Here are some things I personally care about and ask about:
What tasks will I do?
Saying I’m a “senior full stack engineer” (or whatever) doesn’t capture my responsibilities well.
I’d like to hear example tasks that I could do tomorrow if I was already an employee. And also example tasks that I surely would not do. (Are those examples going to be “DBA” or “finance”?)
The format of the answer I’m looking for is not “here is a cool project that lets users inject their own code”, but rather, “we have a bug that allows XSS, this needs to be solved”. This is because employers often present a too shiny reality that employees discover only after signing. This has just happened to a close friend of mine, and is not rare.
Autonomy vs micromanagement
Everybody claims they hate micromanagement, including people who micromanage, or at least this is my (painful) experience.
I am not sure if I want to talk about how I check this, but I have some idea
Culture test: Argue about something
I really care about being able to disagree and have it still a “fun” conversation. People who interview me will often hear me say that, followed by “so I want to try arguing with you about something and check how it goes. Do you have a guess about something we might disagree about?”
I know, this is very Yonatan of me, but this is part of trying to understand if there’s a culture fit.
Influence on Product decisions?
I really like having some non-zero influence on the Product, rather than accepting everything “as is”. This is great for some companies and bad for others.
The biggest mistake I see companies doing is, for example, pretending like their Product situation is great and has no significant uncertainty, while in reality, they are somewhat struggling to get product market fit. The latter would extra attract me! So why pretend to be the former?
This is a more general point:
Tell the employees the real situation. Don’t hire people who imagine they are joining a different company, and will only discover that 3 months in. (I think employers are unaware of how common this is. If you’re an employer, are you sure this isn’t happening in your company?)
Here’s how I would reply if I wasn’t the author:
Here are some things I personally care about and ask about:
What tasks will I do?
Saying I’m a “senior full stack engineer” (or whatever) doesn’t capture my responsibilities well.
I’d like to hear example tasks that I could do tomorrow if I was already an employee. And also example tasks that I surely would not do. (Are those examples going to be “DBA” or “finance”?)
The format of the answer I’m looking for is not “here is a cool project that lets users inject their own code”, but rather, “we have a bug that allows XSS, this needs to be solved”. This is because employers often present a too shiny reality that employees discover only after signing. This has just happened to a close friend of mine, and is not rare.
Autonomy vs micromanagement
Everybody claims they hate micromanagement, including people who micromanage, or at least this is my (painful) experience.
I am not sure if I want to talk about how I check this, but I have some idea
Culture test: Argue about something
I really care about being able to disagree and have it still a “fun” conversation. People who interview me will often hear me say that, followed by “so I want to try arguing with you about something and check how it goes. Do you have a guess about something we might disagree about?”
I know, this is very Yonatan of me, but this is part of trying to understand if there’s a culture fit.
Influence on Product decisions?
I really like having some non-zero influence on the Product, rather than accepting everything “as is”. This is great for some companies and bad for others.
The biggest mistake I see companies doing is, for example, pretending like their Product situation is great and has no significant uncertainty, while in reality, they are somewhat struggling to get product market fit. The latter would extra attract me! So why pretend to be the former?
This is a more general point:
Tell the employees the real situation. Don’t hire people who imagine they are joining a different company, and will only discover that 3 months in. (I think employers are unaware of how common this is. If you’re an employer, are you sure this isn’t happening in your company?)
Would you consider writing more about this, as you feel comfortable?
I think “micromanagement” could be really unevenly distributed among managers, and the reasons counterintuitive, so talking about it seems useful.
May I ask—are you asking because you hope that I’ll answer with something that will make managers micromanage less?
If so, I don’t think I’m skilled enough at writing to change someone’s management style via a post
I’m open to talk one-on-one though
I just wanted to hear your perspective, I don’t think it has to change managers minds. It might inform people here.