[mindcrime]

Salary range, description of office environment (and/or actual pictures), remote work policy, expected hours, dress code, tech stack details, some details on what the project actually is, and a quick "Joel test" like summary of the current development practices.

Also, a note indicating whether or not managers refer to people as "resources". Also, the name of the actual development methodology (if any) that is in use (eg, don't just say "Agile" - tell me if you're doing Scrum, SAFE, XP, Crystal, UP, or your own made-up thing, etc).

[misja111]

+1 for salary range. It's bizar that some companies require you to first go through the entire interview process and only do the salary negotation at the end. At which point you might find out that there never was a possibility for a match and you both have wasted your time.

[mindcrime]

At which point you might find out that there never was a possibility for a match and you both have wasted your time.

Exactly. It's ridiculous to do that.

What's arguably even worse is when you know that the company knows what your salary expectations are ahead of time, and they still go through the entire process, and then at the end either come up with an offer that's way below your bar, or decline to make an offer because "paying you that much would create a disequity on the team". Yeah, I got that last one once... AFTER going through two rounds of interviews. I'm thinking "if you knew you weren't willing to pay me what I was looking for, why did you waste hours of my time interviewing?!??"

[handbanana]

Agreed. These days I'm always sure to communicate very clearly what my salary requirements are, and I haven't had that happen recently.

[oceanghost]

I've turned down interviews from Lucas Arts, Dream Works and other companies for this reason. n n

[handbanana]

If you don't know the salary up front and they won't divulge that info, then why bother interviewing? How often would it be a pleasant surprise?

[mindcrime]

The times I've been in these situations, it's usually involved a recruiter, and I've had verbal confirmation from the recruiter to the effect of "I gave them your number and they are OK with it". Now it's possible the recruiter misstated things somewhere along the way, so who knows? But that's what made these things all the more surprising when they've come up: the fact that I was told specifically "I gave them your number and it's within their range" or "they're OK with it" or some similar verbiage.

Had I been applying direct (no recruiter involved) I probably would not have gone through that much process without demanding more details. Knowing what I know now, I definitely wouldn't.

[handbanana]

You can always try to find the salary range online, too (sometimes). Glassdoor, paysa, + indeed and other sites sometimes try to provide a guestimate range. Take each with a grain of salt of course. I'm very direct with recruiters typically, as I don't like having my time wasted (as it has in the past).

[hiyer]

That's pretty much the norm in India.

[cmorgan8506]

> Also, a note indicating whether or not managers refer to people as "resources"

This made me chuckle. It's a pretty accurate measure of a companies culture though.

[calciphus]

At my last job we had a rule: if someone (usually a new manager) called people "resources", we called them "overhead".

Ex. "I could get more people on my team if we had less overhead".

It helped that our lead Agile Coach was the main advocate of this particular approach.

[mindcrime]

It's a pet issue of mine. I feel very strongly that a "resource" is something like a backhoe, a stack of lumber, a pallet of widgets, a computer, a building, etc. A person is... well... a person, damnit.

Calling people "resources" and treating them as fungible, disposable, commodities is extremely dehumanizing and is emblematic of the typical corporate newspeak bullshit that some people use as a dodge to avoid facing the fact that their actions affect actual people.

[pleasecalllater]

I'm sure they are, so asking this question is useless... I won't believe the answer.

[strictnein]

There's one level worse: Human Capital, as in Human Capital Management (HCM).

[amiller2571]

Places I have worked in the past preferred to say "meat in the seat"

[klenwell]

In addition, a summary of the hiring process.

The standard one-line HN Who's Hiring summary is also more informative than most the boilerplate crap I come across. Example:

> FormulaFolios | Full-Stack Rails Developer | Costa Mesa, CA | ONSITE Full-Time | $80k-100k

As a hiring manager, I've put a great deal of thought and effort not only in our job posting but in our whole process. It requires extra effort for sure, but having been on the other side of the process and suffered the many indignities of job hunting, I try to be spare our applicants from them as much as possible.

This means responding within 48 hours to any applications and notifying applicants when they've been rejected for consideration as soon as possible. These messages are all templated but I tailor them to each candidate.

Since I take some pride in our job postings, here's our most recent one:

https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/172538/full-stack-rails-devel...

(We're closing it soon so link will probably be dead by end of the week.)

[cmorgan8506]

Do you see any benefits on the hiring side of things when you're more transparent?

[klenwell]

Candidates seem to appreciate it. It saves everyone time when something like salary expectations are clearly out of alignment.

I've been using this approach for the last 2-3 years and I have found it to be successful (across 2 companies) and worth the extra effort. I haven't received any negative feedback about our process (which I don't take to mean there isn't any or the process is perfect) and I haven't regretted any of the hires we've made (probably around 12 in total). Even when I have to send out a rejection notice, I often get thanked by the candidate for it.

One other important point is that I've worked with management and my team to constantly refine and improve our process. Their buy-in is critical and I feel it needs to be an agile process just like our software development process.

[herhor]

Exactly! When I send my CV to a future employer, I don't send a list of what require, but what I have to offer.

However, very little job offers are actually "offers" but rather "requirements list".

[monkeynotes]

Office environment!

I recently interviewed at a lunch meeting, and then second interview in a coffee shop (very casual interviews). By the end of the second interview they wanted me to make a suggestion for their offer. I said I needed to see their offices and look at their product before I'd consider moving from my current position.

I was rather taken aback that they didn't really consider I might want to see the environment I'd be spending a lot of my time, nor want to see what I was going to be working on.

Eventually I got to see the offices and the product, I loved the product but just couldn't jive with their office. It wasn't terrible or anything, but compared to where I work now I wasn't prepared to make the switch.

I feel extremely fortunate to be able to be picky about where I work. Every day I come to work I think about how fortunate I am to be happy with my work.

[handbanana]

This but missing one of the most important for me: PTO in days. If it's unlimited, that's vague and could mean 10-50 days, but it's better than not knowing

[ryandrake]

At least I want to know if they distinguish between Vacation and Sick leave. I’ve seen a lot of the recent trend of lumping it all into “PTO” so if you get 2 weeks of PTO a year and you get sick for a week, you only have one week left for actual vacation.