

Ask HN: Would you work for a company if you do not use their product? - bitskits

I'm curious if other folks have considered this:  I see a lot of career/job opportunities that look interesting/exciting, but I have not seriously considered them because I don't use/believe in the product they are developing.<p>One example could be Facebook; I don't have an account (I never have), and generally don't believe in their product.  That said, I'm sure it's a great place to work, and would be a great opportunity.<p>How do you folks reconcile that?
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mgkimsal
There's a whole mess of stuff out there that might be really interesting but
that you'll never 'use' personally. Math geeks might love working in a
derivatives company, working on software and algorithmic stuff all day long.
Not one of those geeks might ever deal with derivatives outside their day job,
ever.

While having a belief in the company you're working for and what they're doing
is valuable, I don't think you need to be a 'user' of a company's services or
products to work somewhere.

Perhaps that's not what you're asking, or perhaps you're only looking to work
at consumer-facing public web service companies?

~~~
bitskits
That's a good point, I was picturing customer facing businesses when I wrote
the question. I think it is probably less of an issue when you're working on
something that you really could never be the customer of.

~~~
mgkimsal
To be clear, every business is a customer-facing business. You just probably
aren't the customer for most of those. Perhaps you're meaning 'consumer' ?

~~~
bitskits
Yes, that is indeed what I meant. Specifically, tech/web companies who's
product you could use, but choose not to for some reason.

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HeyLaughingBoy
Do you mean _believe_ in the product or _use_ the product? Your post says both
and they're not the same thing.

I work for a company that builds machinery that costs close to $1M. I'm not
likely to ever use one of them (but I wholeheartedly believe in the product:
medical instrumentation).

If you only look for jobs where you would have used the end product, you're
likely to spend a lot of time unemployed.

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misterbwong
This really boils down to your personal priorities. Do you _need_ to believe
in the product to enjoy work or are interesting problems/fun workplace enough
for you?

Currently, I'm trying as hard as I can to get a hold of the most difficult
projects I can find in the workplace. If that means working on a technically
challenging product that I kinda-sorta believe in, then so be it. My goal is
to get my technical chops up. I suspect that as time and my experience
progresses, the actual product will mean more to me.

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homecoded
I have been working (coder, project lead, product owner) in the gaming
industry far too long now. I hardly ever play computer games, I hate most of
them, and some of the products I was involved in were, simply put, just very
very bad concepts.

Yet, I derived motivation and pleasure from the technical challenges and the
creative atmosphere created by the crazy geeks I have the privilege to work
with. Besides, the rather short development cycles with hardly any maintaining
after release make for fun projects: Code and forget.

Something else to consider: If you don't like their product, you may be able
to help them to turn the product into something you can enjoy as well, and
with this they may be able to open up to new audiences. Sometimes, the
naysayers can actually be useful, or so I like to believe.

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rcavezza
If you're an expert in the field, your expertise may be needed for the
business, but you may not need the product.

For example, many of the big name financial companies have a higher premium
because of the service and knowledge of the financial experts (or at least
perceived knowledge).

There are many financial firms that offer less expensive options but have less
customer service, etc... So I expect many Morgan Stanley and Fidelity
financial analysts to have a portfolio from a different company.

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ebiester
I think one of my favorite jobs was working on IBM Information Archive, a
piece of hardware that I will never use.

On the other hand, I've taken one job with a company whose "product" I found
counterproductive to society. I got so depressed I could barely work, and was
drummed out in 6 months.

It's almost never worth it.

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mindcrime
I could work for a company where my reaction to the product was "meh,
whatever." But I doubt I'd work for a company whose product is something that
I find morally reprehensible or something that I think is just absolute crap.

