
Ask HN: How do you evaluate a job offer and the company offering it? - newcoeval
What do you personally look for in an offer and company to help you decide whether or not to take a job that you&#x27;ve been offered?
======
magic_beans
Here are the five things I look out for when evaluating a new position:

1\. Is the salary enough to pay my rent, feed me, and allow me to save a
little bit every month? (This one is obvious. Don't take a job that will put
you in debt!!!)

2\. Do I trust that my direct manager will protect me from bullshit? (This is
a REALLY important one for me, and is the reason I've rejected offers. If your
future manager is an asshole or treats you like shit during the interview,
don't take the job. A good manager exists to make sure you do the best work
you can possibly do for the company, and gives you any resources you might
need for that. A good manager is your leader, not your enemy.)

3\. Will I be able to learn and grow in this role? (A good manager will help
immensely with this one.)

4\. Do I like the people I will be working with? (If you don't at least
tolerate the people you work with on a daily basis, you're going to be
miserable).

5\. Is my commute within reason?

~~~
bgribble
(I'm a programmer so my personal rules reflect that)

I like these guidelines.

For salary, my rule is "does the offered salary meet local norms for the
position and the company's situation, and does it show respect for me and for
the role I will be playing?" I wouldn't be applying for the job if "norms" for
the job would not meet my needs (and, as another replier points out, leave
more than a little after expenses to plan for the future).

Also, I look hard at the working conditions and environment. I don't really
start talking about this stuff until after an offer, but I'm watching for
signs throughout the process:

* Are the hours humane? Overworking programmers is a sign of disrespect for the role.

* Is it friendly to women? An engineering team with no women is a huge red flag of bad management and culture, for teams of more than about 5 people. For smaller teams, is there a sense that hiring women is important?

* Does the company try to dominate the employee's non-working life? Regular "happy hours", catered dinner at night (RED FLAG), bar/keggerator in the office... all bad signs to me

* Is there flexibility about when and where the work gets done, or is it ass-in-a-seat-9-to-7?

* Do people stick around? Has my manager pulled in people he/she has worked with in the past (big plus)?

~~~
scriptkiddie95
>Is it friendly to women? An engineering team with no women is a huge red flag
of bad management and culture, for teams of more than about 5 people. For
smaller teams, is there a sense that hiring women is important?

Personally, I'd rather a team that hires based on meritocracy than gender.

~~~
hendler
In case you aren't just trolling:

A lack of meritocracy causing of a lack of female engineers is ignorant.

There are plenty of meritorious but under-represented populations; especially
female engineers. A culture without enough women or without a plan to hire
women is a red flag. Surrounding yourself with people that support [your]
unsubstantiated biases increases the likelihood that the culture is unhealthy.

~~~
chmln
What about other men-dominated (thus sexist), well-paying industries?

Are you also concerned about the lack of female plumbers? Construction
workers? Miners, perhaps?

~~~
falsedan
I don't interact with those industries regularly, so neither am I confronted
with their gross gender inequality nor can I encourage their employers to do
better at attracting female applicants.

For dev jobs, both the problem visibility and remedial actions are obvious to
me.

To answer your question: yes

------
shakkhar
I will touch on something that everyone else seems to be taking for granted -
salary is a complicated concept. There are a few factors that you need to
consider when comparing salaries from two different companies.

The first thing I will look into is 401k. Early stage startups do a
particularly bad job of this. Ask if you have an employer-sponsored 401k plan
and how much the employer will contribute. I'd also ask about the investment
options, just to be safe.

Next is healthcare package. Ask for the full prospectus for all available
options and how much they cost, after employer contribution. Also make sure
that your dependents are covered too.

Ask about WFH policy. If you don't have to commute to work everyday for 9 AM
meetings, you can save a lot and live better by living further away from city
center / downtown area.

Make sure you have enough PTO for vacations. Ask about accrual policy and make
sure their policy is to pay you for unused PTO when you leave.

If you have a bonus target, make sure you know exactly what you have to do to
get all / most of it. It is easy to promise bonus when they can get away
without paying it.

There are many more points like the above. The cost / savings from these add
up. You are the only one who can do the math and decide whether it is
substantial or not.

