about salary up front is a must.

~~~
JohnFen
> Also, if you're anything like me, I value money quite a bit over other
> conditions, so asking about salary up front is a must.

This is an important point. I'm not primarily money-driven, personally, so
this isn't a question I typically ask. But if it's important to you,
absolutely ask.

Not to say money isn't important. I do have a minimum salary that I'll accept,
and I inform them of it when they ask (and they always ask). If an employer at
least meets that, I'm good. Offering more money above that is nice, but isn't
as big of a driver to me as whether or not I would enjoy working there.

------
new_here
Glassdoor, company engineering blog and careers page on their website to see
what the environment, tech stack and benefits are like. Maybe Stackshare.

------
howard941
Next time I will scour online maps to make sure that the engineering spaces
aren't within a warehouse no matter how nice they are. The forklift horns
honking and beeping drives me to distraction.

~~~
ianmcgowan
Agree on this, not so much for the SV unicorn crowd, but at a couple of
interviews I’ve asked to see the actual seat and workstation where I’ll be
sitting. I’ve never had honking forklifts, but some office space “corporate
accounts payable, Nina speaking, just a moment” type spaces were enough to
sour me on the job. It’s mundane maybe, but important to me..

[https://youtu.be/4s5yHUpumkY](https://youtu.be/4s5yHUpumkY)

------
JohnFen
Here's the core of what I do:

I pore over their website, and do web searches on the company and the
company's top executives. If I don't personally know anyone who works for (or
used to work for) them, then I hit up my professional contacts to see if I can
find someone who does. I then ask those people about their day-to-day
experience at the company. I make sure to ask, at a minimum, both what they
consider great about working there and what they consider awful about it.

What I'm looking for is a good fit -- does the company operate in a way that
works for me? Do I feel good about what the company produces and how they do
business? Are the employees generally satisfied? That sort of thing.

One thing I would never do unless I were in a crisis of some sort is to just
jump in and hope for the best. It's too easy for that to go horribly wrong.

~~~
Chloro
You make it sound like it a marriage or something. If you don't like it you
can always leave. That's worked for me so far.

~~~
JohnFen
Indeed you can. But if I want short-term work, I take contracts. If I'm
looking for a permanent job, I'm specifically looking for some place that I'll
be for years. So it is a bit like marriage in that sense.

Also, it's not a great look on your CV when you've only been at a non-contract
job for a very short time.

------
fierro
Most of the other comments here cover the majority of useful tips/techniques.

However for me, one thing I really like doing is reaching out to employees who
quit/left. Ask them for honest information about why they quit and what the
existing problems are.

~~~
titanomachy
This is interesting. I would assume that negative feedback from these people
is less of a signal than positive feedback.

The baseline approval rating from someone who left the company is going to be
lower than people working at the company. If an ex-employee is disgruntled or
bitter it doesn't tell me that much, unless I hear the same complaint from a
lot of people.

If someone left because another great opportunity came along, and they are
really positive about their time at the company, I'd say that's a good signal.

~~~
craz8
For smaller companies, the fit might not be right for certain people, so
moving to a company that allows them a path that works better for them isn’t
necessarily bad for the company they left

------
mlthoughts2018
Every job I’ve had in the past 15 years has had exactly the same office
workspace:

\- horrid open plan layout with no quiet or privacy.

\- comically stupid budget wasted on boutique cafeteria and presentation
spaces, catered lunches, coffee, snacks.

\- corporate slogans and motivational gimmicks painted on the walls.

Why do you need to research office space for a new job? It’s always exactly
the same.

~~~
softawre
Because there are still good developer jobs out there that give developers
offices if they want? That seems to be to be a great reason to do your
research.

PS: if you're in Indy I am hiring, you will get an office.

------
tootie
When you are interviewing, make sure you go to the bathroom. Bathroom quality
is key indicator of how a company values it's employees.

~~~
khorpy
In our local IT community chat, we have a funny tradition of posting bathroom
review videos from different IT companies. From what I've seen, turns out that
your assumption is totally true.

------
troydavis
Here's a few ways to get a peek at a company's culture, particularly how they
interact with customers and how customers perceive them:

1\. The company's responses to public issues/tickets/discussions (on GitHub
issues/pull requests, a support forum, whatever). Do employees provide
thoughtful replies or frustrating form letters ("Great idea! Please vote for
your feature request here:")? Is the person responding actually qualified to
answer? Where appropriate, does the individual's personality come through or
does the reply feel perfunctory or rushed? Do issues ever get closed, and when
they do, is a useful explanation provided?

