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I know we've covered what questions you should ask about a company before you would decide to work there. But what do you do with the answers?

In other words, what would you consider a dealbreaker? I.e. what would scare you so much about a company that you wouldn't work there, even if everything else was great?

For example, if they tell me they don't use version control, I wouldn't work there. End of story.

Jaco Pretorius
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    "Say, have you read 'Twilight'? What an awesome book! Changed my life!" – BlairHippo Sep 28 '10 at 14:37
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    "We'd like to hire you." Any company willing to hire me is clearly not a company I'd want to work for! – Fishtoaster Sep 28 '10 at 14:46
  • @BlairHippo: the book is still awesome (yes, I read it) if you compare it to the film... not to mention the loads of vampire stories that were published in reaction to Twilight's success. – ShdNx Sep 29 '10 at 10:22
  • The book is always better then the film. – Chris Sep 29 '10 at 12:53
  • Except for "The Last Tango in Paris". Film > book in that case. – Erik Escobedo Sep 29 '10 at 13:00
  • @ShdNx: Book: Vampires are angsty hyper-controlling stalkers who turn into disco balls under direct sunlight. Movie: ... and when they're not disco balls, they're mimes. – BlairHippo Sep 29 '10 at 14:23
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    I could live with 'Twilight' (i mean, wearing black clothes, speaking wise things noone understands and trying to avoid the sun comes kinda natural to most guys in IT), but when they mention 'Digital Fortress' by dan brown in a sentence without curse words, THAT would be a dealbreaker – keppla Aug 01 '11 at 08:48
  • It is nice when companies are upfront about conditions, but bankrupt or not, they need to attract coders, so MOST OF THE TIME YOU WILL FIND OUT ONLY AFTER YOU HAVE JOINED. – Job Oct 22 '11 at 16:28
  • @BlairHippo: Someone on Stackoverflow seems to have [hired the vampire from Twilight](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1526064/interview-questions-to-detect-copy-and-paste-coders/1526095#1526095). – user16764 Oct 22 '11 at 21:21

33 Answers33

135

Companies that feel the need to mention up-front that unpaid (for salaried employees) overtime is required 100% of the time.

Jesse C. Slicer
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    THIS. THIS. THIS. Occasional "hell weeks" are just part of the industry. But when you're EXPECTED to be putting in "extra" hours just to be perceived as pulling your weight, run. – BlairHippo Sep 28 '10 at 14:33
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    I'll work overtime if it's something I caused - but damned if you're going to throw me on a coder death march so you can underbid on a project and look good to your bosses and get a huge raise while I'm working 60 hour weeks for months on end. – ist_lion Sep 28 '10 at 15:00
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    Or they don't even consider it over-time. – JeffO Sep 28 '10 at 15:05
  • The other option is take things into your own hands: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1996-03-24/ – Mark C Sep 29 '10 at 03:41
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    Unfortunately, this is the norm in my part of the world. If I turned down every job offer that involved unpaid overtime, I'de be jobless :(. – MAK Sep 29 '10 at 05:47
  • My #1 concern with any job is this right here. – Chris Holmes Sep 29 '10 at 11:46
  • @MAX: It was the same here (Ireland) int the 90's, but at some point in the last 10 or 12 years that's passed. – Binary Worrier Sep 29 '10 at 13:05
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    Amen! Worst decision of my career was working for a company after they told me in the interview that "we routinely work 45-50 hours a week." – Austin Salonen Sep 29 '10 at 18:12
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    Would this still apply to a startup? Many startups work crazy hours and they would probably tell you up-front that you may need to work 60 hours a week from time to time... – Jaco Pretorius Sep 29 '10 at 19:57
  • If 100% of the time is unpaid, isn't this a voluntary position? – JBRWilkinson Sep 29 '10 at 21:59
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    @Austin: I assume that if they told you "we routinely work 45-50 hours a week," that they actually work 50-60 hours a week? – Carson63000 Oct 01 '10 at 01:06
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    @Carson63000: Spot on... My first few months I did the same but it was mainly to get things (source control, CI, bug tracking) in place so that I didn't have to work those long days. That ended up burning me because they came to expect that I would work those long days. – Austin Salonen Oct 01 '10 at 13:57
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    Although I live in a country (Norway) where unpaid overtime is illegal, my experience is that employers can still "encourage" unpaid overtime by alluding to it in some way. Now that I'm a consultant, that is thankfully no longer an issue. – Vetle Oct 04 '10 at 11:51
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    I ask in the interview what the expected number of hours per week is. I understand occasionally you may need to put in a 50 or so hour week to get something done. But if this happens all the time it just leads to me being unhappy, them being unhappy, and ultimately I'll just switch jobs anyway. So far it hasn't hurt an interview yet on the other company's side. On my side there was one place that had an unrealistic expectations so I told them I wasn't interested anymore. In reality anything above 45 hours is not sustainable in the long term. – Cervo May 07 '11 at 21:07
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Any form of "punching the clock".

I need flexible hours - give me challenging work, and I'll get it done. Start counting one second of my "time on the clock" as a measure of productivity and I'm out the door.

Maybe what I really want is just plain trust.

Alan
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    +1 I hate being "time oriented" rather than "goal oriented". I'll work as much as needed to get an objective accomplished; forcing me to sit at my desk for a certain amount of time (or preventing me from staying when I need to) is absurd. – bedwyr Sep 28 '10 at 14:46
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    +1: The owner of my company calls it 'time-theft' when I get back from lunch 5 mins late. Nevermind the 200hrs of unpaid overtime I've put in. – Steven Evers Sep 28 '10 at 14:52
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    @SnOrfus: Eek. Please tell us your resume is making the rounds, mate.... – BlairHippo Sep 28 '10 at 15:33
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    Respecting and treating someone as an adult can go a long way... – VirtuosiMedia Sep 28 '10 at 17:45
  • But at the same time, if someone is in the office for 8 hours and only working 3 of them, that person is under-productive. – Beep beep Sep 28 '10 at 17:49
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    @BlairHippo: Indeed it is. I got fed up and gave in my notice already without anything lined up. My region (saskatoon sk) is very weak for development work though so I'm probably going to have to move. – Steven Evers Sep 28 '10 at 17:56
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    @SnOrfus: Ouch. Good luck to you; here's hoping you land on your feet. – BlairHippo Sep 28 '10 at 19:13
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    How do you guys generally feel about time tracking for the sake of Evidence-Based Scheduling (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html)? – keithjgrant Sep 28 '10 at 22:28
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    This is groaning for a Dilbert strip: [These 5 on time-sheets](http://search.dilbert.com/search?w=time-sheet&asug=&view=list&filter=type%3Acomic&x=0&y=0) are pretty good, and the last one is a classic. Other problems include ["I want everything fast and perfect"](http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-08-12/), [time wasted reporting time](http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-08-24/), [cross-charging](http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-12-13/), and [getting work done at the wrong time](http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-09-27/). – Mark C Sep 29 '10 at 03:13
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    I worked at a place where everyone clocked in and out, and I loved it. Know why? Because you were governed by *reality*, not *perception*. Every week, last week's time report for everyone was left out on a desk where anyone could browse it. No more hairy eyeball when you left early on Thursday; anyone could look and see that you worked extra on Tuesday and Wednesday to cover it. – Kyralessa Sep 29 '10 at 03:50
  • I disagree. I have to complete a time card in my job - but it's not for the purpose of keeping me on the straight and narrow, it's for billing. I don't have to work 9-5 every day, I do have to work 80 hours per fortnight (and usually do a bit more). – Bevan Sep 29 '10 at 20:11
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    @KeithJGrant: Asking employees how much time they've spent working on Task X is fine - you have to be able to track projects, etc. But asking people to clock-in and clock-out at certain times of the day is just ludicrous if it's used to beat employees up. – JBRWilkinson Sep 29 '10 at 22:02
  • This is one of the most whiny, ridiculous things I've ever seen. Of course businesses need you to work specific hours, that is a normal expectation of ALL employees. It helps the business manage the business and prevents them from getting sued when they fire Joe for not doing his job because Sam works even fewer hours and didn't get fired. Grow up people, it's business not a fun factory. – HLGEM Oct 02 '10 at 18:44
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    Are you serious? I'm paid to get things done - not to be in the office during specified hours. Fortunately, I have an employer (and team, manager, etc.) that gets that. It's possible for me to be in the office from 8am to 8pm every day and do nothing (and hopefully get fired for it); if I don't show up at all - or choose my own flexible hours, but get my work done, that's all that matters. – Alan Oct 02 '10 at 19:04
  • @Alan, I fully understand, but this only works if you are not a billable resource. –  Nov 14 '10 at 11:37
  • @HLGEM There's a difference between requiring working for 35-40h a week and requiring you to be in the office from 9am-5:30pm every day. It's that difference that people are talking about here; complaining about the latter, not the former. – Matthew Scharley Feb 24 '11 at 00:33
  • new company, less than 1 year old and they just added time sheets and we're told "it's about finishing the project! not about butts in seats!" yet we're working 9+ hrs every day because of shitty deadlines. 40hr work week? HAH. –  Nov 27 '14 at 08:28
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My shortlist:

  1. Overtime is mandatory (unless I call the shots). Overtime is always a sign of mismanagement. If someone f***s up and I can't do anything about it but waste my spare time to clean up after them, that's a no go for me.

  2. I have to work with the provided tools. Sorry, I'm a senior developer. I didn't spend years refining my skills to be limited arbitrarily.

  3. Bad mood in the team. Dirty/messy workplace. This yells "management doesn't care."

  4. Old computers. A decent computer costs around $1000 (pure hardware). That's about the same as one developer seat per day. If that's not in the budget, sorry, I don't see a point working for a bankrupt company. If the computer is decent, it has to have at least 4GB of RAM. That costs $120 today -> no reason at all to have less.

  5. If my boss is corrupt or tries to corrupt me (lying to customers, making software worse than it could be so we can magically "fix" it for more money, abusing people why they are not present, mobbing).

  6. Agile without any of the rules/tools. Agile is just a label. You need a lot of discipline, rules and management support to be able to be agile. If agile just means for them "we ship crap every two weeks instead of once a year," I quit.

  7. Rules are more important than reality.

Aaron Digulla
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  • @Aaron - Have you experienced employers doing #5 in the past. I've always wondered if any companies really do that as part of regular practice. – orokusaki Sep 28 '10 at 17:45
  • "I have to work with the provided tools" - some of that you cannot get away from. If a company is using Subversion for source code control, you have to use Subversion. If they want you to use Emacs instead of vi (or vice versa), then there's a problem. – Beep beep Sep 28 '10 at 17:51
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    I've experienced #5 before. Needless to say I was planning my exit strategy that same day. – Jeremy Bade Sep 28 '10 at 18:41
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    RE #6, I always press for details when they say, "We're an agile development shop". Often that just means they don't document or plan anything. – Damovisa Sep 29 '10 at 07:07
  • @orokusaki: I tend to be sensitive to it and stop it early. But I have met people who thought it "cool" or "their job" to rip off others. They are manipulative and quite good at pretending being amiable, so I'm wary of them. – Aaron Digulla Sep 29 '10 at 08:54
  • @Jess: I don't agree. In one place, everyone used CVS/Subversion, I used Mercurial. The standard IDE was IDEA Intelli/J, I used Eclipse. And I migrated all projects from Ant to Maven. At my current work place, Windows is standard but my computer runs Kubuntu Linux. There *is* always leeway. – Aaron Digulla Sep 29 '10 at 08:57
  • @Aaron: There isn't necessarily leeway, depending on how heavily regulated the industry you're working in is. Personally, I'd prefer to stay out of banking, given a good choice. In most places, there's a lot of leeway for what runs on your desktop, but you do have to interface with what the company runs. For example, I have to run Visual Studio 2008 (one last problem to fix before we go to 2010), check in and out of a Subversion repository, and write code in the language the application is in. Doesn't mean I can't have Perl and gVim installed. – David Thornley Sep 29 '10 at 14:07
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    @David Thornley: Because of my bad experience, I avoid work in places where rules are set into stone by people that don't suffer from them. – Aaron Digulla Sep 29 '10 at 15:38
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    @Aaron - if you came on my team and decided to run your own source code control, you'd be gone pretty quickly. It's simply not possible to efficiently run a large project when everyone is using incompatible tools. Different, but compatible, tools is often fine ... but expecting a .NET development team invested in Visual Studio that you want to do all of your development on a Linux machine with Mono is a sure way to get canned. – Beep beep Sep 29 '10 at 19:58
  • @Jess: What I was saying: If I had to use Windows just because of some policy when I could use Mono, then I'm not interested in working for you. My life is already complicated enough without nitpickers telling me how to do my work :-) – Aaron Digulla Sep 30 '10 at 11:50
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    @Aaron - I tend to operate with the business model of, "I'll be tough and shark people for as much money as I can. It's the American way to take, and take, and then give back when I'm rich.". Even having this mentality I hate "cheaters" more than anything. When somebody does #5 I think it's cheating. I provide really good work and charge a fortune for it (when I can), but would never do that. – orokusaki Sep 30 '10 at 17:02
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    @Aaron, luckily, it sounds like your dealbreakers are quite compatible with employers' dealbreakers: the people you're not interested in working for almost certainly would not want you working for them :-) – Carson63000 Oct 01 '10 at 01:22
  • #3 and #4 are key. #3 also shows that people don't give a sh*t about working there either, that they're only interested in themselves and getting their own code done, which is soul-stealing if you do care. #4 is the top way for me to see management's commitment to development. – Ed Griebel Dec 20 '10 at 16:07
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Any indication my Internet usage is going to be regulated or spied upon.

