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Good Will Hrunting posted:Java/Scala
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Nov 22, 2016 19:15
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I interviewed today at what I guess qualifies as a startup? Financial management software, they've got around ~220 employees. Pretty solid pedigree when it comes to the founder and CEO, so I'm not incredibly worried that they will go under; they're about 7 years old and have solid revenue of ~12 mil with more raised in funding, although they're still privately held. If I get an offer, should I be asking for some form of equity? How much is reasonable to ask for, or to accept?
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Nov 29, 2016 03:02
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Coca Koala posted:I interviewed today at what I guess qualifies as a startup? Financial management software, they've got around ~220 employees. Pretty solid pedigree when it comes to the founder and CEO, so I'm not incredibly worried that they will go under; they're about 7 years old and have solid revenue of ~12 mil with more raised in funding, although they're still privately held. you will get none, or like 5-10% or your salary as bonus in equity out of an option pool. also that place will not feel like a startup. they probably have dedicated HR, recruiters, IT staff, accountants, red tape, etc.
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Nov 29, 2016 03:07
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Coca Koala posted:they've got around ~220 employees You won't be talking about "points" or percentages, that late in a startup you're probably getting equity offers that are priced at their present value and don't rely on the future magic kaboom.
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Nov 29, 2016 03:10
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leper khan posted:you will get none, or like 5-10% or your salary as bonus in equity out of an option pool. also that place will not feel like a startup. they probably have dedicated HR, recruiters, IT staff, accountants, red tape, etc. I'm alright with having things like dedicated HR and IT staff; I'm past the phase of my life where I'm paying attention to things like "A fridge full of energy drinks that we keep stocked for you!" and "We do your laundry for you so that you don't have to worry about being an adult" as benefits. JawnV6 posted:Do you know what series? I'd guess somewhere in the E~F range. Look them up on crunchbase.com or similar to see. Crunchbase says they've gone through three rounds of fundraising to get $XM, with the most recent being the C Series for $ZM back in 2014. Coca Koala fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Nov 29, 2016 |
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Nov 29, 2016 03:19
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Coca Koala posted:Crunchbase says they've gone through three rounds of fundraising to get $XM, with the most recent being the Y Series for $ZM back in 20XX. That's enough for a unique hit, if you mind things like that, and on angellist they're advertising "0.005% – 0.04%" equity for SWEs.
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Nov 29, 2016 03:30
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Ah, I didn't even think about using something like Angellist; I checked glassdoor and that was pretty much the extent of my knowledge regarding how to get baseline salary and benefits information. Thanks!
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Nov 29, 2016 03:42
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I would be more concerned the company is doing this "we are a startup!" thing when they have more than 200 people. I would wonder if they are really just a mid-size company using that as an excuse to get you working 80 hours a week.
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Nov 29, 2016 09:14
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As I understood, it's not a startup if it's mainly supporting itself off its own revenue?
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Nov 29, 2016 11:17
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Also it's seven years old.
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Nov 29, 2016 15:41
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Imagine calling YouTube a startup in 2012
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Nov 29, 2016 15:57
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ultrafilter posted:Also it's seven years old. It took well over a decade before Amazon was profitable. I think some companies use "startup" as a way to say "we aren't done establishing ourselves in the market" as opposed to "we're still working out how exactly we're going to function".
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Nov 29, 2016 16:23
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:It took well over a decade before Amazon was profitable. Wasn't that because they were funneling all revenue back into company growth?
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Nov 29, 2016 16:47
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fritz posted:Wasn't that because they were funneling all revenue back into company growth? Yes, that's my point -- some companies use "startup" to mean "we're still in the growth phase".
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Nov 29, 2016 16:52
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Just had a phone screen where the recruiter asked me about 15 technical questions that he typed the answers to noisily in the background while I answered. Hell yeah.
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Nov 29, 2016 19:22
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How do I search for telecommuting jobs? I've always been willing to relocate before so I don't know where to start looking. My wife is going through the final stages of getting offers from companies in Washington and Illinois so I can't apply to positions in either location because I can't promise I'd be able to move there and one of the cities is small enough I'd likely only be able to find something telecommuting anyways.