~~~
jchmbrln
Additionally, salary is about more than gaining wealth–it's the indicator of
whether my time is well-spent. All else being equal, a company can pay me well
because my skill-set in their hands creates value. Contrarily, if a company
can't pay me well, presumably my time won't be spent doing something valuable.

My morale is directly tied to a sense of value and pride in my work, which
means it's directly tied to salary, and not because I'm greedy.

Don't work–or at least be very careful–at a company that can't pay you well
but hopes to someday. Unless things change quickly, it means you're not
creating something worthwhile.

------
edw519
I look at their code. Deeply. To me, this is more important than everything
else put together.

I don't like jerk bosses, difficult customers, unrealistic deadlines, lack of
specs, reqs, or schedules, tough commutes, or unreasonable pay, but over the
years, I've learned to live with them.

I have never learned to live with shitty code.

I'll answer your phones. I'll clean your toilets. I'll even take your daughter
to the movies.

But I will never refactor another 800 line case statement with 26 early exits,
14 double negatives, and 90 unintelligible variable assignments inside a
23,000 line module. Never.

I wish I had adopted this philosophy years ago. Oh how much better my life
would have been.

~~~
cpfohl
How do you look at a company's code _before_ you get on the job? I've never
been in a situation where my company or my company's clients would have been
ok with that.

~~~
edw519
Insist on it! I can't tell you how sorry I hadn't done this sooner.

If they won't comply, that's a big red flag. Run the other way.

~~~
aratno
In most industries, this is not a red flag at all. Nobody doing anything
serious would let normal applicants look openly at their codebase.

~~~
Etheryte
You don't have to (and should not) request access to the whole codebase,
simply asking to see a single medium sized file from a project you would be
expected to work with is often enough. I've asked for this before with great
success, some companies will ask you to sign a short NDA beforehand, most
don't even bother. Sure, it leaves the chance that they will simply show you
the pretty parts, but at least you'll know that there are some pretty parts at
the very least.

------
partycoder
I reject jobs if:

\- interviewers talk poorly about their employees (means they are bad
managers)

\- the interview is too easy (means they do not know how to recognize talent)

\- they are too agreeable (could mean they are not being honest about the
role)

Ask to the interviewers:

\- What are the traits of your most valuable engineers?

\- What are the traits of your low performing engineers?

\- How do you balance features with bug fixing and technical debt?

\- Is the project on track?

You want to get a feeling of their definition of success, and if they're
already being successful by their own metrics.

------
wayn3
This is for contract work, which I exclusively do, so may not apply to
employment. I've never done employment. Seems like a bad deal to me. Anyway,
cliffnotes of my standard contract:

\- I work remotely. Under no circumstances will I ever show up in person at
your office or any other location that requires me to spend time away from
places I want to be.

\- I bill 2 weeks in advance. You chose to buy hours of my time and my
compensation is tied to those hours. My compensation is not tied to any kind
of result. If you are unhappy with the result, there is no way for you to sue
me. If you decide to hire me and then waste my time with meetings and your IT
department not being able to procure a simple ssh key, that is your problem,
not mine.

\- I understand that you have deadlines, but so do I. I need to be places and
under no circumstances will I ever work more than 40 hours in a week as part
of this contract. If you need more resources, we will have to talk about a
separate contract.

\- I do not care for your employees. You are hiring me because you need me to
fix their mistakes, do not expect them to be happy about that. If you want to
make it my job to be their nanny, I'm cool with that, but don't expect them to
suddenly drop the wilful incompetence.

\- You get a weekly e-mail update which should suffice as far as communication
is concerned. Anything beyond that has to be initiated by you and will consume
time that I could spend working productively.

\- I work with Python, exclusively (and some fun low level languages but
nobody works with those anyway). I understand that back in 2013 someone
decided that node.js was a great idea and now they left because it wasn't all
that great, but that's not my problem. If you want it fixed, we can rebuild it
in python. It will work phenomenally.

\- I do absolutely not do any kind of User Interface work. I know people who
do and can manage them for you. But I will not ever touch anything like that
personally. Watching paint dry is at least an order of magnitude more
entertaining.

\- This is a contract negotiation, not a job interview. You can ask me
technical questions if it makes you feel better about yourself, but time spent
on such nonsense will be considered billable hours.

