The flip side: There are always bad apples at any company. The negative reviews may be legit, but not relevant to the manager/program you'd be working under.
As someone who's worked at a 100k+ employees company, there were literally dozens of programs in the same building living largely separate/parallel existences. Unless the reviews called out a program/manager by name they'd be completely useless in gauging job satisfaction.
Too true, and the larger orgs definitely have that as a concern.
And some specific managers who would be better not leading people (aka fired) are a weird case where the in-person interview can kind of discern that. Basically, one has to learn what to ask and how to ask to suss out which team leads are good and which ones aren't. Then again, it's a definite problem where you are in an org can make or break you.
However, we have to separate "shitty manager" from "shitty organization forcing managers to enact shitty policies". And this is where I think Glassdoor 1 and 2 star reviews can show policy trends (versus bad manager trends).
And of course, you may get a company that avoids most of the reviews in scummy ways. I know that the company I worked for that got bought out had a clause they wanted us to sign that stated "no negative comments about us anywhere". What's funny is this is actually illegal under the NLRB. But to me this was a massive red flag to get the hell out (and I did).
Personally in my experience, regardless of the size of the organization (small family business to thousands of employee orgs) if management is toxic, it's because it's tacitly approved from higher ups.
Culture is preserved at the top. It starts at the bottom. The problem is too many leaders read an Adam Grant or Simon Sinek book and all of a sudden think they are the latest incarnation of the tech leadership buddha and impose their will on the team.
1. Efforts to conceal in an interview reveal potential toxic areas. NDA issues aside, this is more about concealing and making things look better than they actually are.
2. Ask "What do you like about working here?". If there's pushback or defensiveness, red flag.
3. Ask "If you were in my position, would you take this job?". Would they gladly take this job, or is there hesitation/defiance/pushback?
5. Ask "What are your values and how do you hold people accountable to live them?" (Does the org follow their own guidance, or is it just for show?)
6. Ask "What happens to employees who make mistakes?" - is this a 1 and done? This also pairs with psychological safety.
7. Ask "What happens to employees when they challenge the status quo?" (As an engineer or similar lead technological role, you will be continually pushing tech. How does the company respond to that?)
8. And for you to ask yourself: "Is the interview conversational or scripted?"
9. Was the interview genuine happiness, or faked? Would the people you would work with actually happy what they're doing?
10. How do you feel after the interview? Is there something that felt off? Can you identify it?
That's not a good question because it assumes the other person if familiar with the jargon term "psychological safety," which seems pretty new. That's not reasonable because that recent HBR article you posted indicates that many people don't know what that term means.
Also "psychological safety" could be easily misinterpreted in today's political environment as something related a demand for an (ideologically) "safe space."
After skimming that article, it would probably be better to ask something along the lines of "is it OK to make mistakes in this organization and learn from them?"
I would actually want to use "psychological safety" to see if my manager is the kind of person who, when they see a word they don't know, instead of asking they make a shit assumption and then react negatively to their own projection of the situation.
I would agree with you if it was a more esoteric sounding word that doesn't have some kind of intuitive interpretation. Physiological safety doesn't sound like something that has a concrete definition at all, and if asked, I'd probably either ask what the person means by it, or come up with my own definition that's otherwise equally valid. Though in the context of an interview, probably best to ask what they mean.
I hope this comment comes across as helpful rather than rude: if you asked me a couple of those questions (especially back-to-back) during an interview, I would not hire you. It isn't that any of those are bad questions per se, but the volume and forwardness of them would be a red-flag that this is a person who likes to show up, make trouble, and not be held accountable for it. Maybe that's not your goal, but remember that in an interview you only have a few minutes to communicate where you're coming from.
As a counterpoint, if someone asks these questions in an interview of me, they'd still go to the "Had questions prepared" higher slice of rankings.
Prepared questions indicate you have initiative and do your homework. I'm hiring thinkers, not drones.
The only turn-off could be in the way they asked the questions and followed up -- aggressive? Not listening to my response closely? Not clarifying if I asked for more information?
Exactly. This isn't meant to be a Blade Runner Voight-Kampff rapid-fire interrogation.
An interview is supposed to be a bidirectional conversation to see if you fit with the manager/company and the company fits with you. Obviously, how you ask (and don't ask), and ask around these questions can really give an idea what to expect.
There's also major red flags for places that you probably never want to work at. For example, dismissive managers are a major problem. What are they going through on a day-to-day? They probably can't tell you, but you can ask around them.
Why are they interviewing? Is it a new position, or a replacement? Why did the replacement leave? I had one interview that the person leaving was also on the interview committee. Really nice gentleman. He was retiring, and wanted to move back with family across the US. And he was on the committee to help find a person and train them to be there. The job wasn't exactly what I was looking for and declined, but I greatly respected how they did that interview.
Again, I interview primarily for engineering roles. Maybe other non-engineering roles do things differently. But I like to try to get a snapshot what the company's like, their expectations, my expectations, and how my life is working there. Last thing I want to do is accept a position and find out they grossly misrepresented the position to get me in the door, and make it hard to interview/switch to get out.
On the other hand, as a hiring manager, I know this is someone who is team-focused and wants to be part of an organization that is similar rather than a blame-focused organization.
