HACKER Q&A
📣 eric_khun

What are the other companies you'll never work for?


What are the companies you should absolutely avoid?

Why? Culture? CEO? Management? Customers?


  👤 mstaoru Accepted Answer ✓
My personal opinion on what I would avoid:

- FAANG / BAT: too large, I don't want to tell people that my work was handling validation of 17th form in Adwords extended preferences screen for Tier-3 partners;

- any kind of surveillance / anti-privacy tech, including all those "we help companies understand their employees better" and "we make workers more productive" etc, all kinds of ad-matching platforms, behavioral analysis and so on;

- generally anything advertisement-related;

- anything military- or defense-related;

- anything by ex-Wework and Uber because of how toxic work culture was / is in those (just IMO);

- sweatshops like Luxoft, Crossover etc;

- probably would avoid corporates like Citi, McKinsey, BCG, Deloitte etc;

- anything that produces cheaply in China and sells outside;

- would be very careful with anything invested by Softbank directly or through a proxy fund...

Hahaha, so probably starting a business or working for a NGO with a good cause is the only way.


👤 codingdave
I can give the same answer here that I give to recruiters. The job I do has to improve the world somehow. It doesn't have to be some profound world-changing project, but it has to be a net positive. For example, the project I've been on for the last 7 years moves paper-based processes in small government to online processes. Less waste, saves them money. Doesn't solve the big problems of the world, but at least is one small positive step.

I will consider any job that can make that same claim. And I'll reject jobs that cannot.


👤 2rsf
CEO and culture will make me do better homework before and during the interview process, but will not stop me from working for such a company.

I would avoid everything related to betting, I can't justify to myself abusing people's weaknesses. There are grey areas like esports involving money

I would have to think twice about companies or teams building "content recommendation", online ads or anything else that spies on individuals for the soul purpose of making more money


👤 Japhy_Ryder
Brightcove. Completely terrible company - some of the most cliquey, horrible people I've ever had the displeasure of working with.