Those are the things that matter to me. Other things do not. I charge extra
for boring work, like "restFUL API". No its not difficult to instantiate a
framework to write some endpoints.

Its perhaps not surprising that my list of priorities doesn't touch on usual
employment stuff. Its not employment, after all.

~~~
noway12345
I legitimately can't tell if this is satire or not.

~~~
wayn3
Was it an entertaining read?

------
GiorgioG
Nobody has mentioned this so this is all I have to add:

Work/life balance (a.k.a. will I be expected to work 80 hours a week, or will
I be fighting fires at 3am on a regular basis.)

Sadly sometimes they will lie and you don't find out what it's really like
until you start the job. This happened to a friend recently. Despite setting
expectations up front about hours, work/life balance, etc. the first week he
started working there he noticed developers were fighting fires (and getting
distracted) all day long and often at night/weekends. Luckily for this friend,
he had another offer come along and he gave his new employer a choice: Let me
help you fix this problem or I walk.

"Well, this is actually better than what it used to be like."

(He quit (a week after his start date,) and took the other offer.)

------
hidden_sheepman
These are my top 5. Usually I think its common sense especially if your the
one applying for the job, one would assume that you want the job if it was
offered to you.

1\. Is the job described what your actually going to be doing?

2\. Team/Company Culture, did you meet the team? how are the managers? the
company values? etc..

3\. Salary expectations (whatever yours is or anyones is) don't be afraid to
negotiate if you feel its to low.

4\. Do you see your self here for more than a year?

