[CaptainOfCoit]

I feel the same way.

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'?

[bluGill]

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.

[CaptainOfCoit]

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?"

[bluGill]

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)

[CaptainOfCoit]

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 :)

[achenet]

The best way to predict the future is invent it.

If you're looking for the next Bell Labs, why not try to found it?

[Lord-Jobo]

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.

[dreamcompiler]

> 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.

[jtbayly]

The saying I’ve heard is about students, but similar enough and different enough o quote here:

“The A students work for the B students and the C students become federal judges.”

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

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.

[dreamcompiler]

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.

[crmd]

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.

[CaptainOfCoit]

> If growth is to continue

Maybe this is the crux of the issue.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

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.

[CaptainOfCoit]

> 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.

[km144]

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.

[CaptainOfCoit]

> 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.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

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.

[CaptainOfCoit]

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?

[ChrisMarshallNY]

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.

[dotnet00]

Considering Long Island, I'm guessing these were X-ray optics?

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Nah. Cameras, microscopes, binoculars, etc. The headquarters is in Tokyo.

[nxor]

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 ?)

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I don't remember attacking, lecturing, or talking down to anyone. I was simply sharing my own life experience.

It is interesting that it was interpreted as some kind of threat, requiring an insult, in response.

Have a great day!

[nxor]

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

[forgotoldacc]

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.

[yowlingcat]

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.

[devnullbrain]

You have to be involved with making it golden: they don't have ride-alongs

[CaptainOfCoit]

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?