The question that arises is: How can you potentially spot which companies are about/likely to enter a 'golden era' when you interview there? What questions could surface some sort of likelihood? Is it possibly to identify them before they enter the 'golden era'?
It doesn't matter. Most jobs even at those companies were not in the interesting areas you heard about. For every one person at the cool jobs there were thousands elsewhere who had regular deadlines and a regular job. Odds are you wouldn't have had the cool job even if you were born in the right era.
Better advice: when interviewing ask questions when they ask if you have any! Find out what the job is really like.
Ask what hours they normally work - if they give exact times that means they are strict about the times. If they give a lot of hours that means you are expected to work a lot of hours. If they give a range that means they really have flexible times. If they talk about leaving early for their kids third grade events that means they support families.
Ask what they really wear - this is clue to what the dress code is like.
Ask about the perks you care about. I don't play ping-pong so won't mention that perk if I'm interviewing you, but if you ask I can tell you that there are regular tournaments and people do play games here and there, but the tables are empty in the middle of the afternoon: if you care about this perk ask, otherwise focus questions elsewhere.
There are a lot of great jobs. There are a lot of bad jobs. There are jobs that you would hate for reasons that the people who work there don't even care about. There are jobs you will think are great that others will hate.
Yeah, but I mean after decades of experience, you already know how to do those things, and they're fairly basic stuff to know and learn from.
Was thinking more "Imagine you have 30 years of experience and casually looking for the next Bell Labs, what to look out for when there are the company?"
If you have 30 years odds are your real worry is can you afford to retire. I'm not quite there but I'm looking at my accounts. I don't need a fun job - I hope not to be there long. maybe I'm worng, but I believe even the best job can't compare to working on my own projects. (Though they will also have bad days)
No, I'm already "retired" as in I don't have to work to survive. Right now I'm contracting on fun/interesting projects that gets passed to me and idly looking for the next Bell Labs to join for fun :)
I don't think it's really possible for the average employee. You'll just do an interview, like the vibes, and get unbelievably lucky.
By the time their golden age is known outside of the company they are very likely near the decline phase; even if they aren't you are going to be competing with the best now.
For actual upper level leadership: they have the ability to make the golden age happen but studying the circumstances that allowed it to happen at other companies and being very selective about employee number 2-49. After that it's out of your hands.
> being very selective about employee number 2-49. After that it's out of your hands.
Indeed. There's an old saying that A-level people hire A-level people, but B-level people hire C-level people.
Obviously this is too simplistic: How do any B-level people get there in the first place? But there's still some truth to the idea that the overall talent level of a company tends to degrade as it gets larger unless very unusual structures are in place to work against that tendency.
That's just a plain scaling issue, isn't it though? Eventually, the supply of A-level people dries up, no matter the compensation offered. If growth is to continue, B-level people must be hired.
Yes A-level people are rare and expensive. The mistake I see too often is companies not focusing on keeping their core revenue-generating team A-level. Put the B-level people in support roles. When you dilute the core revenue team with B- and C-level people, the As tend to leave and then you're in big trouble.
The quote is from Steve Jobs and is absolutely true. As soon as the first bozo infects your team, they will start hiring other bozos, and after a while your org has regressed to the mean. Therefore you should hold a ridiculously high bar for hiring. A temporarily empty seat is preferable to a non-A player.
For a small company, for one still trying to find its business model, growth is absolutely necessary. The alternative is lost investment, and everyone out of work.
> By the time their golden age is known outside of the company
Yeah, but that's the thing, when you're interviewing, you usually have some sort of access to talk to future potential colleagues, your boss and so on, and they're more open because you're not just "outside the company" but investigating if you'd like to join them. You'll get different answers compared to someone 100% outside the company.
I think the problem is false positives, not false negatives. The people you interact with during the interview process have all sorts of reasons to embellish the experience of working at their company.
> The people you interact with during the interview process have all sorts of reasons to embellish the experience of working at their company.
That's true, but you have to be kind of smart about it. If you just ask the question "Is working here fulfilling?", of course they'll say "Yes, super!". But you cannot take that at face value, your questions need to shaped in a way so you can infer if working there is fulfilling, by asking other questions that can give you clues into that answer.
