Ask HN: As a female/minority, how do you vet a company before taking a job?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19852939

by bwb • 7 years ago

32 56 7 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I read stories about what it was like to work at Uber as a woman and I wonder how women and minorities vet a company they are thinking about working for or received a job offer for?

How do you try to screen the environment and figure out if it is a hellscape before you enter?

I'd welcome any feedback. I am working on a research project on how people analyze and screen when offered a new position...

superflit4• 7 years ago

As an Minority I check for:

1. Negative if has a "diversity" panel or ombudsman (will explain more below).

2. If all VPs and "big shots" came from the same university

3. Power Ranger Factor (negative factor)

If #1 is present and there are several examples the Company is more cautious about the virtue signalling and to avoid fire the bad "minority" will allocate them on a "non work" club. Mostly "push paper" tasks or trivial tasks that will not have direct impact on revenues. No good position to be it as I want to make an impact.

#3 If in all communications there should be All "races" all the time like Power Rangers again feels fake.

I never set my hiring forms as minority and try to best to blend in. I just hate when people get too touchy about something from my culture or country and don't want to touch the subject. So I have to came forward and say: "Heyyyy I escaped from there I know how it works and how to deal with that... So please lets be frank XX will not work maybe we should do Y" and that is it.

There are bad actors in All races. There are bad actors in Asian companies, in Indian companies in European companies. The question is how much they hide or fire them.

Great companies don't look your name, age or school. They look at your CV, portfolio and ask questions about your work and your skills. They test you and bang you are hired. They don't care about my political affiliations or if I got to the church.

bwb4• 7 years ago

Thank you for sharing!

Is Glassdoor helpful at all or just in a general way?

Do you try to get a reference or insight from someone at the company who is a minority or anything like that to vet it?

superflit4• 7 years ago

Glassdoor is like reading reviews for Condoms.

You can only grasp what happened with a person in a certain moment and mood.

One of the companies I worked for in Glassdoor was the hell on earth for me was the best job.

So it is a case of "bad ex" .

julius_set2• 7 years ago

I generally agree with you but let’s play devils advocate, at what DOES political affiliation matter. If you know a candidate has ties to Al-Queda do you hire them, given that their work so far and resume indicate they would provide a 100X increase to your teams output? This would be an extreme example

superflit4• 7 years ago

I follow the laws of US.

No ties with terrorist organisations or embargoed countries.

That should clear the real bad ones.

Spooky233• 7 years ago

How do you screen for this? How do you identify an Al-Queda member?

And what is the standard? If a potential employee is affiliated with the Socialist Worker's Party or the Right to Life Party, are they disqualified? How about Democratic party?

Unless the job is a germance policy making position or includes tasks that anathema and where good conscience would impair their ability to perform work, it's none of your business.

sethammons5• 7 years ago

Related, we extended an offer out to a younger lady who did well on our interviews; pretty sure this was going to be her first job outside of school. She declined our competitive offer and went with Uber, right smack dab in the middle of the media frenzy on what was happening at Uber. I heard that she really liked us but wanted the bigger name on her resume.

superwayne• 7 years ago

Just out of curiosity, why did you go with "lady" and not with "woman"?

OJFord2• 7 years ago

Just out of curiosity, what do you think is wrong?

salex892• 7 years ago

To fire up your curiosity a bit, although I'm not the one you are asking.

In my native language we have different terms for:

- (Very) young woman as in child - up to around college age

- Woman up to her, let's say thirties or mid-thirties (it's a matter of personal reference, I guess). English stil has only "girl".

- After that we generally use "woman" as in more mature female.

Hard to mess up, the context is rather clear.

- Then comes miss/misses which can basically overlap with some of the previous, but you kinda eyeball it

- Lady is more of a descriptive term for someone's style and classy behaviour, and can refer to any age, even to a little girl. If you want to be official, than we would probably use Ms/Mrs, rarely lady. Sometimes lady can be pejorative. It's complicated to call (invoke) somebody as "lady" (hey lady). "Ladies and gentlemen" is a rare direct usage.