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Nov 30, 2016 00:52
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LLSix posted:How do I search for telecommuting jobs? I've always been willing to relocate before so I don't know where to start looking. What I'm seeing, having been looking casually for a remote work position for over a year, is that coding remotely is still nowhere near a mainstream type of job. If you don't have a special skill, know that special someone, or be able to accept a special salary, it's an order of magnitude harder than just getting a regular office job.
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Nov 30, 2016 03:42
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baquerd posted:What I'm seeing, having been looking casually for a remote work position for over a year, is that coding remotely is still nowhere near a mainstream type of job. If you don't have a special skill, know that special someone, or be able to accept a special salary, it's an order of magnitude harder than just getting a regular office job. As someone who keeps an eye out for remote work, this has also been my experience. And to follow this up, I've worked remotely on a few different teams over the years. I got the jobs without them being advertised as remote, but when I brought it up during negotiations they turned out to be open to it. Sadly, at two of those companies we eventually got some dumbass exec that decided to do away with remote work on a whim. After working from home for years, it loving sucks being in an office everyday again.
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Nov 30, 2016 03:54
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LLSix posted:How do I search for telecommuting jobs? I've always been willing to relocate before so I don't know where to start looking. Stack Overflow has a checkbox for remote jobs. I just accepted a job I found that way. Searching other sites like LinkedIn is hard because searching for "remote" gets you listings that say "no remote!" Personally I'd apply for positions in both cities. If a company in, say, Washington wants to hire you and it turns out you're moving to Illinois, you can explain the situation and you might be able to turn it into a remote job if they really like you. baquerd posted:What I'm seeing, having been looking casually for a remote work position for over a year, is that coding remotely is still nowhere near a mainstream type of job. If you don't have a special skill, know that special someone, or be able to accept a special salary, it's an order of magnitude harder than just getting a regular office job. This too. Companies that are hiring remote-first are either hiring people that check all of their weird front end framework needs, have actual experience in a newer language like Golang, or (most likely) it's for a DevOps-type role.
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Nov 30, 2016 03:56
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There are good remote-only (WeWorkRemotely, wfh.io) or remote-filterable sites (Stack Overflow, Github jobs, HN jobs). If your idea of an ideal job is writing Java at a bank, no you're not going to find a remote job easily. If your ideal job is writing python devops tools for some internet thingamajig, it probably will not be so difficult. I found my first remote job on HN + have gotten many interviews and a handful of offers from WWR + wfh.io jobs.
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Nov 30, 2016 04:05
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And don't for a second let people underpay you in return for remote. Remote jobs should pay at least ~meh SF money, because they are competing with all the other SF companies that will also hire you remotely. Of course you're gonna have a hard time getting insane bubble SV Google money, but if they offer you like 60k for some Sr Eng role because you live in Omaha or whatever... tell them to suck an egg. It's easy to find 80-100% SF pay remotely.
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Nov 30, 2016 04:10
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I've seen some good luck with remote work by starting a non-remote job where the person lives currently then moving to a new location. This also works great if you live in a higher COL area and are moving to a lower COL area since many larger companies don't downgrade your salary for moving.
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Nov 30, 2016 17:24
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Thread, I need some advice. A place really likes me and wants me in for a final round. However, their Glassdoor reviews from engineers and the rest of the company in other offices range from bad to absolutely scathing. This would be working on a brand new team that is 6 weeks old, in Go (which I'm looking to transition to), on cool poo poo that's interesting to me. The company is stable, fwiw. What do?
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Dec 1, 2016 21:24
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Sounds bad enough to abort. Or at least it might be. Seems unlikely that the Go team is so independent that you could be shielded from whatever that company is doing to piss off everyone. Hard to say more without knowing what is in the glassdoor reviews.
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Dec 1, 2016 21:34
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Ask them specifically about the issues you've read about. This is a legit concern about company culture and there's nothing wrong with raising it as an issue. If they can't answer satisfactorily, then you bail.
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Dec 1, 2016 21:36
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Or take the job and keep interviewing so you can bail if the lie about it not being bad and it does turn out to be terrible.
