Ask HN: Which job criteria is important you when searching a new job?

[mcbetz]

When you search a new job, apart from the regular job description (position, technology, Joel test) which criteria are important for you?

What makes a good job for you?

I feel that a lot of companies still underestimate softer criteria like "remote possible", "deep work possible" or "development plan from day".

[afarrell]

- How long after joining does it take to find out who your line manager is?

- How long does it take to stick a debugger into a particular place in the codebase and run a single automated test to trigger it?

- How long does it take to get a diagram of the schema (or implicit schema) of the relationships among data entities in their main applications?

- How long does it take to find out who the business stakeholders are for my team or projects?

- How long does it take to find out what the goals are for the engineering and product team are overall?

- Can the product manager explain the relationship between technical debt and engineering velocity?

——————

Is it weird that I find myself utterly distressed that these can be so uncertain?

[ta17711771]

It's certainly depressing.

Are you having a hard time finding this?

[afarrell]

I once joined a company where I didn't know where my line manager was.

My current company uses MongoDB and I _really_ wish there was a schema I could read.

[stonecharioteer]

I want to speak to my possible peers. I join my current company, a huge fintech company everyone has heard of, hoping to find amazing people here. The team I originally joined is full of junior developers who have learnt horrible coding habits from idiot architects and seniors. I changed my team within 6 months because I couldn't fight the system anymore.

I am not joining a new place unless I can discuss work with my possible peers. They need to be deserving of me just as I need to be deserving of them.

[decafninja]

Culture. I'm no longer interested working for companies where technology is treated as a disrespected cost center.

There's ways to identify such companies. One of the more obvious ones tends to be having a strict dress code (i.e. must wear biz casual).

[paulcole]

I won’t work for a company that doesn’t have revenue or that has revenue that doesn’t come from charging money for a product or service.