2\. Twitter interactions between the company and users. Search Twitter for
"to:companyname" for replies and "@companyname" for all mentions. Depending on
the company, searching Reddit for the company or product name(s) may also turn
up interactions.

3\. Search engine keyword research/planner tools. What other words/phrases are
used alongside the company or product name? Google and Bing both now restrict
their tools, but many third-party planners are public and some include things
like inbound link pages. (For a less-complete view, check which phrases are
autocompleted in Google and Bing's search form input fields.)

------
fro0116
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned AngelList yet. Well, that's not quite true.
I saw a few mentions of AngelList itself but nothing about what I feel is
their killer feature for job searching: their salaries tool
[https://angel.co/salaries](https://angel.co/salaries)

Job posts there usually come with a salary range, and salary can be a deal-
breaker for a lot of people (most people?), so seeing salary ranges up front
for specific companies & positions you're interested in can help avoid a lot
of wasted time on both sides due to mismatch in expectations around
compensation.

The tool is even more helpful when you're in that initial stage of looking for
work but not sure where to apply to yet, because you can filter for jobs that
match a certain salary range, within certain locations/industries, level of
funding, tech choices, etc.

I also personally really like job searching platforms like Hired.com,
Underdog.io, Triplebyte, and AngelList's own A-List that allow you to apply
once to their platform and then have companies come to you with offers for
interviews, many of which of also require the company to disclose salary range
up front so you can decide which offers are worth your time to pursue.

------
jb3689
Crunchbase to understand the company's funding

Github to see if they have open source stuff

Company blogs

I've told companies I want to remeet the team after interviews and they've
scheduled lunches for me to talk with them in a more low pressure situation

~~~
fierro
those lunches/coffees are critical

------
chucksmash
When I was interviewing a few years ago, one of the interviewers I spoke with
mentioned they'd used Mattermark[0] to prospect for companies they might be
interested in applying to. That seemed like a novel idea given it seems to be
targetted primarily towards investors.

[0]: [https://mattermark.com/](https://mattermark.com/)

------
coffeemug
One piece of advice I heard recently that in hindsight is extremely important
-- look around the company and see if there are people who look like you in
positions similar to the one you're expecting to get. If there aren't, you're
probably not getting the position you think you're getting.

------
tlavoie
Various OSInt (open source intelligence) tools can be handy, just as they are
on a pen-test.

Besides the usual stuff linked to on the site, you can look for email
addresses from their domain(s), Google-dork for file extensions on their site
and so on.

Often email addresses are tied to discussion forums and such, though perhaps
more of that is Github these days.

One tool (forget the name at the moment) would let you look for social media
posts/pics in a radius to a given location, so see what pops up nearby the
office. If not from the company, might still be informative of the
neighbourhood.

------
gbenzzz
Since i'm in IT, DNSDumpster.

~~~
penagwin
This. It gives you can (but not always) give some valuable insights to what
services they use, potential security issues, etc.

------
0x8BADF00D
I used to use Blind. Unfortunately, it has devolved into a kind of clean cut
version of 4chan. The topics discussed there used to be about how the culture
was at a certain company, total compensation, etc. Now it is a place where the
topic of discussion are memes about Indians being incompetent with women, why
can't I get laid, I'm so lonely etc.

LinkedIn, AngelList, and Crunchbase are some good places to start to get an
idea of the company.

------
Mitchhhs
TransparentCareer has really robust compensation and satisfaction data for
business roles and can be filtered and personalized very heavily. They also
display the data in ways that make it more accurate and useful such as showing
medians and allowing you to only see recent data.
([https://www.transparentcareer.com](https://www.transparentcareer.com))

------
hbcondo714
That's one of the reasons I built Last10K
([https://last10k.com](https://last10k.com)). If the company is publicly
traded, they are required to file reports that contains transparent
information on a their operations, financial condition and much more. In other
words, know how a company actually makes (or doesn't make) money before
joining.

------
wolco
Just jump in and keep your eyes and ears open during the interviews. Check
glassdoor, etc but let your instinct take over.

------
ummonk
Blind is really invaluable for getting the inside scoop at companies large
enough to have an active presence on that app.

~~~
Sonnol53
I spent so much time on Blind when I was jumping ship

------
toomuchtodo
Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and emailing previous employees. Current employees aren’t
going to give you the low down.