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Dec 1, 2016 21:44
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Thread, I need some advice. A place really likes me and wants me in for a final round. However, their Glassdoor reviews from engineers and the rest of the company in other offices range from bad to absolutely scathing. This would be working on a brand new team that is 6 weeks old, in Go (which I'm looking to transition to), on cool poo poo that's interesting to me. The company is stable, fwiw. go to the interview ask questions interviews aren't just to test you
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Dec 1, 2016 22:40
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Good Will Hrunting posted:...their Glassdoor reviews from engineers and the rest of the company in other offices range from bad to absolutely scathing... Agreeing with others : Ask them. See if you like the answer or not.
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Dec 2, 2016 01:30
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Thread, I need some advice. A place really likes me and wants me in for a final round. However, their Glassdoor reviews from engineers and the rest of the company in other offices range from bad to absolutely scathing. This would be working on a brand new team that is 6 weeks old, in Go (which I'm looking to transition to), on cool poo poo that's interesting to me. The company is stable, fwiw. Glassdoor is practically useless if you ask me.
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Dec 3, 2016 13:42
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IMO there's basically two types of glassdoor reviews: 1. Really angry and resentful ex and current employess (legitimate or not), that see it as a way to throw a rock against against a place they largely have no way to push back against. 2. Fake reviews and reviews 'encouraged' by bosses. In other words, it's an OK tool for detecting the whiff of something really rotten, but pretty much useless for sorting between slightly bad/average/awesome companies. Also useless for getting a sense of specific jobs within a company.
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Dec 3, 2016 13:55
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mrmcd posted:IMO there's basically two types of glassdoor reviews: If you see the phrase "keep doing what you're doing", it's probably a shill. I swear, all HR drones must have went to the same seminar on how to fake/influence GD reviews, because that statement is attached to almost every review that seems planted. I think GD can be very useful, but only using the methods one must use with any online review system (looking at you Amazon.) I scour the reviews for objective facts (e.g. they removed x,y,z benefits, bonuses are not paid, turnover is high) rather than crybaby feelings from aggrieved employees. Of course, even subjective reviews, if there are a bunch of them, can point to big problems. The ratings/review trends are also useful. It may signal a management change or cutbacks that indicate a failing company. B-Nasty fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Dec 3, 2016 |
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Dec 3, 2016 18:23
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In this case, the reviews were very objective. There were a few recounts of the business operating shadily to make money (it's advertising and the things they were doing could quite possibly have been real, spoken from someone who works in advertising) among other complaints geared more towards the HR side. I ended up avoiding it. incoming:Trip report from 2 months of interviewing with a handful of companies: wow this sucks! Even places where the first few rounds went well and I meshed very well with the initial interviewers, somewhere along the way I met someone (in cases where I went onsite and met multiple teams, a few people) who seemed like they'd be hellish to work with. Whether it was arrogance, lack of communication skills, a general disinterest in me or the interview process, there hasn't been a single place (I've had 3 on-sights and 4 other places where I made it multiple rounds via phone screen and assignments) that I felt comfortable with or at least good enough to continue the process. I've rejected two offers so far. One was a tougher call than the other, but of the other rejections I've received I wasn't even terribly bothered by any except for that one I posted about in here where they bounced me cause of a dumb system design question. Is this how it is? Am I being too picky or just meeting really lovely companies and people?
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Dec 3, 2016 19:44
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Trip report from 2 months of interviewing with a handful of companies: wow this sucks! Even places where the first few rounds went well and I meshed very well with the initial interviewers, somewhere along the way I met someone (in cases where I went onsite and met multiple teams, a few people) who seemed like they'd be hellish to work with. Whether it was arrogance, lack of communication skills, a general disinterest in me or the interview process, there hasn't been a single place (I've had 3 on-sights and 4 other places where I made it multiple rounds via phone screen and assignments) that I felt comfortable with or at least good enough to continue the process.
