
Ask HN: Are these signs of a toxic company? - throwAwayQA
This is my first job, I have recently joined as a full-time developer a small software company working in a niche sector I like.<p>However, just around my 1st month I started noticing some things, and was wondering if these could be signs of a toxic place:<p>* The number of people working in sales is double the people working on the actual product.<p>* Many interns and temp workers for a company of this size.<p>* No coding styles, CI or tooling conventions are implemented (causing many issues).<p>* Internal conflicts between senior developers and managers that result in heated arguments and&#x2F;or emails.<p>* I was given low-performance hardware (that makes my compiling&#x2F;testing time twice as much as my actual coding time) due to budget.<p>* Marketing and sales people have (implicit and explicit) privileged treatment compared to developer teams.<p>On the other hand, most people are really nice and the team I have been assigned to has been really helpful getting me up to speed.<p>---<p>Am I reading too much into this, or are these signs of a sinking ship that I should abandon while I can?<p>I&#x27;m using a throwaway account for obvious reasons.
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calcsam
I wouldn't say it's a toxic company or sinking ship, but from the three points
below they don't seem to value engineering much. As it's your first job, so
you probably don't have a ton of leverage -- though if you had other offers, I
would consider re-opening conversations with them, and if you can find a new
job pretty quickly, you can just leave this job off your resume in the future.

* No coding styles, CI or tooling conventions are implemented (causing many issues).

* I was given low-performance hardware (that makes my compiling/testing time twice as much as my actual coding time) due to budget.

* Marketing and sales people have (implicit and explicit) privileged treatment compared to developer teams.

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throwAwayQA
The problem is, whenever I try to introduce some tools that could solve an
actual problem I get dismissed as I'm new, thus making solving these issues an
almost impossible task for now.

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calcsam
Not sure what you're responding to -- my advice was to look elsewhere & reopen
convos with other companies.

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pinewurst
The 1st one (ratio of sales to development) is not a problem, assuming that
the sales people aren't individually dead wood. Any reasonable sales
organization rewards the good ones and purges the non-performers periodically.

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throwAwayQA
I'm not too familiar with these people as they're scattered over different
offices. They seem competent though.

But in my mind (and i may be biased) I believe that you should invest in the
team building the actual product before investing in the team selling it.

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angersock
You're incorrect here, though well-meaning. :)

The ideal setup, from a company's perspective, is one engineer and as many
sales people as it takes to sell the product.

 _How_ the product is made--and hence the team that makes it!--is of no
consequence _provided the company can sell the product_.

The product doesn't even have to _work_ : you just need people willing to pay
for it.

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throwAwayQA
I absolutely get what you're meaning, but this is not very "comforting" for an
engineer.

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angersock
Agreed. :(

This should probably be on the short list of reasons we have so much burnout
in our sector.

