I'm past the likelihood of doing another degree myself, but having a robust education reimbursement suggests that they are investing properly in employee growth.
If they aren't within about a 20 minutes commute, they need to have remote work available. I don't mind coming in occasionally for longer distances, but remote work is now a competitive standard, not an option.
Everything else is negotiable. Flexible policies about PTO are, I think, better than 'unlimited PTO' -- be generous and have flexibility at every manager's discretion, we'll be good.
I'm a hardware engineer so remote work isn't very important for me. I don't really want a full lab at my home. Other things are nice but pale in comparison to having good work, good coworkers, good boss, and management I can respect.
Remote work and unlimited PTO are amazing bennies. It just lets you deal with life as it comes and, when other things in life line up, go take extended trips/vacations and work from somewhere else and experience other locales. It truly enables working to live, rather than living to work.
I will say though that unlimited vacation has to have a good company culture around it, otherwise it's just a scam that encourages people to overwork and burnout.
Edit: 25 days vacation is the minimum vacation
With defined PTO, everyone knows how many days you are entitled to. In addition, if you get laid off, you get money for your unused vacation days.
Other than the usual health insurance, etc, the biggest thing I am looking for would be full-time remote.
Remote work is my #1
Health insurance didn't used to be important in the UK but it's looking like it might be in the future.
Most other benefits can be solved with your base salary figure. For example, if you don't offer health insurance but you pay +$15,000 more than a competitor then it doesn't matter. You could make a case this is preferred because now the employee has a choice on what to do with that money.
I've seen a number of interesting things over the years like every Friday off for 3-4 months during the summer or $250 towards holiday meals near the end of the year. Gestures like this go a long ways and could be an indicator that the company understands employee happiness.
* If I'm going to invest my time in a company, I want it to be something where I'll grow from it, and learning enough that it keeps me interested and engaged.
* If I know I'll want to leave within a year, what's the point?
Does it pay enough that suggests they value my contribution and care about my ideas?
* Actually, my living costs are relatively low because I've paid off my house and don't have a family. I don't need the highest pay available, but conversely a low offer means that they almost certainly won't value the work I'll be doing.
Location
* Close to where I currently live, or somewhere I'd like to live, or fully remote.
Holiday
* Unlimited PTO sounds terrible to me - most people will feel guilty for taking time off, and those that don't will be noticed by their manager as taking more PTO than everyone else.
* In the UK, there's a legal minimum anyway
Snacks, freebies, work events
* These are just tweaks to quality of life. If you already love the job, they'll just make things even better. If you have any issues with the job, or if you're considering an offer elsewhere, these honestly make no difference in the grand scheme of things.
* Think what your hourly rate is, and pretty soon you'll realise that even getting free food when you work overtime is a terrible trade - e.g. the largest pizza you can order is probably still less than an hour's work, but you probably won't get food unless you're working multiple hours overtime.
* Also, fruit or snacks are cheap anyway. It's nice to not have to buy it, but really you're probably being paid more in the time it takes you to eat it than it cost. It's no big deal to buy your own if you're somewhere that doesn't provide free snacks!
The benefits are however much less important than not working for complete fuckwits.
Edit: +healthcare if I lived somewhere that was a problem!
There are rare times when a critical report has gone down (I'm a BI developer) when my boss will call me, and that's fine. But I make it a strong point to keep those to a minimum and to keep the boundary between work and home life very solid.
1. Company culture where people are not dickheads to each other, and take into account that their colleagues are also humans with lives outside work
2. Working 4 instead of 5 days
3. Allowed to work 50% or more remote
Also, it's BS: unless I can take a year off on my first day, then it's not unlimited.
IOW, "come work for me if you're gullible"
Decent salary
Interesting wotk
What Alt Data are you selling?
That, and remote work. I have no interest in ever going back into the office. Even a modest 30min commute each way just feels like an unnecessary waste of my life. It’s like writing a document for hours which will only be read by your manager, and then for your manager to provide you with detailed feedback on how to improve the document, and expect you to update the document. I could do without that too.