5\. Room to grow, do you want to become a manager? or a senior developer? what
options are available to you?

~~~
abulman
For the matter of the Team/Company culture, I'd also add - Do they expect you
to come in and merge into a unchanging culture, or would you add to, and
change the culture?

------
bsvalley
I look back on the interview process because it tells you a lot about the
company. Numbers don't tell you much. It's all about how good or bad you've
been treated. So I look at:

\- the kind of questions they asked, was it mostly stupid algorithm stuff?
Useless 15 minutes HR multiple choice questions?

\- the interviewers. Were they involved during the interview or were they
thinking about their day ahead? Were they jerks, making you feel like crap?
Did they asked anything else than work related questions such as "how is your
day going?", "what did you do this weekend?". etc.

\- Last but not least, I look at HR, how transparent and genuine were they
during the process? Very often, when it comes to arguing about salary,
feedback, etc, they often show that they lie and don't even make sense. Like
"you were the last person we've interviewer" when one of the interviewer told
you - you were the first candidate in the process!. Things like that...

I've been through a LOT of interviews. The process is a snapshot of the
company. Most of the companies fail at it. More often than candidates
actually.

------
bb88
I take a different look. I think it's it's nearly impossible to get a feel of
a company from an interview or offer. Often they're trying to put the best
spin on the company and you're never really guaranteed to work under the same
manager you were hired under.

Case in point: I was hired under one manager, then another manager (who was
worse than the first) replaced him three months later, and I was fired two
years later.

It may take a year to discover the true bullshit the company is hiding. So in
that case ignorance is bliss. Enjoy that time, and if you smell something
rotten, best steer clear of it, even if that means getting a new job.

The most important thing is your happiness. To me that's salary. Some people
like clean code. Some people want to grow in a position. Some people want a
good commute. I don't care that much about the code base, because I'm
technically a hired whore. And currently my commute is 4 plane segments a
week, and I don't mind it because in the end, the people are nice.

Sure it helps if the people treat you nice, but as long as you are the
employee, you can be treated like shit at anytime during your employment, and
you may have very little recourse.

The other thing to steer clear of is how much the company brands it's
employees. If your own personal identity is wrapped up in the company brand,
then if you or one of your co-workers are later separated, it can be
especially painful.

In short, figure out what it is you want from a company, and see if it matches
your needs, roll the dice and hope for the best.

------
gregshap
In addition to what's been mentioned:

Did they respect your time in the interview process?

-Good: schedule a full day of interviews and make the offer within a day or so.

-Bad: ask you to come into their office several times, or make you wait outside the CEO's office for 30 minutes (feel free to replace CEO with department head, partner, etc)

Did the interview involve a reasonable number of people to make a decision?

\- Good: mixture of peers or management levels, each interview session has a
clear point

\- Bad: lengthy HR gate keeping, meeting with multiple non-technical people to
evaluate your culture fit, seemingly everyone in the org needs to sign off on
a hire

In general, I've found that organizations execute "real" projects the way they
execute interviews.

------
mbesto
If you're in Silicon Valley and you comp is partially equity based, I would
ask for the high-level financials and strategy for the business. Your job
offer value is predicated on those artifacts.

------
pacetherace
Evaluate single job offer vs multiple job offers are totally different things.

Some of the parameters that can be used for evaluating a job offer:

1\. Startups: How much money the company has in terms of its burn-rate? Given
a choice, I would not join a startup that is running out of funding and next
round of funding is nowhere in sights.

2\. Growth in team: Are you replacing someone or it's a new position. If I am
replacing someone the scope of work will be well defined. It will be worth
checking why the earlier person left. If it is a new position, check how the
team will grow. If a team grows, earlier employees tend to get bigger roles.

3\. Compensation and other benefits: This is mostly a relative study, but I
would not join a company that is not really giving me a decent raise in terms
of salary or stocks. I have not seen people not join a company for healthcare
benefits unless it is a really low paying job.

4\. Commute and other flexibilities: You may be ok with commuting for an hour,
but if you are asked to reach office at 9 am, your 1 hour commute might get
converted into a 2 hour commute. So check out what are reasonable work hours
and how flexible is the company in terms of working from home, sick leave and
PTOs in general.

5\. Manager and upper management: It is not very easy to figure out how the
company management is, by taking to someone who is making you the job offer.
Check our reviews on glassdoor and similar sites. Take them with a pinch of
salt, because those reviews are either from frustrated employees or employees
who were requested to write reviews.

6\. Work: Join a company that will help you grow both in terms of compensation
and skills. A general rule of thumb is to see if taking this job will help you
in finding your next job.

------
logicallee
How to evaluate job offers:

"Do I know someone in it and do they say it's awesome?"

Anything else is just bullshit, come on. you're a programmer. network just a
little teeny tiny bit with your peers. you can work wherever you want. why
should you be the first person to try an unknown job environment, when you can
just join one that is good already?

Statistically, nothing else you can possibly do will come close to having as
good a result for you. Find out which of your friends are working at awesome
places and then just onboard with them. that simple.

Now, I realize you were asking about how to evaluate a job offer you've
already received! Well, the answer is simple: using the exact methodology
above.

But how can you do that, you say? How can I evaluate a job offer on the basis
of my friends working there, if I don't have any friends working there?

You still can. But how! How! It's a logical inconsistency!

Nope. Just make a friend!!! If you're in the office, go barge in and
apologetically steal 10 minutes of someone's attention, become friends with
them and figure out if they're saying the workplace is awesome.

Can't do that? You'll have to dig deeper. Network your way into finding
someone (by name) who works there. Then figure how to email them and make a
friend over email. 100% serious.

This is how you actually separate bullshit from reality. You'll be investing
many months of your life there. A bit of hustling to make sure you're getting
someplace awesome will pay better dividends than anything else you can
possibly spend that time doing.

EDIT: Downvotes? I've just given you a formula that is all but guaranteed to
make you happy.

~~~
metaphorm
I downvoted you for two reasons.

1\. the topic of the post is "How do _you_ evaluate a job offer" but you're
not phrasing things as if it's your own personal technique, but rather
suggesting that everyone ought to do things this way, and if they don't
there's something deficient about them.

2\. you seem to be willfully ignorant about the very real and very important
personality differences that people have. not everyone has (or wants) a huge
network of acquaintances in the industry. just because you're an extrovert
doesn't mean everyone is, or that what works for you will work for them.

~~~
bb88
Downvoting is the same as censoring, period.

You really need to ask whether or not you just disagree with him (which is
what you seem to do here.) Or whether the post is off-topic (which it does not
appear to be because you made an argument against his point)

~~~
metaphorm
it's not the same as censoring. its ranking. a downvote is an intent to rank
some content lower than other competing content.