~~~
fenwick67
How do you get names and contact info for previous employees?

~~~
ddebernardy
LinkedIn.

If you end up needing their email address because you can't send a message on
LinkedIn, there's a slew of ways to find someone's email. They might list it
on their Twitter, Github, or blog. Companies out there will help you guess it
(Clearbit, Hunter, VoilaNorbert, etc.). And if all else fails, googling your
best guesses as to what their email is (including their gmail) will often
yield a match in some random mailing list, press release, or what have you.

------
chiefalchemist
Good question. But I also believe some of it requires being proactive.

1) Keep in mind that during the interview process, you are (read: should be)
interviewing them, as much as they are interviewing you. If you sense they
don't realize / respect you being an equal in the process then put a note
under "red flags."

2) Along the same lines, listen careful during the process. Listen for that is
said, and often more importantly, what is not said __. Again, be mindful of
how they speak with you or maybe it 's more like at.

3) Every process has at least one Q&A segment. Prepare some questions. Bring
them along printed out if you want. When the moment comes, ask away. If you'd
like to speak to current team member(s) ask for that. If you sense friction,
that's at least a partial answer. Noted in the red flags column of your "post-
date" analysis.

Of course this won't uncover everything, but it's a start. It's also likely yo
generate more questions. Do a follow up, if necessary.

<sidebar>

 __For example, yesterday I had a phone call with the head of small marketing
/ design agency about some PT (but regular) contract dev work. During the
course of the conversation I said something like "...and perhaps in time,
there can be a junior dev who can take care of some of the more simplistic
stuff and I'll focus on the heavy lifting..."

His reply was along the lines of "That doesn't interest me. I'm looking to
deal with only one person."

However, what I heard was: "This guy is not aware of the fact that I want to
outgrow the mundane stuff and/or I might be willing and able to move into a
supervisor position. It also sounds like he's not interested in growing the
business in ways where there would be more heavy (dev) lifting. Perhaps my
ambitions and desire to grow wouldn't be a good fit."

We're still talking. But that one answer told me __a lot__ even if he didn't
realize it. Those are the type of "not said" things I'm talking about.

</sidebar>

Ultimately, you are both looking to enter into a LTR. They should want -
should things move forward - you to be comfortable and confident they are "the
one" for you. If they are resistant to you having __relevant__ and
__professional__ questions, then again, that's a signal. Make note of it, and
weight it when the time comes.

~~~
Maultasche
If he only wants to deal with one person, the other developers could report to
you, and he won't need to worry about dealing with them.

------
timfrietas
I've had people find me on LinkedIn and reach out to do due diligence on
companies I've worked at, which I thought was pretty smart.

I would do the same if I were looking at a small company with potentially
astroturfed Glassdoor ratings.

~~~
JohnFen
Yes, if all the spam hadn't driven me to delete my LinkedIn account, I'd do
this as well.

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gwbas1c
That's what the job interview is for!

In all honesty, I find how everyone behaves during the interview, and my
interactions with everyone involved in the interview process, as the best
indicators of how the business operates.

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claylimo
Search GitHub for any code repos with the company name (or
abbreviations/acronym of the company name) to see if you can get a heads up on
what the code challenge may be.

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tejado
[https://www.kununu.com/](https://www.kununu.com/) \- at least for german
based companies

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cyrux004
Blind app. Lots of users now from different companies

~~~
the_jeremy
Do you actually find the blind app useful? Most of my experience has been that
it's "4chan-lite".

Someone posted asking for the best way to let a friend down easy and tell them
they weren't romantically interested. Top response: "Bang his roommate."

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markbnj
Generally just the company's site, any other stuff they have posted publicly,
news stories about them, etc. I rely mostly on my own personal impressions of
the team and leadership. I have only worked for one public company and with
that one I did also have a look at some financial returns, but I can't say it
mattered terribly to me as long as they were not losing money.

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ChefboyOG
AngelList to get a sense of their current employees/team make-up. If the place
is earlier stage, I might look at their investors too.

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01100011
I'm curious about this, having recently joined a company where I feel
completely out of place. I like the work, but I hate the work environment and
I'm not really gelling with my coworkers.

I'm not sure how you can assess team dynamics before committing to the job.
Unless you sign on as a contractor, you're taking a big risk signing up.

~~~
chapium
i strongly suggest leaving if you can, its not likely that feeling will change

~~~
01100011
Yeah, I'm guessing I will underperform until I get fired anyway. I was hoping
it would work out, since the company is so large and stable that it could have
been my final job over the last 20 years of my career. I have a non-verbal
offer from another company who would pay me close to the same, with the option
of moving to Austin. I'm just not sure the company(a well known manufacturer
of set-top boxes and TV middleware) will be around for the long haul. I met
their team though and really felt at home.

