
Ask HN: What do you REALLY look for in a new position? - lamroger
For myself, I realized perks like free food and laundry service are nice to have but are not the reason you stay or move.<p>Things I&#x27;m looking for now are attitudes towards professional and personal growth, contributing towards a meaningful goal, and people I enjoy working with.<p>What are some thing you&#x27;re looking for when searching for a new job?<p>I&#x27;m trying to collect a list of questions for companies similar to The Joel Test for software. http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.joelonsoftware.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;fog0000000043.html
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chrisbennet
I don't see this mentioned but...I look for happy, non-stressed out
interviewers and managers.

I had a nice manager (who was trying get me to work for his company) mention
how his hair had turned gray during his last project. I told him "If you're
trying to get people to sign up for you diving tour, um, you might not want to
show them your shark bites." It wasn't the main reason I passed on that job
but it didn't seem like a desirable situation.

~~~
bbcbasic
Upvoted for having the balls to say that.

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billconan
I want to work for a position that requires domain knowledge (for example,
deep learning which is what I'm currently interested in).

Or a job that I can make theoretical breakthroughs and those breakthroughs are
connected with industry, can be productized .

I'm sick of solving engineering problems. I'm working on a large code base
with lots of people. the difficulty of my job comes from unfamiliarity and
complexity. for example, I need to add features to some undocumented code, I
have to debug it to understand it. or I need to hack a piece of existing code
to add some feature in, because the feature wasn't previously planned in the
architecture. these skills I gained via the job enable me to quickly
understand complex code, but I don't think it's actual "knowledge".

~~~
byebyetech
We software developers are practically knowledge trash cans. The knowledge we
acquire decays faster than unrefrigerated meat. If wish I paid attention on my
math classes, I would have been doing something cool like Deep learning rather
than pull my hair, debug unknown codes and plug apis. The only intellectual
stimulation I get is when I am preparing for technical interviews.

~~~
sotojuan
Heh, I feel like this sometimes. Unfortunately math also bores me :/ I've
tried many times.

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borplk
Sadly what I have found is almost anything worth knowing is not possible to
know early on.

Curtains fall after 6 months and that's when you know some real info.

Especially true if the company/team is not a large or well known one so you
can't read reviews or anything.

Mostly turns into a gamble at that point.

~~~
romanovcode
Well, you know some things like your salary and vacation days.

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sheepmullet
Money and a core tech/domain I want to learn.

These are unlikely to change and are reasonably transferable.

Perks come and go. Co-workers come and go. Culture changes rapidly. Companies
move office locations. Corporate policies change. Etc.

I just got a new boss and he has insisted everyone arrive for 9am stand-up.
Goodbye flexible working hours.

The last place I worked had a top of the line coffee machine and free lunch.
Unfortunately when the coffee machine broke they replaced it with a cheap pod
machine and they switched lunch providers to a (IMO) much worse provider.

Another company I worked for in the past moved office locations and doubled my
commute (only 10km further away but it meant I had to take a train and then a
bus).

In these cases the company I was working for removed $10-20k/year in benefits
without consulting me.

I've never even been approached about taking a $10-20k/year pay cut.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Cash is king.

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jrgifford
Respect. Everyone says "Oh, we respect our team members!", but few do when the
rubber meets the road.

I've always insisted on going out to lunch with my potential boss, and watch
how they treat the servers. I've never regretted working with the ones who
treated everyone with courtesy and politeness. I've regretted working with
those who weren't.

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ace03150
I've seen this before but on the flip side. There was a CEO that would take
candidates out for lunch, and would prior tell the waiter to intentionally
mess up the order to see how the candidate would react.

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deckard1
Money. Remote work (freedom). Location.

Equally important, IMO, is what I stay away from:

Ping pong/pool/foosball offices. Free soda offices. Creepy culture cults. Open
floorplans.

Basically, all the infantile ways IT companies like to placate younger, naive
employees while cargo-culting Google and Facebook. If your office resembles a
college dorm, then you probably need to grow up.

~~~
bbcbasic
Open floorplans?

I'm yet to see a company that offers your own office for a Engineer position.
Exception is one that used to until they scaled up.

I am yet to see a cubicle office plan, everything I have seen is open.

Where I work now it is 10 or so people in a room so being open plan isn't too
bad. Previously had 300 open plan that wasn't fun IMO.

~~~
djb_hackernews
I work for a well known software company and have my own private 120sqft
office (4 floor to ceiling walls, door, personal thermostat, etc).

All engineers have their own office. Sometimes they are double offices, most
interns have 5ft? tall cubicles.

This isn't so uncommon once you get out of the "startup"/frat house employers.