So... When using English without switching context properly, I find myself confused what to use because I miss some tools I'm used to in my language. I actually find "lady" to be handy in that manner, because it kinda replaces multiple terms I'm used to :-).

sethammons5• 7 years ago

Maybe that is why I got downvoted. I would not have said "a man I interviewed." I would have said "a guy I interviewed" or "a candidate I interviewed." I associate the word guy and lady as the same thing, just gendered. I went with the feminine word because it is relevant to the thread - she chose to go into a known toxic environment for woman to, presumably, get a name on her resume. And after a quick thread elsewhere here, I've now learned that some folks don't like the word lady. :themoreyouknow:

julius_set2• 7 years ago

Just out of curiosity when did we start policing words?

dangerface• 7 years ago

It seems Lady is seen as old fashioned in America while the rest of the english speaking world does not.

petercooper• 7 years ago

I am not a woman but I saw a woman post a great tweet recently (sadly I forget who). She said that she asks the company for the details of any ex-employee who was also female who she could speak with.

Update: Found it, it was Rachel Nabors here, https://twitter.com/rachelnabors/status/1114310745590726656

Someone1234• 7 years ago

I absolutely get why that would be useful to a prospective employee.

But I cannot understand how it would work in practice:

- Your former employer is giving out your contact information so you can help them recruit(?)

- Your former employer is asking you to essentially work for free

- But if your former employer offers you compensation now your opinion is biased

- You may have liability issues (e.g. you say something unfavorable OR favorable, and you can be sued by the perspective employee or former employer)

Rachel Nabors on twitter said it worked in the past, and I won't discount her experiences. I am genuinely curious to understand how the former employer arranged that with a former employee though.

minnca4• 7 years ago

Your former employer is giving out your contact information so you can help them recruit(?)

I think a lot of women would view a request like this as helping other women, rather than helping the company. Plus, as Nabors points out, the company would presumably ask the ex-employee permission before giving out contact info.

ng12• 7 years ago

Feels like there's lots of opportunities for this to backfire.

bwb4• 7 years ago

Wow that is great, thank you for adding that in!

minnca4• 7 years ago

Interview vibes matter. As a woman, if the men (it's usually men) that interview me talk down to me or use patronizing language (however subtle), that's a red flag, though not necessarily a deal-breaker. Also, it's a personal pet peeve of mine if men constantly hold the door/say "after you" and let me walk through the door first. That's a sign that they treat women as "ladies" (just fyi to men, pls don't call the women you work with "ladies") not colleagues. You can usually pick up on this (the door thing) in an interview, in my experience.

rococode• 7 years ago

men constantly hold the door/say "after you" and let me walk through the door first

I think it may not be a good idea to draw conclusions from this without seeing if they do the same for guys too (which you may not be able to observe during an interview). In my workplace everyone pretty much holds the door for everyone else if they're walking in a group. The first person who gets to the door will open it and stand behind it while the others walk in first. Sometimes we'll throw in a lighthearted "after you" too. I'd really hate for someone visiting our company to get the wrong idea about our culture from a common courtesy, especially in an interview scenario where the interviewer may just be trying to be nice to the interviewee regardless of their gender.

minnca4• 7 years ago

I should have clarified – it's a pet peeve for me when men do this exclusively for women/not for other men. It's definitely something I think it can be pretty observable during an onsite – for example, if you're waiting in a lobby or go to lunch as part of an interview, you can watch how men and women interact around a door. I've a man hold open a door for the sole woman in his group, and then walk through the door after her and not hold the door for the remaining guys in the group. Not trying to be super granular here – just for me, it's something I watch for. It's also an additive thing – if the door thing's just a one-off deal, it's probably not indicative of anything. If, however, it's paired with some patronizing language and other vaguely sexist things, it might actually mean something.

sethammons5• 7 years ago

It is always interesting to get different perspectives from folks.

How do you filter the people who hold the door for everyone vs the ones that are only doing it for ladies? Or for those fellas who where told countless times as a youth to hold the door for a woman. Because someone is polite, that is a red flag?

As for calling a woman a lady this one is new to me, and I don't think I've ever used the word "colleague" aloud in my life. I would say, "that is a {guy|lady} that I work with." I've never been made aware previously that referring to a woman as a lady would be taken negatively. I had only heard that some woman don't care for ma'am as they can feel that is a title for an older woman. fwiw, I do tend to use gender neutral words like "they" or "them" over he/she when writing.

minnca4• 7 years ago

"that is a {guy|lady} that I work with."

