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.
Companies that feel the need to mention up-front that unpaid (for salaried employees) overtime is required 100% of the time.
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.
My shortlist:
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.
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.
Bad mood in the team. Dirty/messy workplace. This yells "management doesn't care."
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.
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).
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.
Rules are more important than reality.
Any indication my Internet usage is going to be regulated or spied upon.
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.
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.
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.
Any definite indication that I'm being lied to in the interview about important matters.
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.
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.
Working with a boss who thinks I am not apt for the job because I'm a woman (yes, it happened - to a friend).
My dealbreakers are:
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."
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..
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.
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".
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.
Are you ready to move away from your town to work abroad?
This is definitely my Dealbreaker
I have a short list:
Deal Breakers:
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:
And I refuse to work with either of them, ever again.
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.
If the first interview is with an HR rep who knows nothing about the job. Way too bureaucratic for me.
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.
Showing up late for my inteview. You don't get a second chance to make a first impression.
Like a good spamfilter, there are few outright deal breakers, but there are a number of things that will score them up.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...).