BlairHippo
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    +1. I have no idea how those scantily clad women got on my desktop. – Josh K Sep 28 '10 at 14:51
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    @Josh: It's obviously a virus! – Jaco Pretorius Sep 28 '10 at 15:27
  • I worked somewhere that wouldn't let me see certain VB/ASP.NET results - Websense called them "Business/Economy". Luckily Google Cache wasn't blocked, so I got my results that way. It was a pain. – Wayne Werner Sep 28 '10 at 17:45
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    -1: I disagree with this: There are _very_ good reasons to monitor internet usage. It depends more on why, when and how they monitor it, as well as their policies for what is allowed. When your co-workers get busted hosting child porn web/ftp sites, then you start to see the benefits of monitoring not only from a moral but from a legal standpoint. – Steven Evers Sep 28 '10 at 21:10
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    +1: Even if this were morally defensible, it would still be a waste of company resources. If they need to spy on you to determine whether or not you're being productive, it's not a good place to work. As for potential engagement in unsavory/entirely frightening undertakings: if we as a society don't condone surveillance of our citizens, why should individual companies engage in such a practice? – intuited Sep 28 '10 at 21:19
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    @int the difference is that with the government, you're not using their property or being paid for your time. When a company provides their own equipment and pays you to do something, that is completely different. What if you paid a baby-sitter to watch your child. Would you hesitate even one second to perform surveillance on her if you had any reason to suspect at all that she was stealing from you or abusing your child? Grand ideals about "society not condoning surveillance of citizens" fly out the window when you're talking about YOUR STUFF. – ErikE Sep 28 '10 at 21:42
  • @intuited: Let's assume for a moment that it is morally defensible, then considering the cost of potential litigation, then one $1 million lawsuit justifies paying a sysadmin's salary and the necessary hardware/software for the sole purpose of monitoring internet usage for ~5-10 years; which is not a waste of resources. This also assumes that said admin's ONLY purpose is monitoring internet usage. – Steven Evers Sep 28 '10 at 22:13
  • @SnOrfus: Sure, it makes sense to keep an eye on what's going in to/out of the company connection, as much as you can do that non-invasively. Are you saying that a company can be held liable for an employee's use of its resources for purposes that it doesn't allow and can't reasonably defend against? I wasn't aware of this, and would find any links etc. on the topic interesting reading. – intuited Sep 28 '10 at 23:37
  • I figure if they're going to want you to stay back to complete extra tasks within deadlines, then they should give you access to the unrestricted Internet so that you can do things. These being things such as online banking/paying bills, quickly contacting family, buying dinner when staying late etc. NOT looking at pornography, downloading bittorrent, etc. – Dominik Grabiec Sep 29 '10 at 07:40
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    @Emtucifor the fact that companies have a *right* to employee surveillance does not make it a good policy. They should watch your results, not your internet usage or bathroom habits. If my level of productivity is fine, why would they care that I read news online? Lack of trust produces diminished loyalty. Spy on me, even if it's legal, and I'll make sure I treat you with same amount of respect. – dbkk Sep 29 '10 at 08:51
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    There is a difference between regulated and spied on. I don't mind being asked to defend my use of the company's net connection, I do mind their nanny proxy blocking all manner of legimate sites for spurious reasons. – Unsliced Sep 29 '10 at 09:31
  • If it hinders me from doing my job, it's a problem. Otherwise, I have nothing to hide - anonymous. – JeffO Sep 29 '10 at 12:15
  • What do you mean by "regulated"? Where I work, there's some web-blocking software. The times I've had it interfere with work, I've been able to get to previously blocked sites fast through the provided interface, and most of the time it doesn't. That works. Spying on me, or arbitrarily limiting what I can do, would be a different matter. – David Thornley Sep 29 '10 at 14:10
  • @int Yes, I was not really promoting spying for the purpose of determining if you're productive or reviewing every little thing you do. On the other hand, blocking outright inappropriate content (such as porn) and keeping records of your usage in order to provide information if a question arises seems well within their rights, to me. If your employer can put a video camera on the ceiling to record everything you do, I see no difference in recording what you do on the computer. How that recording is used does matter a lot, but the mere fact of making the recording is defensible in my mind. – ErikE Sep 29 '10 at 16:28
  • @Wayne For the longest time, `ca2.php.net` was blocked, considered "Personals/Dating" somehow. `ca.`, `ca1.`, and `ca3.php.net` were all good. Was annoying when I'd get load balanced to `ca2` and had to change it... I know your pain. – Tarka Sep 29 '10 at 16:55
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    There is a big difference between monitoring usage (spying on users) and having a white list or black list of sites. If you want to stop porn, use the OpenDNS white list. If you want to stop productivity vacuums like Facebook and YouTube, have a black list. But, please, don't monitor my web history and draw wild conclusions like curl.haxx.se is a hacking site.... – JBRWilkinson Sep 29 '10 at 22:06
  • @Emtucifor: If there's a camera on the ceiling watching me, it's *definitely* not a good place to work unless there's a danger of robbery or some similar situation. I figure it's ethically acceptable for the company as a whole to scan for illegal material that it as a whole is transmitting. This is not a particularly practical thing to do with any sort of thoroughness, and, as others mention, is likely to lead to a lot of false positives. I'm also unconvinced of the legal necessity of it in most jurisdictions. – intuited Sep 30 '10 at 01:22
  • @int I once worked at a company where they had cameras in the suites, unbeknownst to any of us until a certain event. In the final analysis, I shouldn't have been surprised. I don't like such monitoring, but I understand it. – ErikE Sep 30 '10 at 04:38
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    @Josh, you were looking at a new car :) For some reason new cars come with one or more scantily clad women. –  Nov 14 '10 at 11:39
  • @Thorb: Excellent point! – Josh K Nov 14 '10 at 12:06
  • I don't mind that my usage of internet resources is monitored or tracked. I do mind that some pages which I know for a fact are legit and discuss information that is important to my work are being blocked. That drives me nuts! – Captain Sensible Jun 24 '11 at 11:46
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    @intuited: There was one time I wish we had a web blocker. This is a true story. It was years ago, and I typed in "man pages" in Google. That was the first and last time I ever clicked the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. I'm glad nobody saw me. I think. – Dave Markle Oct 22 '11 at 22:18
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Dealbreaker: I don't feel like I'm the dumbest person on the team.

What I mean by this is that I don't want to be in a position where I can't learn a lot from my peers. You can always learn from others, but when I worked at one particular company, the people there were amazingly smart, and I felt like I should be back in first grade as far as my programming skills went. However I learned more in a couple years with them than I had in the 5 years prior to that and including school. Now, I try to find a place where my peers make me look bad, because then I know I'll learn a lot.

Ryan Hayes
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    I wish I could relive several years of my life with this mentality. – Steve Sep 29 '10 at 01:58
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    Would this only work for the first decade or so? Since after that you'd be the one that would have to teach other people? – Dominik Grabiec Sep 29 '10 at 08:02
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    @Daemin: I think/hope it eventually gets to the point where, if you're in the right place, your peers know more about different specializations instead of outright knowing more. – Steven Evers Sep 30 '10 at 22:54
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    Don't know who said it but: "never be the best musician in a band" – Martin Beckett Mar 06 '11 at 04:53
  • It's great that you want to learn a lot. I doubt however that your employer or even your colleagues will be as forgiving as you hope. If you are not as good or better than they are, you will get some time to get your stuff together and if you cannot catch up within the timeframe that THEY have in mind, you will be a goner. – Captain Sensible Jun 24 '11 at 11:50
  • @Seventh Element: I'm not saying I always actually want to be the dumbest person on the team, I just want to have team members who I can learn a lot from. To progress in your career you always need to be able to contribute more and more as you grow over the years to whatever team you're on. I just don't want to be the only guy who wants/cares about learning new things on a team of people who don't want to/don't care, which hinders the team's progress as a whole. Yes, you still need to be as good/better by the time they need you to be. – Ryan Hayes Jun 24 '11 at 12:31
  • I like to be right in the middle of the pack. If they do trimming, you don't wanna be cut with the other noobs, but you definitely want to have lots of peeps to learn from and room to grow. – orokusaki Oct 05 '11 at 01:54
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Sales talks to the customer, then tells us what to build and when to build it.