I worked for a 100-year-old Japanese optical equipment manufacturer (household name, but I don't like to mention it in postings). One of the top-Quality manufacturers in the world. I worked as a peer with some of the top engineers and scientists in modern optics (and often wanted to strangle them).
I worked there for almost 27 years.
The pay was mediocre. The structure and process would drive a lot of folks here, into fits.
But they consistently and routinely produced stuff that cost tens of thousands of dollars, and that people would stake their entire careers on. Stuff that some folks would assume was impossible to make. They have thousands and thousands of hard-core patents.
I felt pride for working there. My business card opened a lot of pretty amazing doors.
It's disappointing to see the stuff that folks here post, when I mention it. It almost seems as if people think I'm exaggerating or outright lying or boasting.
I'm not. There are places that foster greatness; simply by being a place that has a long culture of accomplishment. I was just someone that stood on the shoulders of giants, and I was lucky to have the experience.
That said, I think some of their managers made some big mistakes, and they took a drubbing, but I will bet that they are already getting back on their feet. They are really tough. They weathered being bombed in World War II, and multiple depressions and recessions.
Thanks a lot for sharing your experience, I at least appreciate it!
With that said, if you were to try to figure out how someone from the outside could see that it was a great place to work, during an interview, what questions/topics do you think could have surfaced that as clearly as possible?
Hard to say, these days. Interviewing seems to be a pretty nasty, adversarial process. It wasn't, for me, back when. Not sure if any questions would have done it. I observed the place.
In my case, I was contacted by a recruiter (the old-fashioned kind, which no longer exists). It was quite low-key. When they first contacted me, I thought it was a joke.
I was flown out to a trade show in San Jose, for my initial interview, and to Long Island, for my follow-up. There were no coding tests. I started as an engineer, on a brand-new team of two. I became the manager of that team, after a few years.
I think observing the people there; seeing how they interact with each other, is important.
Of course, looking at their products is also key. Asking yourself "Do I want to help make this stuff?" is important.
In my case, I was intrigued by the culture of the Japanese. I was born overseas, and spent most of my formative years in a pretty heterogenous environment. I like to mix it up with strange (to me) people.
Are you also aware, that typically members of your generation criticize members of my generation for being soft and lazy, despite this new harsh period of adversarial interviews? It boggles my mind that you found a job at a nice company (to say the least) without a test (and that seems like a bad move on the part of the company ?)
I liked your comment and was curious what you make of people who don't believe the process is adversarial, and whether companies should or shouldn't give out tests. When I said boggles my mind I meant in light of the situation today, not you personally
OK. I'll break my own rule. When I say "Have a great day!", it means we're done. I won't foul this place with fighting.
The process should not be adversarial, in my opinion. It's a contract. I do something; you do something. There may be adversity, but that's not required, and it's actually likely to cause problems, down the road. Like any contractural relationship, each party needs to respect and trust the other party to come through with their end.
If the way that you introduce your company to me, is by bullying me (and tests are not "bullying," but many of the other interview games are), then we won't be working together. I don't like bullies. I won't be one, and I won't work with them.
These folks kept me on for a long time. There was a reason for that. I can't speak for all Japanese companies, but this one did not suffer skaters. You delivered, and you were constantly held to account. I did well in that environment. I suspect that many, here, would not.
I don't argue that companies should not give tests. I had tests in other interviews, and did fine. This company chose not to. One reason, is that the folks interviewing me, fought fang, tooth, and claw, for the headcount. When I became a manager, I had to do the same. It was a crazy frugal company.
This meant that they dedicated all their attention to the interview process. This wasn't where they were handed my CV, five minutes before they spoke to me. I was around them all day. They watched me work with others, and they gauged me on my character, more than my tech abilities. The Japanese are really big on character. At least, this company was.
I mentioned that I had an "old-fashioned" recruiter. They don't seem to have those, any more, but part of his job, was to vet me, before putting me forward. They trusted him, and paid him well. I was working for GE, before I interviewed, and had a fairly substantial amount of background, in hardware. That was important to them (it was a hardware company).