------
rchen8
Offer checklist: checklist for deciding whether to join a specific company
from [https://notes.breakoutlist.com/offer-checklist-checklist-
for...](https://notes.breakoutlist.com/offer-checklist-checklist-for-deciding-
whether-to-join-a-specific-company-9ca3e227a4ab#.8whoy4d2m)

Are there people in this group that I want to be working with in 20 years?
(Before evaluating this question, make sure you give people a chance to show
their interestingness, either by looking up their profiles/websites online, or
asking them many questions when you meet them)

Would I buy the product if I was the customer? (Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman
of Berkshire Hathaway along with Warren Buffet, in my opinion one of the best
investors in history) Do I respect and admire the people I’d be working
with/for? (Charlie Munger)

Do I enjoy hanging out with the people? (Charlie Munger)

Is my future manager stellar? (Keith Rabois)

Is the CEO a learning machine?

Is this valuable (to the world), and going to remain valuable over the next
10+ years? (Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Palantir, Clarium Capital,
Founders Fund, Mithril Capital) Does the world/people want this, and will they
continue to want it over the next 10+ years? (Big difference between what is
valuable and what people want. i.e. perhaps reading for two hours a day is
more valuable than spending two hours on Facebook, but looking at the numbers
would indicate most people ‘want’ the latter more)

Am I going to be able to perform the job (well), and maintain/improve my
ability to perform over the coming years? (Peter Thiel)

Are other people not doing this, and not going to start in the next few years?
Note, this question is less relevant for a mid or later stage company. (Peter
Thiel)

Is this something that I feel I am slightly unqualified to do? (Marissa Mayer)
Please don’t use this to justify taking an impressive role at an unimpressive
company.

Would it be fun to work on this and with this group? (Paul Bucheit, employee
#23 at Google, creator of Gmail, YC partner) Is this either a mid-stage high
growth company, or an early stage company with an extraordinarily strong team
and network? Obviously, if it’s something that just seems really fun and
interesting to you, that’s great too. (Joe Lonsdale, Marc Andreessen, Andy
Rachleff, etc)

1\. Network 2\. Market and Growth Rate 3\. Optionality (does it build new
career capital/skills for you, or is it more of the same) 4\. Brand (more
important if you don’t already have 1–2 strong brands like MIT CS or Google
Engineer on your resume) — Elad Gil, co-founder of Color Genomics, early
investor in many past breakout companies, e.g. Airbnb series A, Optimizely
seed Does the company have at least one of the above attributes noted by Elad?

Are you less focused on both role and compensation (because even in a less
important role where you earn less, if the company ends up being a far more
important company you will have far more future opportunities)? (Elad Gil)

If they have impressed you with revenue numbers, are you aware of how they are
reporting revenue and the differences between for example GMV and net revenue,
or revenue and bookings?
([http://a16z.com/2015/08/21/16-metrics/](http://a16z.com/2015/08/21/16-metrics/))

Have you read some/all of the pages on understanding offer letters? If not,
re-read the sections on ‘Understanding options and equity’ on BreakoutCareers

If this is a pre-breakout company, have you read some/all of the pages on
thinking like a VC? If not, check out the section ‘Think like a VC’ on
BreakoutCareers. There are three types of start-ups: 1) Ones that are so young
that it’s difficult to tell if the dogs are going to eat the dog food. 2) Ones
where there’s clear evidence of market pull. 3) Ones that are unfortunately
stuck in a push market or have a very difficult product to sell. The trick is
to say away from #3. You only go to #1 if you are a domain expert and you have
an informed opinion on a product/market, but this is a rare trait. The real
trick is to end-up in #2. — Doug Leone, Sequoia Capital Does this either fit
#1 with you being a domain expert, or #2?

Is this a ‘tribe’ you want to be a part of? (John Lilly, Partner at Greylock)

Struggling to decide between two options that both fare well? Ask: ‘Where
would I be spending the most time with people that I admire the most?’ (If you
don’t know who you admire the most, consider looking for people who are
energetic, smart, independent minded and curious)

------
hullsean
Take salary (incl benefits) divide by 52. That's your weekly. Then divide by
real hours.

Checking emails after hours? Include that. Thinking through problems in the
shower? Include that time too. Maintenance at 2am Saturday night? Incl that
x2.

If the number seems small bc you're working 60 real hours a week, then think
again.

Trying to factor in stock? When it comes to investing warren buffet says go
for the s&p 500!