This is a little more forgivable at companies that don't do software as their primary business, but any serious software company that doesn't allow developers/PMs to interact with the customers is going to produce crappy products, angry customers, missed deadlines, and a lot of misunderstood requirements.

Fishtoaster
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  • Oh, sales... This entire mode of thinking I dislike. – Mark C Sep 29 '10 at 01:35
  • I believe this led to the destruction of one very promising company I was at least peripherally involved with, whose software was the best in the industry. – David Thornley Sep 29 '10 at 14:02
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    Yes, yes, 100 times yes. – Damovisa Sep 29 '10 at 21:23
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    If software is at the heart of the business, you find that the software development gets much more attention. If its only a minor part of the business, then unlikely to get much love. – JBRWilkinson Sep 29 '10 at 22:08
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    Or even worse, Sales tells the customer that the software already does something in order to sell it, and then we have to build it. – Ken Oct 29 '10 at 02:26
  • @Ken - Oh boy, do I know this one. Sales would even promise the customer they could have 3 months worth of development in 2 weeks. Mid-way through the actual (rushed) development, sales would start the whole process again with a different customer. This was clearly unsustainable and lead to the implosion of one of my previous employers. Luckily, I left shortly before that happened. But, it still goes on. I'm truly baffled as to why so many companies still do this and believe that it can't be done any other way. – CraigTP Jun 11 '11 at 08:12
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Any indication that work/life balance won't be maintained. If a company doesn't have a clear policy regarding family emergencies or life-altering changes (e.g. having a baby or getting married), I wouldn't want to pursue an opportunity with them. This includes being forced to travel an inordinate amount of time.

Work is important, but being present in your family is more so.

bedwyr
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    Unless you don't have a family, then you're probably just a scourge on society ;) (So I borrowed this from Dilbert, but apparently it exists in real life) – Wayne Werner Sep 28 '10 at 17:46
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    Kudos. This is #1 for me as well. I recently moved across country to be with my fiancée and took a new job; I told my new boss, "I am moving across country to form a new relationship, not destroy it." – Chris Holmes Sep 29 '10 at 11:48
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Any definite indication that I'm being lied to in the interview about important matters.

David Thornley
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    Can you post an example? Obviously lying in an interview is a serious do-not-do, however where (and on what) has it been done? – Josh K Sep 28 '10 at 14:51
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    @Josh K: I've never caught a lie in the interview, but at one job I found out I'd been lied to (about what I'd be expected to do), and eventually things got worse and I started having dreams about toy soldiers coming to rescue me from the company. Seriously. I can still see the arc of the howitzer shells hitting the cubicle walls. It doesn't matter what the lie is about, because if they start lying to you they'll happily continue. – David Thornley Sep 28 '10 at 17:13
  • @David: I think you mean if they start *by* lying to you... – Wayne Werner Sep 28 '10 at 17:47
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    This happened to me, so it's something I'm particularly sensitive about when I interview. Ironically, the place that lied to me was the only company I've worked for that made a big thing about having an ethics policy. – Stephen Darlington Sep 29 '10 at 10:56
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    +1: This happened to me once. Do you document requirements? **Yes!** Do you plan according to requirements? **Of course!** Do you have a product you sell, or does every customer have their own customised version of the software? **Product!**. No, wait **ALL LIES**. I left before my trial period was over. It wasn't just one thing, they'd lied about **everything** If they were truthful only the desperate would join. They folded about 18 months later. – Binary Worrier Sep 29 '10 at 13:13
  • @Josh K: In my job interview I was told by the CEO that *"Microsoft technology was playing a central role at the company"* but the two projects currently running are done in Flex respectively Java/XSLT. Despite being hired as a .NET developer I haven't coded a single line of .NET code for the company since I started there but instead have to kill my brain with that Actionscript crap. :/ – Baelnorn Sep 29 '10 at 22:07
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    @Baelnorn: I was doing PHP development for a company and they ended up wanting an iPad app. Face meet palm, head meet wall. – Josh K Sep 30 '10 at 02:17
  • I'd go with "any reasonably suspicious", but yeah, if they can't be honest on day 0, you can bet those offers of stock options/bonuses/paid conferences are bogus too. – MIA Sep 30 '10 at 22:19
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    I would change that to 'anything at all' no just things that matter. I had an employer note in the interview 'as you can see, the place is a bit of a mess/falling apart because we're in the middle of a renovation.' Turned out that they'd been 'renovating' for 2 years, without any work actually being done. The lie was small, but very foretelling of what was to come. If they lie about little things because they don't want you to know, do you think they'll tell you the **big** things that they don't want you to know? – Steven Evers Dec 08 '10 at 20:43
  • @Josh K: Sounds like a good opportunity for free training? – Ed Griebel Dec 20 '10 at 16:11
  • @Ed: There is a difference between "free training" and "We want this done in a week. By the way, make it perfect." – Josh K Dec 20 '10 at 16:38
  • In my experience, you will never learn what state a company is in from going to an interview. No, they won't tell you that the place is a hell to work at. But neither will you tell them about your time in jail, your drug addiction or that time you punched your boss in the face because you mistook him for your dad. – Captain Sensible Jun 24 '11 at 11:54
35

The deal breaker is "Anything you create on your own time belongs to the company, and anything that competes with any of several dozen other unrelated businesses owned (now or in the future) by our parent company is prohibited."

The work I do for the company belongs to the company -- no problem. I'm not to compete with the business unit I'm working for -- no problem. But beyond that, such agreements are just asking for trouble, and I can't afford the lawyer power that a company can.

retracile
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    I had one clause at a consultancy = you can't later work for any of our clients, or anyone who has clients in common. "Can I see the list of your clients before I sign?" - no that's confidential ! – Martin Beckett Mar 06 '11 at 04:55
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    Unfortunately everyone seems to have some contract now so there aren't many options. This is why we could use a union. As long as that is everywhere and no one boycotts these companies, they get away with it. Mine says they have rights to any products that compete with their business. It is vague defined and I suspect if I invented something I'd have to go to court.... – Cervo May 07 '11 at 21:14
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    Interesting you say that, because I never really care about this - it's pretty much impossible to enforce – Jaco Pretorius Jun 17 '11 at 07:18
30

We use proprietary version control X

The available free version control systems are so much better in nearly every respect. Using a proprietary one, while not necessarily terrible on its own, but what it implies about the company is.

Fishtoaster
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Working with a boss who thinks I am not apt for the job because I'm a woman (yes, it happened - to a friend).