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byebyetech
Which company ?

~~~
FT_intern
probably msft

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j4_james
This is probably not the kind of answer you were looking for, but for me the
number one criteria is location. If it's going to take me 2 hours each way to
commute to a job, I'm not even considering it. So I find it frustrating how
difficult some companies make it for you to find their office location. I
really wish the Hacker News "Who is Hiring" threads had zipcode/postcode as a
required field.

And for something like a job board, being able to register my location and
have it display approximate commute times for each job listing would be a
dream come true.

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tdb7893
Try to get the interviewer comfortable and realaxed and then just ask them
about their job and the position that you are interviewing for. I've found
that 90% of the time you can get a pretty decent feel of a company after
having a relaxed conversation with a few employees. I've found if you go in
with a bunch of canned questions they just answer with canned answers.

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sciurus
Here's a list of questions that I've used for operations-focused roles:
[https://www.polibyte.com/2015/02/06/interview-
questions/](https://www.polibyte.com/2015/02/06/interview-questions/)

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nicomfe
freedom!, not being tide up to a strictly daily schedule 8 to 5, 9 to 6, or
whatever, thats bullshit, as long as you meet the goals (and being present in
some boring meetings), I always look for the freedom to decide when to get in
and off work. Among other stuff of course, but the main one is that.

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JSeymourATL
#1) The People - is the team good? Will they elevate your game? And help move
the agenda forward?

Having a solid boss, and senior reporting relationships is huge. Here's a good
list questions for a potential new boss> [http://www.inc.com/alison-green/how-
to-interview-your-prospe...](http://www.inc.com/alison-green/how-to-interview-
your-prospective-new-boss.html)

~~~
romanovcode
Really? People come and go all the time.

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AnimalMuppet
Yes, but culture changes more slowly. If the culture is good, it (probably)
won't break because one or two people leave.

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sbank
Autonomy over my work and how I solve problems. Not having to deal with the
customer directly or provide support. Few meetings and business waste. Quiet
working conditions with few interruptions.

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codeonfire
Is the company making enough money to pay me at my experience level but not so
much that it is runaway money politics. Are there lots of inexperienced people
at the company that just want to be in charge. The scene in There Will Be
Blood when Plainview has to walk out of the town meeting and walk away from
the oil because of the chaos describes it. Lets find something reasonably
profitable that the power hungry noobs and politicians will stay away from.

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AnimalMuppet
I look for a balance of several things:

Money. My life is kind of expensive right now (kids in high school and
college), and I really need money.

But I also need time. I can't give you 80 hours a week for very many weeks.
I've got a life outside of work.

And when I am at work, I don't have time in my life for people with toxic
personalities, or for a ton of political BS. I expect people to be grownups at
work; I've got enough teenagers at home.

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navyad
For new position, Whatever technology it is you will learn on the go But I
look forward to work with smart peoples to learn from them. I look for
flexible hours, foosball games, lunch or dinner outing. And most importantly
open and transparent environment which helps professionally and personally .

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sotojuan
Sebastian Markbage of Facebook recently posted about this. Essentially, hard
but interesting prolems.

[https://twitter.com/sebmarkbage/status/774016577033216000](https://twitter.com/sebmarkbage/status/774016577033216000)

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marmot777
Opportunities to learn and grow. Stagnation is the worst. If you've been there
you know what I mean.

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aprdm
money

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thecupisblue
Not in any specific order. If a company offers me one more of these than the
current one, I'll jump.

0\. Ability to influence

I don't want to work somewhere where I'm just a gear without a say. I'm a
developer that loves exploring, tinkering, learning. If I find something that
I think could make us work faster, better, more efficient, I want to be able
to suggest it and it having a chance to become a part of our process. But, I'm
also someone who loves exploring design and UX topics, business, marketing
(and especially platforms I as a 23 yr old use and approaches older people
usually don't see). I want to be able to have a sitdown with the design team
and say "hey, I think this doesn't work, what do you think?" or with marketers
"hey, why don't we make deals with influencers in this niche and have them
shout us out?"

1\. Flexibility in time/location

I don't want to stand on point for 8 hours on a chair so someone thinks I'm
productive. I've been doing more and more travel and talking and I want to say
"Hey, I've been invited to be at this panel at this time and place, I'll be
out of the office" or go home after 6 hours of work because I'm having a lousy
day in the IDE.

2\. Ability to learn, teach and promote myself.

I want to learn from my team, with my team, teach my team. I want to be able
to go to conferences and have the company pay for some of them, I want to
write blog posts on the company blog, write a library out of something we use.

3\. Ability to hire.

If I know a developer that's awesome and want to hire him, I don't want to go
through a ton of red-tape and have him go through whiteboard interviews and HR
bullshit.

4\. Work on interesting problems

I don't want to write the same thing and fix the same bugs for the rest of my
life, that's why I prefer startups over corps and agencies.

5\. Equipment of choice and software.

Yes, I want that new Macbook Pro that's gonna come out in a month. I want the
new Nexus, Note 7 when it stops blowing up, new iPhone 7 or whatever is your
weapon of choice. Not being able to get it is like not buying your mechanic
new tools because "hey this wrench is okay, kinda used up and could break but
fuck it".

6\. Being a part of the team and doing team stuff

I want to have lunches with my team, go drinking, skateboarding, diving,
travelling, team-building. The more expensive the less it needs to occur, but
a team building once a year on some new location should be a thing.

7\. Perks

Gym, free lunch, great coffee, beer in the fridge, games to play during
relaxation time.

8\. Compensation and ability to earn more.

If I'm bringing consistent value to the team, you're able to grab new talent
because of me, I improve your processes and workflows, of course I will go
elsewhere if I can earn more there. Stay in the competition by bumping my
salary.

9\. Transparency

I want to know what's going on in our company, especially if you put me in a
leadership position. If I'm required to shelter my team from the storm of
shit, I wanna know if I should carry an umbrella with me that day.

10\. Pride

I want to be proud of the product I build, of the company I work for, of the
team I am part of. All of the above contributes to that.