I guess that I said the right things, and they gave me a chance. I appreciated it, and worked hard to reward their faith.
I know that my attitude is considered "quaint," in today's cutthroat tech world, but I always legitimately believed in personal Integrity, Honesty, and Loyalty. These qualities actually meant something to this company. I am quite aware that they elicit scorn, from today's tech bros, but they worked for me.
> “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.”
Thanks for the thorough response. I'd edit my comment if I could. I work for a similar company. I do agree that measuring a person's character and similar traits is a way to measure their potential. The next question would be, why have companies started hiring the way they typically do now?
Well, here, we're getting into "guesses and opinion," rather than "personal experience."
I suspect that when tech became a place to earn big salaries, is when the dodgy folks started showing up.
It's always been common for folks with little background in tech, or unrelated experience, to apply for jobs. In fact, as a manager, I often looked for that. I was fairly decent at finding "diamond in the rough" talent (I sort of had to, as my company didn't pay especially well).
But, apparently, these days, even fairly innocuous job postings are inundated with tons of totally unqualified (and a significant portion of the "qualified" ones are outright fabrications) CVs.
Also, you get people that are crooks, applying.
The other side (in my opinion), is that modern tech CEOs are behaving quite badly. They consider their workforce to be some kind of hostile, subhuman slurry, and they treat their workers as such.
In order to fix this, the C-Suite needs to "blink first." They need to do better at treating their workers and prospective workers, well. HR culture also needs to change. It's become outright hostile to employees. I saw that happen in my own company, which started off, quite friendly towards employees. By the time I left, it was pretty much openly hostile.
That's unlikely to materialize, in today's tech industry. Any company that does this, will be eaten alive by their competition.
If people are serious about improving things, then legislation needs to be introduced, to prevent companies that improve their employee relations, from being killed by their competitors, and to help companies to survive manifesting risks, when they take chances on employees.
I am not optimistic that this will happen. If it does happen, it’s unlikely that it will be done well. In fact, the chances are good, that it would make things worse.
Yep. There's a balance between doing enjoyable work, getting paid what you feel your work is worth, and feeling like what you're doing is of some sort of value to your community or the world as a whole.
Maxing out all 3 of those is incredibly rare, but I think once people reach some degree of financial stability, almost all of them go for a job that feels like it's meaningful.
You're getting answers in child responses that while accurate are not necessarily answering the spirit of your question. In my personal opinion, you'll find what you're looking for by searching for a high growth Series A - B startup (I would recommend Seed but that's almost a different animal in terms of risk) with a technical product and strong technical founders + eng leadership.
When you're at a company at that stage that's doing well and has a lot of commercial runway ahead of it, the reality can often end up being that the golden age will last long enough for a very pleasant 4-6 year tenure if you so decide to stay at the company through its growth phase (which often takes it from a 50m-100m valuation to $1B+). Some of these companies will also make the leap from $1B+ to $10B+ or beyond (which makes the golden era at least as long as 6-10 years) and although nothing lasts forever, it can last long enough for you to find what you're looking for at least for a decently long period of time. This pertains to what other commenters have mentioned with regards to "making it golden" -- the golden era is what it is because everyone needs to make it golden and the company is too small for anyone who would dilute that for their own gain to do so without anyone noticing.
The challenge to this approach is that it requires being able to assess a company's commercial prospects as well as the quality of the company's founders, leadership and early team well enough to assess whether the company merely looks like a golden era company or whether it is actually the real deal -- something which even professional investors who target these kinds of companies struggle with. It is possible, but in my experience, it definitely took a couple of rounds of trial and error and getting burned a few times before my radar worked.
Sure, that makes sense. But in order to know what places/communities/organizations are worth getting involved with, that has the right base conditions at least, how to identify those? Not every place has the same likelihood I'd wager, but based on what?
The question that arises is: How can you potentially spot which companies are about/likely to enter a 'golden era' when you interview there? What questions could surface some sort of likelihood? Is it possibly to identify them before they enter the 'golden era'?