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C1sc0cat
Companies House - For UK based companies

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TehShrike
Ask these questions: [http://blog.alinelerner.com/how-to-interview-your-
interviewe...](http://blog.alinelerner.com/how-to-interview-your-
interviewers/)

------
speedplane
I think the expensive paid versions of LinkedIn allow you to see how many
people are coming and going from a company, and from that you may be able to
figure out if they are on the up or down-swing.

------
joezydeco
Check the bathrooms. The condition of actual working facilities will tell you
more than you want to know about how a company treats its employees.

------
aecs99
Please keep in mind that the tips/tools/techniques that people list are highly
subjective and may not be applicable everywhere. I realized this from my own
experience (worked at two startups in the past, and now at BigCo):

* Glassdoor: Sort reviews by date (people are relatively happy when they join, negative reviews tend to be more current). Take every review (good/bad) with a grain of salt. Reviews with higher "helpful" counts could be more reliable because there are so many companies where the HR writes glowing reviews

* Crunchbase: To know more about the funding situation, list of execs, etc.

* levels.fyi: Salary info. Also check h1bsalaryinfo (website). May/may not be applicable to you, but will give you an idea of what your peers potentially make.

* LinkedIn: Search the name of the company, click on the "People" tab, and look at the list of people who match your background, and then dig out their backgrounds. How long have they been working at the company, what are their previous jobs, how well do you think their background support their roles (even before you talk to them). At my previous company, there were a bunch of people who did sub-par job of being software engineers at their previous companies, and took director/lead/vp roles purely based on their years or experience rather than technical expertise and screwed up the mission big time. This tends to happen at medium/big companies more frequently than at small startups.

* On-site interviews: I know it is going to be extremely hard to gauge a team/company while they are gauging you, but this can be done. Prepare your questions beforehand, and try to see how close or vague their responses are.

* Blind (app) or teamblind (on web): Search for the company and look for comments/questions etc. There may be some discussions which may not be applicable, but it doesn't hurt to search.

* GitHub/Medium: Some companies/startups have their own pages, or at least their team members do (although not current). It'd be good to check those as well.

* Cold emailing: Previous and current employees. Not many will respond, but if even one or two do, I'd highly value their input

* Coffee: Doesn't hurt to try (most people are willing to do this, but don't do this just because they don't have time, or feel awkward about meeting new people)

Most of these will be applicable for smaller companies/startups, but at big
companies, it'll be tough knowing all the people you will work with.
Ultimately, it's going to boil down to few things:

(a) your instincts: whether you feel you'll fit right in or not, whether the
company is good for you or not, whether you believe in the core mission or
not. I tend to believe this more.

(b) your team: a good team/team member can make your life at work the best
experience or the worst experience. And unfortunately, there is no way to
predict this unless you give it a chance.

Good luck!

~~~
Sonnol53
I agree. The more proactive you are about reaching out or asking the right
questions, the more you'll know. Thanks for the detailed suggestions. I
personally think Glassdoor is pretty outdated. Blind is more 'real time'

------
aboutruby
crunchbase / glassdoor / main website + archive.org / github / twitter /
facebook / try out their service/app / contact customer support / emailhunter
/ linkedin / etc.

------
GuyPostington
nmap

------
tmshu1
salaryproject.com for (mostly Software Engineer currently) salaries

------
tmshu1
salaryproject.com for (mostly Software Engineer) salaries

------
lawlessone
Glassdoor

~~~
Sonnol53
I heard that HR departments get paid to write on glassdoor.

------
lugg
GitHub. Stalk a few of their devs see how they interact with other people in
the org and out. How they act in personal projects likely maps how they act
professionally as well.

------
appsonify
Glassdoor, and filter by most helpful, since it's an open secret that startups
write their own fucking reviews.

You always get the down lo when you read a highly upvoted review.

I know this one startup CEO he was caught lying publicly about writing his own
glassdoor reviews. It was quite obvious (everybody in the company knew except
the CEO).

------
bjornlouser
Don't give notice yet. Instead, take a week of vacation and start the new job
during that week. Make your official decision during afternoon tea on Sunday.

~~~
kamikaz1k
I'm pretty sure there's issues with holding two jobs at the same time. Have
you done this? And do you just rely on people not finding out?

~~~
twojerbs
I had two full time jobs for eight months. The only issue was no leisure time