An organization that is aligned with the communications patterns outlined in those questions would answer those questions comfortably.
I’d ask similar questions as the parent poster, and I explicitly wouldn’t want to work somewhere where asking these questions was a red flag.
So, it can actually still be a useful candidate side filter. If you don’t hire me because I asked these questions, that’s good for me because I don’t want to work for you (not in an accusatory manner, just we probably don’t have compatible workplace expectations).
I'm trying not to take this as rude... But yeah. My failing, I guess?
I gave a list of types of questions I use to try to discern the manager and the company's perspective. Obviously these aren't to be utilized rapid-fire in a dismissive attitude. However, that's exactly how companies approach interviews. Why isn't it good for me to do the same that's being done to me?
> if you asked me a couple of those questions (especially back-to-back) during an interview, I would not hire you.
(The personal response) And there's no way I'd want to work with or for you with that kind of "you ask too many questions" attitude.
> It isn't that any of those are bad questions per se, but the volume and forwardness of them would be a red-flag that this is a person who likes to show up, make trouble, and not be held accountable for it.
I've also been in workplaces that fired after one fuck-up that was due to miscommunication, bad documentation, or other 3rd party factors. I'm not normally accustomed to making mistakes in my professional area, but they do happen. "How are failures and changes handles in your org?" is a massive key indicator of how this org maintains and grows, and I along with it.
And as an engineer, I get *paid* to ask questions, including those pointed ones that get to the root of a matter. And I apply those skills and abilities to interview processes as I would to any other process. To see a hiring manager dismiss this type of interactive discussion as "someone who makes trouble", is the very type of manager I recommend to be fired on my reviews.
> Maybe that's not your goal, but remember that in an interview you only have a few minutes to communicate where you're coming from.
And the implied contextural clues you typed here indicates that it's the interviewer's to ask the questions, and the candidate to shut up unless spoken to, except for a softball one-off question at the end.
Interviews are a 2 way street. You're interviewing me, and I'm ALSO interviewing you. My questions I ask that probe to a company culture and happiness of the interviewers is of utmost importance. I've turned down higher-paying higher-stress jobs precisely because people on the team balked at work-life balance questions.
Another company had a manager roll their eyes when I asked if they would work the position they were hiring for. Just what exactly did I dodge by discontinuing the interview?
One company blatantly stated that "full time ie expected to be 50 hours minimum" when I asked how maintenances were handled with scheduling. And they're a BIG vehicle company. 6 sigma, ISO 20000, yadda yadda. Absoluutely no life balance, and the interviewing manager made that known.
I've dodged a LOT of crap companies with these sorts of questions. Yours sounds like one as well, with your response.
I might hesitate in answering #3 because it's such a weird question. I don't know your tolerance for common things in young companies like frequently changing priorities. I don't know your financial situation (are you desperate for a job, or are you holding out for a perfect fit?).
Answering "no" could easily land me in hot water, regardless of my reasons, and especially if I don't explain them very clearly and objectively. Answering "yes" doesn't tell you anything; after all, I already work here and might have drunk the company kool-aide.
It just seems like you're looking for a reason to not work here, instead of looking for reasons to be excited about working here. Walking in the door with a negative attitude is a good way to poison a team's working environment. You are, in effect, the very toxic thing you are trying to reveal.
Maybe it's just cultural differences, but I cannot imagine a reason to ask that question of anyone other than someone who I trust and know well.
And if it is scripted, so what? That might mean every candidate gets a somewhat consistent experience, instead of whatever off-the-cuff crap my not-as-smart-as-she-thinks-she-is interviewer pulls out of her butt. Because we've all known that person on the interview team that has their bullshit manhole cover question because "I think to see how they think".
Yeah. 8 is just a silly question. First off you can often just tell if it's scripted. Secondly if it is scripted it's generally just because HR is more mature and is trying to be more fair in the hiring processes; this is a good practice for diversity.
Organizations that aren't scripted just haven't gotten there yet.
It's not good practice for diversity. While it might help some with racial, ethnic or gender diversity, it discriminates heavily against neurodiverse people who often do not fit into little boxes a scripted interview is designed to check off.
have recently been in an interview were the scriptedness feeling crept in after the first few up-beat intro questions were done. didn't felt professional at all to see them working a questionaire with me.
It tells you the company values process over efficacy. Interviewing, like practically any complex task is dynamic in nature. Following down a line of conversation with a candidate provides genuine insight into the individual and cannot be done mechanically.
It depends on what is driving the dissatisfaction. If it is something like how the company handles promotions and raises, than it doesn’t matter which department is providing the review.
This is very true. I've worked in an organization where most people on most of the other teams would negatively rate the company, but I was fortunate to have a great boss. So I look back on my time there as positive, although I recognize that most other people had a very different experience of that company.
I don't think it's too difficult to infer that siloed irrelevance etc may be the case, doesn't seem like much of a flipside to critically studying negative reviews
As someone who's worked at a 100k+ employees company, there were literally dozens of programs in the same building living largely separate/parallel existences. Unless the reviews called out a program/manager by name they'd be completely useless in gauging job satisfaction.