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Dec 3, 2016 19:55
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Ralith posted:I feel like one or two of the engineers who've had their work interrupted to interview a candidate being a bit disinterested shouldn't be surprising, let alone a red flag. That's understandable, but to me it says something about the culture when you go in for final rounders and multiple people haven't read your resume in advance and just care about your answers to their somewhat arbitrary questions. Things along those lines. I don't know, this is only the second time I'm interviewing and it's different cause I have more experience and I guess therefore higher expectations, but so far most places have really lived up to the arrogant autist stereotype save for a few which fit the rich startup brogrammer stereotype.
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Dec 3, 2016 20:26
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Good Will Hrunting posted:That's understandable, but to me it says something about the culture ....
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Dec 3, 2016 20:35
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Good Will Hrunting posted:That's understandable, but to me it says something about the culture when you go in for final rounders and multiple people haven't read your resume in advance and just care about your answers to their somewhat arbitrary questions. Things along those lines. I don't know, this is only the second time I'm interviewing and it's different cause I have more experience and I guess therefore higher expectations, but so far most places have really lived up to the arrogant autist stereotype save for a few which fit the rich startup brogrammer stereotype. Yes, it says people have better things to do than read a completely subjective document that has pretty much no bearing on if the person will actually be competent and reasonable to work with. The questions may be arbitrary, but they give at least some insight into your competence and how you work. It sounds like you're looking for a unicorn and I find it hard to believe that your current workplace doesn't have any of the red flags that you've mentioned. As a side note, the last sentence of the quote above doesn't match your previous post. In that you say one person seems to be not great to work with and then in this one you just handwave the whole company to be that way. asur fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Dec 3, 2016 |
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Dec 3, 2016 20:49
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asur posted:It sounds like you're looking for a unicorn and I find it hard to believe that your current workplace doesn't have any of the red flags that you've mentioned. I mean yes, that was that point of my original post. I feel like I am slowly realizing that most places will have flaws and I'm struggling to pick out things that I should put more weight into and determine who is/isn't lovely to work with. A lot of people here have stressed that I should be interviewing the company as well as them interviewing me so how do I do that? What do I ask? My company is certainly not great, but we have hired some great engineers lately and after lots of turnover, the interview process has gotten a lot more cohesive. Also I don't really believe resumes have no bearing on success. If you fabricate them, sure, but I think it's pretty important to be able to explain stuff you've worked on and design decisions from a lower, code-focused level and tech choice level. Obviously resumes in a vacuum can be quite useless, but how useful is it to ask me questions about something I've never worked with? It's impractical - in the real world if I came across a problem I hadn't tackled before I'd do research, not just blabber out an answer without looking into it. I have gotten to a point where I prefer whiteboard algorithms to system design stuff because I've gotten so good at the former and feel like the latter is even more arbitrary.
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Dec 3, 2016 21:20
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In my experience you can't really tell who is lovely to work with just from the interview. Some of the more obvious red flags may present themselves, but you never know if this guy is always behind schedule or gets defensive in code reviews or any of the other million things that actually make somebody a bad coworker. Plus there's a decent chance you'll never work with that person at all. As for resumés, while I do read them I don't always remember the details, especially if I am interviewing several different people. Even if I do remember them I find it's more useful to let the candidate explain his/her background and to ask questions based on that instead of on the application. At the end of the day however, the interview is about whether you have the skills to perform this job, not whether you did well in your last one. And that means that my interview questions are going to be mostly geared toward what we expect for the role. I wouldn't ask you to answer questions in a language you don't know or based on company-specific knowledge, but otherwise the questions are not going to be tailored to your prior experience. in_cahoots fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Dec 3, 2016 |
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Dec 3, 2016 22:02
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Good Will Hrunting posted:In this case, the reviews were very objective. There were a few recounts of the business operating shadily to make money (it's advertising and the things they were doing could quite possibly have been real, spoken from someone who works in advertising) among other complaints geared more towards the HR side. I ended up avoiding it. It sounds to me like you're being pretty picky and reading too much into weak signals. But ultimately only you can decide what's right for you.
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Dec 3, 2016 22:21
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Conducting interviews sucks just as much if not more as being the on the other side of the table. It's probably not a great indication of how lovely a person is to work with.
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Dec 3, 2016 22:39
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