Hila
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    @Hila - That's not a "deal breaker". That's a "money maker". See a lawyer, if that happens to you. – orokusaki Sep 28 '10 at 17:46
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    @orokusaki Life is not always that simple. – Hila Sep 28 '10 at 18:25
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    @orokusaki - I appreciate the analogy. You'll be surprised to find that even when a woman gets beat - it's not always that simple (What if she has kids? What if he threatens to kill her? What if her family considers divorce a great shame and won't talk to her? What if she is financially or in other way dependent on him?). In our case - what if you know that this is what he thinks, although he won't do anything about it because it's the law (can't sue for misogyny)? What if he said something to your friend, who won't do anything because she REALLY needs the job? I'm sorry, life is not boolean. – Hila Sep 29 '10 at 11:17
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    @orokusaki: If the woman has solid evidence that she was turned down because of her sex, and she's willing or able to push hard for recompense, and nothing unfortunate happens, she might get a judgment for $50K (a friend was in a discrimination investigation) in this state. This isn't harassment (unless the woman is asked for sexual favors and can prove it in court), which can get more money. In many places, companies practice illegal discrimination, but avoid letting anybody get solid evidence against them. – David Thornley Sep 29 '10 at 14:01
  • @Hila: Regrettably, I'd imagine this one is tough to spot ahead of time. Would your friend has gotten an honest answer during the interview if she'd asked "So, would I be working under a misogynist douchebag?" – BlairHippo Sep 29 '10 at 15:04
  • @Blaid Actually, she did hear from someone who's working at the company before signing up that her new boss hesitated to interview her for the job because he thinks women aren't apt for it, but she did get an interview (and the job) thanks to the fact that not everyone agree with him. Unfortunately, this was one of the cases when she REEEEALY needed the job. But no, most of the time you are right - it's hard to tell in advance. – Hila Sep 29 '10 at 18:01
  • @Hila: At least she went into it with her eyes open, cold comfort that may be. – BlairHippo Sep 29 '10 at 18:16
  • @orokusaki: And you should be ashamed for taking the "it's so easy! why not just do it?!" position. There's a world of difference between an abuse victim making excuses and actually trying to work out the best possible solution. – Adam Lear Oct 01 '10 at 04:01
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    @orokusaki The fail is with you, young orokusaki. – EpsilonVector Oct 01 '10 at 13:24
  • @EpsilonVector at least he murdered Splinter! – Luka Ramishvili Jan 11 '13 at 19:49
28

My dealbreakers are:

  • Working environment == Cubicles
  • Working computers == tiny 15" single monitor, 2 Gb or less of RAM
  • No Internet connection
JuanZe
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  • Single monitors are definitely a bad sign, no internet is even worse. :gag: – Josh K Sep 28 '10 at 17:43
  • @JuanZe - you need to aim higher. I wouldn't work for anyone providing less than 2 22" LCDS, and 4GB of RAM, with high-speed internet (at least 1MBS). – orokusaki Sep 28 '10 at 17:48
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    How many developer environments are NOT cubicles? – Beep beep Sep 28 '10 at 17:54
  • @orokusai I totally agree with you, that's the point: no single monitor, no small monitors, as much RAM as you can get today... – JuanZe Sep 28 '10 at 18:24
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    @Jess the good ones – JuanZe Sep 28 '10 at 18:26
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    @JuanZe - Development shops, maybe, but if you're going to be a developer at a corporation then I've only seen cubes. – Beep beep Sep 28 '10 at 20:51
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    I don't think I'll take another cube job – dave4351 Sep 28 '10 at 23:34
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    Heh and here I was thinking that I needed to get that quad-dual core machine with 16G RAM upgraded... ;) – dash-tom-bang Sep 29 '10 at 01:24
  • I actually LIKE cubicles. Before i worked in one i thought i would hate it. I dont know why people dislike them. –  Sep 29 '10 at 03:41
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    I love cubicles. I like even better the open space I've got in my office, with no walls at all. Much, *much* better than an office. – configurator Sep 29 '10 at 07:30
  • It's not the cubicles as much as the neighbors. – JeffO Sep 29 '10 at 12:09
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    http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDevelopers.html – JuanZe Sep 29 '10 at 15:00
  • It sounds like some of you come from [Cubicle Paradise](http://www.amazon.com/Another-Day-Cubicle-Paradise-Dilbert/dp/0740721941/)! – Mark C Oct 06 '10 at 15:18
  • I don't like cubicles, I need to see the outsides during the day. –  Nov 14 '10 at 11:42
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    In Denmark you are basically not allowed to put people in cubicles. Every office have to have a windows. :) Of cause you just get open office spaces then. – Bjarke Freund-Hansen Dec 07 '10 at 09:22
  • ALL of my programming jobs have been cubicles. I would seriously love to not have one. It's just never happened. – q303 Dec 11 '10 at 06:34
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    I would prefer cubicles to open plan. Worst place I saw had gone for private offices/developer - but had built them into a large open plan, so fluorescent lights and AC went across internal walls. You had offices with a section of light in one corner and others where the entire ceiling was lights – Martin Beckett Mar 06 '11 at 04:58
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A compensation package comprised mostly of creativity or promises. The bank which holds my mortgage is not impressed by how much money I'll be making when the investors "finally come through."

BlairHippo
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    We got so many of those in college- "We'll give you 3% of the company's annual profit!" "What were your profits last year?" "$0." – Fishtoaster Sep 28 '10 at 14:45
  • this *should* be irrelevant to the "deal". Bonuses are just that - a "bonus". If the base package is not good enough, then you walk. I **NEVER** consider a bonus as anything that will actually exist ... especially when too many times they've been not awarded due to some political issue – warren Oct 03 '11 at 17:46
18

I think people are putting to much focus on the technical side of things here. I won't even comment on statements like 'windows is a no go' because in that case a reality-check is in order which is beyond the scope of this.

To get to the point:

Personally I would not so much focus on technical aspects of a job. Sure it's nice if your new company is using a mature SCM solution like perforce or git, it's cool if the firewall has almost no restrictions and you work machine is a 8core with 32gigs of RAM.

Desktop computers can be upgraded and new scm solutions can be implemented if you make valid arguments and manage to convince your boss of the benefits.

What can't be easily fixed is an unfriendly work environment. What can't be easily fixed or changed is the way the employer looks at employees - From my experience that is either (a) machines that you put coffee&cash into and sell the product or people that produce better code when they are treated well and have a good time at work.

My desktop at work is not a power-house and I work with Java even though I'd love to do low-level C programming on micro-controllers. However the working atmosphere is really great. We often have BBQs, regular small developer convention days where people present new stuff they've come across during work etc.

You were quite possibly actually hoping for the kind of technical answers u've been mostly given here so far. I just wanted to put notion on the fact that there is more to a good company than the technical details. Try to make out if the job looks like it has a healthy working environment that wants to make you go to work in the morning rather than shout and curse..

Tobias
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    Generally speaking (but not always), the issues you dismiss as unimportant are good indicators of how much the company cares. If I don't get at least dual monitors, a good SCM, a decent machine (doesn't need to be a powerhouse), and unblocked internet, then it would take a *lot* for me to be convinced that said company *really* cares about their developers. Plus, it would take even more to convince me that they had a developer-oriented culture if they required Windows and didn't write Windows software *only*. – Jason Baker Dec 09 '10 at 02:29
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Mailbox size. Storage is cheap. If you make your employees waste any moment of time clearing out their mailboxes, you've got the wrong priorities.