"Person" also works in this case. +1 for they. "Lady" seems patronizing to me - would you call someone a "gentleman"? To me, "lady" describes a woman who is "traditionally feminine" – I get that when people use "lady" today they don't typically mean "traditionally feminine," but "lady" is still evocative of a time when women were seen as delicate/demure/less than men.

throwaway764214• 7 years ago

As a man this behavior (not only towards women) annoys me as well. When meeting new people with my wife it sometimes happens that other men reject to shake my hand or even look at me before they have introduced themselves to her, giving me a disparaging look and commenting how I could be so non-chivalrous. My wife thinks this behavior is silly.

The same thing happens often in trains, where sometimes as a man you get snarky comments or disapproving looks from other passengers for not jumping up to "rescue" a woman that dares to put her luggage in the overhead compartment all by herself. Would be curious to hear how women here see this but I always think that people are able to ask for help if they really need it and that automatically assuming that they can't put their luggage up by themselves is degrading to them.

Sorting people by gender and age when going through doors or out of an elevator is also silly and degrading I think, so I can understand that you don't want to work in such an environment.

gshdg5• 7 years ago

As a woman, I avoid companies where people use “female” as a noun when referring to humans.

On a less snarky note, I’m aware of the gender balance of my interviewers. At a startup with an engineering team of 3, not having any other women is expected and can be excused; but presumably there’s at least one other woman in the company available for a culture fit interview, right? ... right?

Good signs: existence of an actual HR department (the CFO and an entry level recruiter don’t count); women holding key leadership positions; an office full of faces that reflect the gender and ethnic and age diversity of the city I live in.

Red flags: a strong alcohol culture or one that involves very long hours or lots of mandatory fun time; nobody over 30 in the office, or founders who started the company less than 5 years out of college; an imbalance of women in support roles; water cooler and lunch conversations self-sorting by gender or ethnicity.

Also, many women who have been in the workforce have developed or discovered whisper networks where we can find out about what it’s like to work at various companies.

bwb4• 7 years ago

thank you, that is helpful!! With the whisper networks, is that something where people throw out what is it like to work here? Or even so far as under specific managers? Curious what type of requests come across that.

gshdg5• 7 years ago

Depends on the network and company. You get “has anyone worked at Acme Corp? What was it like?” And “I was there 5 years ago. Things were great in the foo department, but my friends in the bar department said the VP there did baz. Things may have changed since then, though. LMK if you want me to put you in touch with someone who still works there.”

The networks also often share salary information.

badpun• 7 years ago

an office full of faces that reflect the gender and ethnic and age diversity of the city I live in.

That's most likely not going to happen. Tech is a demanding industry and, with age, lots of people start looking for easier/less demanding jobs, even if they pay less. That's why you may see some 60+ year old COBOL maintainers, who stepped off the tech treadmill decades ago and are just now cruising towards retirement, but you, for the most part, won't see 60 years React developers - people at this age value their sanity and don't want to run on the treadmill any more.

gshdg5• 7 years ago

The office presumably isn’t just the dev team, though.

Spooky233• 7 years ago

That's most likely not going to happen.

At a shitty company. Just went to a 60th birthday party for one of the tech leads who just finished a major rollout that impacted about 50,000 people and is standing up our SRE program.

gshdg5• 7 years ago

Oh, look, the question got edited to replace “female” with “woman”. Thank you.

sergiotapia• 7 years ago

Minority here (latino) - I literally don't think about it whatsoever. If you're actively looking into something like that I wonder why.

If anything I ask the engineering team about recent emergencies and crunch - but never `hOw rEpReSeNteD arE mInOritIeS`? That's gross.

fzeroracer• 7 years ago

I mean, there are a fair amount of companies that are openly shitty to women. I imagine it would be a good thing to avoid companies that have a high chance of treating you like garbage.

I've made friends with some of the women I worked with back when I was a government contractor and they had their fair share of horror stories both working for contractors and working directly for the government. Sexual harassment, groping, you name it.

JungleGymSam• 7 years ago

there are a fair amount of companies that are openly shitty to women

How much is "fair amount"? Of all the companies that exist. And where are you getting this data from?

nkkollaw• 7 years ago

Glad that there is still someone with common sense around.

alexcabrera• 7 years ago

If the company or client makes a point about me being a minority or begins to tell me about their diversity or inclusion efforts, that's a hard-pass.

Ask HN: As a female/minority, how do you vet a company before taking a job?

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