My previous job had a 100MB limit on personal email accounts and the primary mode of documentation was 10MB+ Powerpoint decks. Given the salary of my then manager, I estimate that she wasted at a minimum of $30k/year of company time organizing her email. Perhaps I was overly stubborn, but it became my personal goal to convince the powers that be that our email policy was easily costing the company on the order of $1mil+ of lost productivity per year.

kubi
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    Back in 2001 I worked at a place that gave each employee 100 MB of backup storage on the network. I was doing Access database development at the time. My storage filled up after about three databases. And even at the time it was about $1 worth of storage. – Kyralessa Sep 29 '10 at 03:56
  • what year is this again? When was the last time you worked somewhere with mailbox size limits? – orokusaki Sep 29 '10 at 04:00
  • @orokusaki My current employer has a 40MB limit. In practice it's not annoying, as we never use email to exchange documents. 40MB holds a lot of text only emails. Previous job, the limit was extremely aggravating, because you had to clean out your box every day. – kubi Sep 29 '10 at 09:46
  • We have a limit of 200mb but rather than using the shared drives the common way to collaborate on documents here (large NHS hospital) is a constant back and forth of word files with tracked changes. Chuck a few pictures in these files, random pictures and PDFs and my inbox is a nightmare to manage, I'm constantly pushing the upper edge of my limit. – Chao Oct 29 '10 at 09:20
  • Now that you can give your employees gmail accounts with several gigs of storage for free, I don't really see any excuse to make your employees deal with small inboxes. – Jason Baker Dec 09 '10 at 02:32
  • @orokusaki - far far too many places have those limits (I can name a slew off the top of my head) – warren Oct 03 '11 at 17:49
  • My boss just implemented limits on email retention due to the threat of lawsuits. There is something ironic about an automated email that says my mailbox is almost full. – Rick Ratayczak Oct 22 '11 at 16:51
  • Reading this I realise it's the first time I actually thought about mailbox size. I never saw one in the email account at my job. I also have thousands of emails (a lot of which have attachments) in that account. So I guess we have no limit. Yeey :) – Radu Murzea Jan 13 '14 at 20:44
13

Companies which hire w/o asking the candidates to write code

I don't want to work with a company where new "Programmer" in my team doesn't know how to "Program".

rkg
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Asking for salary history.

That's none of their business and likely to mean they aren't interested in talent so much as hiring warm bodies to burn through.

Ryan Hayes
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    Actually I don't mind this - I just give an honest answer, because in all cases they've given me a great salary anyway. Good businesspeople don't want to hire you for less than you're worth, it's much more expensive to lose you quickly and have to hire you again when you find a better-paid job. – MGOwen Oct 20 '10 at 04:49
  • An example: first employer who asked me this eventually offered me almost double my old salary. – MGOwen Jan 05 '11 at 01:50
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Are you ready to move away from your town to work abroad?

This is definitely my Dealbreaker

systempuntoout
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I have a short list:

  • Issues with a particular OS. Sure if I'm doing .NET stuff it's probably going to be Windows, but doing PHP / Java development there is no reason to disallow a full range of operating systems. Have a personal grudge against Apple / Linux / Windows that's your business, not mine.
  • Companies that expect or mandate weekend hours. I'm sorry, my weekends are mine. Sure most of the time I'm doing semi-work related stuff anyways, and I may even come in to the office. But sometimes I won't, and you don't have the right to pitch a fit because I don't.
  • If you don't version control that speaks volumes.
  • Non-diverse platforms. It's great that everything is written in Java, however if you aren't open to other options (when there are clearly better languages for certain tasks) you aren't being flexible in an industry that has to be flexible.
Josh K
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    I agree with all of your points except the OS one. It's nice that you have a preference, but ultimately... best tool for the job, eh? (That is, if you're applying for a .NET job, for example, and insist on using a Mac, you might be a bit peculiar.) – Adam Lear Sep 28 '10 at 15:10
  • @Anna: Hence I don't apply for .NET jobs. ;) I will restructure that point though. – Josh K Sep 28 '10 at 17:41
  • @Josh K: Fair enough. :) – Adam Lear Sep 28 '10 at 17:47
  • @Anna - There's never a time when Windows is the best tool for the job, ever, unless it's personal computing. – orokusaki Sep 28 '10 at 17:49
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    @orokusaki: I disagree, but this isn't the place for this argument. – Adam Lear Sep 28 '10 at 18:00
  • @orokusaki: When working with IE I would argue that it is. ;) – Josh K Sep 28 '10 at 18:44
  • @Josh K - pun intended, right? – orokusaki Sep 28 '10 at 20:53
  • #orokusaki: Do you mean that it's ironic you are using Windows as a tool to use IE (another crappy tool)? If so yes. ;) – Josh K Sep 28 '10 at 21:11
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    @orokusaki - love it or hate it, vendors often exclusively use Windows. If I wasn't on Windows, I couldn't use the tools that I need to use to do my job... (Plus it's not actually bad anymore, hold a grudge much?) – dash-tom-bang Sep 29 '10 at 01:26
  • @Josh K - I'm using Ubuntu with Firefox, so I don't get your IE joke. I don't wish to be buffer overloaded with a virus that uses my machine as part of a child porn bot net. Microsoft doesn't care about such frivolous security issues, so I don't bother. I use Windows for some personal computing (for my Adobe products), but I still use Firefox. Anyone who uses any browser that isn't Firefox is ignorant; perhaps not by choice, since some just don't know about security issues, etc. – orokusaki Sep 29 '10 at 03:53
  • @dash-tom-bang - No, I don't hold grudges. I just don't care for Windows' security problems, or the garbage file-system that it employs, but I digress because I was referring to Servers in my first comment. – orokusaki Sep 29 '10 at 03:54
  • @orokusaki: And you've experienced this first hand? The child porn bot net via a mysterious buffer overload? I've known people who have used IE for years without any issues. – Josh K Sep 29 '10 at 03:59
  • @Josh K - I own http://www.conficker.com (Check the source code; I put a message in an HTML comment to you.) and used to have a contact form on it. Conficker is the largest bot-net in the world, and has been since about 6 months after it was sent into the wild. Most of the people who contacted me via the website for help were using IE6 or IE7. Now their computers are used primarily for DDOS attacks against various websites (not as bad as child porn but pretty freaking bad considering the Feds call DDOS attacks terrorism). Note: I have nothing to do with conficker and only own the site for PPC. – orokusaki Sep 29 '10 at 04:26
  • @Josh K - also note, I've known people who smoked for years, without any issues. – orokusaki Sep 29 '10 at 04:32
  • @orokusaki: Nice, *love* source code comment shout outs. ;) I'm not saying Windows is a good platform, in fact I have a hard time wrapping my head around it as a system, however IE in recent years has become a better browser in terms of general CSS support and functionality. – Josh K Sep 29 '10 at 04:51
  • @Josh K - yea, I'll give them some credit for the web standards and stuff, but TLTL IMHO :) I thought you'd like the code shout out. – orokusaki Sep 29 '10 at 04:58
  • @orokusaki: I did, even placed a reciprocal one. ;) – Josh K Sep 29 '10 at 05:07
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Deal Breakers:

  1. No Source Control
  2. App tied to a Database that makes Windows 2000 look like the bleeding edge of technology
  3. No, or poor bug tracking
  4. Timesheets (when not on specific client work) esp. if implemented in a horrible system devised by your sucky payroll software.
  5. Any sign of Major Process Failure - e.g. TPS Reports
  6. No Internet
scunliffe
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  • Please define: TPS Reports – Bevan Sep 29 '10 at 20:30
  • @Bevan - TPS Reports is a classic bit from the movie Office Space (if you haven't seen it, go rent it now!) but I was referring in general to any severely flawed process. E.g. if fixing a 1 liner bug requires 10 steps of bugtracking forms, approval, verification, etc. then development is crippled by the process and doomed to fail - run away! – scunliffe Sep 30 '10 at 12:48
  • I have to disagree. I took a job this year that scores at least 4 out of 6 of these issues. Best job I've had: implemented a new source control system, a new bug tracking system, wrote a DAL to decouple the VB6 app from the database, working on normalizing the database and reworking the time entry system. I get to make them all work the way they should. Best job ever... – Scott Whitlock Oct 29 '10 at 00:39
  • Hi @Scott W you are correct, being able to effectively apply change is an awesome feeling and very satisfactory... on the other hand if you find that you can't make headway with the changes/fixes due to "red tape" or management unwilling to budge - you've found yourself a dead end position. – scunliffe Oct 30 '10 at 01:29
  • @Scott - Unless you have really cool bosses, it takes a major effort and a huge amount of stress to make those changes though. You always hear things like "We don't have time to use one of those newfangled 'version control systems'! We need to ship software!" – Jason Baker Dec 09 '10 at 02:37
  • @Jason Baker: Clearly not "always", as I plainly had no trouble implementing those. I get your point though, it can be hard in some environments. – Scott Whitlock Dec 09 '10 at 18:26
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Anything that makes me think that they don't know how to manage a software project. 9 times out of 10, when they don't know anything about software development and want to develop software, it's because of one of two things:

  1. They write in-house software and want to offset the cost by selling it.
  2. They saw the margins on software sales in some business magazine and think it's their ticket to getting rich.

And I refuse to work with either of them, ever again.

Steven Evers
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If the founders of the company have moved on, you should too. This isn't an ironclad rule but I've found that companies often lose energy and focus when the founders move on. The people who start successful companies are a rare breed and, though demanding, are great to work with.

lambmj
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  • So Oracle good, Intel bad? ;) – Randy Levy May 09 '11 at 18:51
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    I find this to be a bit too elitist for my taste. Successful companies inevitably grow. A person who is great at starting new companies and running average sized businesses may be the wrong guy to run the company he/she founded once the company moves on to "the next level". – Captain Sensible Jun 24 '11 at 12:04
  • Yes, you're right, this doesn't always apply. However, in my experience (working mostly for small, young companies) it has. It's not a rule so much as a guideline. – lambmj Jun 24 '11 at 17:15
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If the first interview is with an HR rep who knows nothing about the job. Way too bureaucratic for me.

Adam
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  • just had one of those. I interviewed with HR for 1/2 hr on the phone, and then with IS for 3 hours (one database admin, even though the job requires no DBA tasks whatsoever, just to add to my complaints). – orokusaki Sep 29 '10 at 04:02
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    I can live with it if it's over the phone. – JeffO Sep 29 '10 at 12:08
  • Interesting. First interview with HR is pretty normal in places I've worked - and they've been great places to work. – Bevan Sep 29 '10 at 20:25
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    sometimes its just insulation for an over stressed project team. Given I've spent way too much of my life conducting interviews, I appreciate it when there's a good in house recruiter doing an initial screen to make sure the resume lines up with the actual experience of the candidate. That will cut down by at least 1/2 the number of people I need to interview myself. – MIA Sep 30 '10 at 22:24
  • Meh. It's not so much a no-deal to me as it is a no-deal to the company. I have yet to have an interview with an HR type who actually passed me on to the next level. I always get the impression that if I mentioned that I proved P != NP, they'd reject me for not having 3 years Java experience. – Jason Baker Dec 09 '10 at 02:34
7

At this stage in my career, a dealbreaker is often the phrase, "you will be required to do some occasional support of existing legacy systems".

Too many times that has resulted in 90% of my time hacking at a VB6 app with no documentation to get it functional again. You're the new guy, therefore the sh*tkicker who has to do the support work.

Damovisa
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    VB6? Consider yourself lucky. I dealt with VB3 (and that was in 2008) – configurator Sep 29 '10 at 07:36
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    I fully support your notion that you shouldn't get the sh*t jobs just because you're the new guy ... but if I'm interviewing you and get the impression you're not willing to help me *upgrade* my legacy systems, no hire. And that's reguardless of how much greenfield development there might be coming up. – Bevan Sep 29 '10 at 20:47
  • @configurator. VB3? WT... I don't even... – Damovisa Sep 29 '10 at 21:20
  • @Bevan - Oh, I'm not talking about *upgrading*; that's fine. I'm talking about those apps that *won't* get rewritten because, you know, they work most of the time... – Damovisa Sep 29 '10 at 21:22
  • @Bevan: it depends entirely on the context. If as part of a well-managed setup, then no problem. But if it's dumping some nightmare crufty port on the new guy, when the last five people who drew this straw have left, it obviously means something else. – smci Aug 29 '11 at 04:41
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    I've fell for this trick before. I've worked for a company as a senior .net developer, and had to maintain vb6 apps that are over 12 year old. 12 years! C'mon, it ain't that complicated to re-write that with a 8 developer team and 12 years. Considering this app was written by one person, back in the day... – Rick Ratayczak Oct 22 '11 at 16:59
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Showing up late for my inteview. You don't get a second chance to make a first impression.

JeffO
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    Meh. I showed up late for a job interview because the directions were bad. The person giving the interview understood, and it went well. I was offered a better job than the one I originally interviewed for. I'm not saying that its ok to show up late, but just be human about it. Be respectful of other's schedules, but don't avoid the interview because ******** happened on the way. – riwalk Oct 13 '10 at 19:58
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    @Stargazer712 - I'm not suggesting getting up and walking out the very second they are late; it just puts them in a hole that I feel they need to work to climb out. That's why I give my cell phone number. I'd call if I were going to be late. – JeffO Oct 14 '10 at 00:06
6

Like a good spamfilter, there are few outright deal breakers, but there are a number of things that will score them up.

  1. Cheap machines. Slow machines with little memory shows they are not interested in maximizing the amount of work I can do for them.
  2. A need to have one machine for e-mail (usually Windows running Outlook) and another for primary duties (programming or system administration.) Constantly jumping back and forth between the two breaks flow and makes it difficult to copy/paste work items into or from e-mail.
  3. Matrixed organizations. When you work primarily with the product team from day to day, but your performance review is done by someone who rarely works with you, that's a recipe for disaster.
  4. A history of poor customer support or low customer loyalty numbers. When a company doesn't treat their customers well, those attitudes from management bleed into how they treat the workforce. Even worse, it can taint how the workforce treats each other.
  5. A history of regular mass layoffs. A national IT company near me seems to have a story every year in the paper about how many they're laying off, and always within a couple weeks (plus or minus) of the New Year.
John Franklin
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    Why would your company want you to have different machines for email and for other work stuff? – configurator Sep 29 '10 at 07:35
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    I interviewed with a place that was getting into iPhone development, but their source control was windows only. Each dev had two machines, a Mac Mini and a windows machine they used to make commits. It sounded like a nightmare. – kubi Sep 29 '10 at 09:50
  • @configurator: I don't think they wanted it. I think they just did that as the easy way out. They had a number of Windows-only apps for internal purposes (HR, e-mail, IM), but the company's entire revenue-raising infrastructure was a mix of *NIX. – John Franklin Sep 29 '10 at 20:05
  • @kubi: Did they at least get iPhones? – configurator Sep 29 '10 at 23:29
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    @configurator They probably had one first-gen iPod Touch that they all shared. – kubi Sep 29 '10 at 23:47
  • @configurator I know people who work for companies with military contracts. They have one machine on the secure network, and another on the main network. The secure network is not linked to the internet or the public network. Although I don't think this should be a red flag in this case - this policy is apparently not only effective, but also popular, and they all seem to enjoy their jobs. – Colin Pickard Nov 29 '10 at 13:58
  • @Colin: Yeah, I've done that when I was at the army. Lots of fun printing code and retyping it! (I only actually did that once) – configurator Nov 30 '10 at 15:15
  • @configurator: there are countless organizations whose management, admin, finance etc. depts only do MS-Outlook for all calendaring and contact mgt. – smci Aug 29 '11 at 04:39
  • About nr. 2: I kind of disagree. There's no need for a second machine just for email. Frankly, double-clicking that small icon that represents your email client once every hour is not that big a deal. Also, it's probably faster than switching to another machine. You don't have to check for email every 2 minutes, you know. If you do, alarm bells should definitely fire somewhere because you're losing a lot of productivity that way. But if it's absolutely necessary that you see new emails instantly, a dedicated screen seems a better idea. – Radu Murzea Jan 13 '14 at 20:55
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Dealbreaker:

If they describe themselves as a "young company" and when you look around you don't see anyone over 35 in any kind of technical position. There's clearly no long term technical career track, and probably nobody experienced enough to learn from. Plus they're probably underpaying and expecting you to work 60+ hour weeks.

Scott Whitlock
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My interview "trick question" is usually something along the lines of "What do you guys do for fun?"

In my experience, teams that really gel together end up doing fun stuff together outside of work as well -- bowling, playing badminton, wolpertinger hunting, it doesn't really matter. A blank look from the interviewer at this point is usually a giant red flag for me.

Kaz Dragon
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    "Could you please define 'fun'?" – Mark C Oct 06 '10 at 14:57
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    This sort of thing can be taken too far. I knew someone who applied for a job at some major city (financial) institution. The terms and conditions said something about being obliged to attend a fairly large number of "company sports days" (at the weekends). Creepy. Sorry, but enforced fun ceases to be fun. – timday Dec 18 '10 at 00:32
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    I don't think this one is true if your future co-workers have families. I have enough friends on my own, I don't need a new crew of "drinking buddies", thanks. – Ed Griebel Dec 20 '10 at 16:18
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    I actually quite like this question. It may tell you something about the overall working climate. People who like each other don't mind having lunch with their co-workers once in a while. If there is no friendly atmosfere in the team, then what atmosfere is there? – Captain Sensible Jun 24 '11 at 12:12
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Dealbreaker: We don't wanna buy this software, let's pay developers write it, or let's spend months of developers' time wrangling with some crap free alternatives.
I always ask in the interviews what commercial applications you have got and why did you think it is useful for you. Very negative point about a company's resource management.

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You can't go round inspecting everything, but a trip to the toilets either before or after the interview can tell you everything you need to know about a company and how it treats its staff.

I'm not a hygene nut, but I do feel it's important that the facilities I'll be using every single day are decent.

Spudley
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If I can't ssh home, that's it.

Zaz
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  • +1: Even if working from home is out of the picture, you need to _at least_ be able to check on a build or commit something, or change a config script or anything else that you forgot to do at work. And the cost is nearly nothing to make this happen. – Steven Evers Oct 28 '10 at 22:58
  • @SnOrfus: I think he's talking about accessing his home machine from work, not the other way round! – timday Oct 29 '10 at 04:00
  • @timday: Ah, I see. I thought it said '_from_ home'. In that case, it's a shame that I can't remove my upvote. I can't see a real reason that this would be a must. – Steven Evers Oct 29 '10 at 21:33
  • I've ssh-ed home to read personal email for years now. A more modern setup would be to use webmail, but it works for me. Also useful for checking on the progress of big rendering jobs. – timday Oct 30 '10 at 17:52
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Windows. Any version. GTFO.

The key thing for me; at any point is it hinted at that you'll bleed into other roles?

Example: one of my previous job titles was Analyst Programmer... which essentially meant "Sometimes programming, sometimes re-writing requirements document so you can actually start coding, occasionally doing the Analyst's job and other times, well, good luck. May the force be with you.".

If you're applying to be a developer make sure that's what your role will be once you're through the door. Get a feel for a developer's role on a typical project. Ask them to explain the role to you - make no assumptions.

One other question I always ask is: "Suppose technology X becomes the new hotness, how do you fill the technology gap?". If the answer is "we just hire new people" then i'd get out.

Oh, and Windows.

dannywartnaby
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    Heh, so have you tried Windows 7? :-) – Jaco Pretorius Sep 28 '10 at 18:20
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    I have indeed. It's just not for me, to each their own :). Happy now I get to use a Mac. Sounds silly to some, but the platform you develop can make all the difference. – dannywartnaby Sep 28 '10 at 19:54
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    I suppose you mean that Windows can be an option, so long as it's not the requirement? Or are you saying that Windows shouldn't be used by anyone at all? – waiwai933 Sep 28 '10 at 23:10
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    I wish the MacBook keyboards didn't suck so much ass. – dash-tom-bang Sep 29 '10 at 01:23
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    What is this talk about Windows? Could you elaborate? – Mark C Sep 29 '10 at 01:27
  • @waiwai933 I'm saying if you're a fan of Linux, and you're forced into using Windows, you probably won't enjoy yourself. I don't use Windows - i've never liked it, even Windows 7. So if a company states clearly that I could *only* use windows i'd turn the job down. Choice is a good thing - remember an employer needs you as much as you need them. It's in their interest to make the working environment conducive to getting the most out of you... for a developer the environment includes OS and the tool-chain. IMO anyway :). – dannywartnaby Sep 30 '10 at 14:26
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    I've always had the opposite feeling--anyone who is so rigid that they are unwilling to work on operating system X is far too rigid to work as a programmer. Good programmers use the best tool for the job by weighing the pros and cons in an intelligent manner (rather than letting personal bias get in the way). – riwalk Oct 13 '10 at 20:04
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    "the best tools" is subjective and not always based on technical merit though. I'm more productive on my choice of platform. Productivity, familiarity and the *EXTENDED* toolchain are important (email, browsers, SVN clients, spaces, expose, where to find configuration files, system settings, etc etc etc). Code is code. It's for human beings, and platform doesn't really matter too much. I'd suggest the opposite; hiring talented people and not giving them the tools they think they need to get the job done is silly, especially considering how little these tools cost. – dannywartnaby Oct 13 '10 at 20:22
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If the company doesn't have a control version, you can put it. You should be scared if they say in the interview, that everyone do unpaid overtime (because they are the best or whatever), or they focus too much on the money you will earn in the future (someday...).

greuze
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