The health insurance plus debit card allow you to have an HSA you never have to touch. HSA is tax deferred, grows tax free once invested, and is tax free withdrawal at 72. The advanced age makes this somewhat unattractive but you can use the money before that (at 60+) for healthcare expenses.
Stay away from the free snacks so you don't have to use your HSA.
• Health insurance is a close second
• Work hours are next most important
• Reasonable salary and PTO matter but not hugely. As long as it’s generally fair I don’t need/want to wring every possible cent out of my employer.
• I don’t value reimbursements, snacks, etc. at all. I’d rather just spend the money I’m paid on things I want.
- base salary
- 100% remote
- flexible schedule (I can start to work at 7am/8am/9am/etc.; If I need to do some errands at 2pm, I can just do it)
- culture, product and tech stack. A standard no BS culture would suffice, but every company has its own shenanigans. A good product to work on would be nice, but I accept that the majority of products out there are just not needed at all. Also, I'm not anymore a zealot when it comes to the tech stack; and learning something new at the job is welcomed.
- standard vacation days (as dictated by the law of the country). I see the majority of unlimited PTO as a scam. There's a difference between what it's my right (my official 20-30 vacation days per year as per the law that no-one can take away from me) and what company says should be my vacation days per year (wich is highly dependant on my team/manager).
- at least in Western Europe, the health insurance is more or less the same everywhere, so it's not a perk in itself.
- free lunch/snacks/videogames is not a perk from my perspective if you are over 30. Even less now if we work remotely.
- education reimbursement could be nice, but I don't mind at all. I try to be self-substained when it comes to gathering knowledge that benefits my career
- no on-call rotation. But I accept that this is getting harder and harder to negotiate
For a small, organically growing firm like my employer, unlimited PTO is just shorthand for "we don't have the back office staff to track this, so just don't abuse it". Yes, totally subjective, but the point is when you're scrappy you don't have time to make Policy all the livelong day.
As we've grown and evolved we ditched the messaging of unlimited PTO because of the negative connotation it has that everyone here has rightfully pointed out. "Does unlimited mean none?" is a verbatim question I've fielded in an interview.
Anyway, I explain OP's question as what I call the career trifecta:
1. You are working on things that have meaning to you
2. You enjoy working with the people around you
3. The pay and benefits give you space to pursue life's other interests
Most people in the world don't get one of those, much less all three. I have all three and now I'm a spoiled brat and don't want to give up one of them to get more of the other (i.e., more salary doesn't make life better if you lose one of the other pillars).
This seems like it would be a win win situation. The effective value of the employee's "raise" is more than what the employer has to spend on the "raise".
Of course that's assuming that the company actually caters high quality, healthy food. If they try to cheap out then that all falls apart.
I've grown to really appreciate and desire the "chilled out hybrid" model that some places are now offering -- primarily remote, but come into the office as much as or as little as you want, with a comfortable office that has the usual small company amenities.
Edited to add: flexible hours to accompany the above!
With this in place, I'd also look for an employer that's signed up the the Cycle2Work scheme, and has their office in a reasonably sensible location.
And to be honest, with the state of the NHS these days, I'd really want private health/dental insurance on offer.
I don't much care for the following [any more?]:
* Parental leave (although I use the existence of a generous policy as an indicator of the workplace culture)
* Unlimited PTO (I'd rather have clear expectations)
* Games in the office (Nice to have, but I'm wary of what sort of working culture this might indicate)
That includes beign able to get vacation (not just me, but my team as well) when I need it.
And be able to disconnect and nothing (bad) happens.
Vacations, health insurance, parental leave are all given by law here (Italy). But, if they weren't, I guess they'd be pretty important.
First and foremost: remote. Not commuting gives me 2 hours of time. Every day. That makes a profound impact on my life that goes way beyond any kind of financial compensation.
Secondly: Meaningful and interesting problems.
Right now I’m working 4 days (32 hours) a week, entirely remotely, for enough money to live in NYC, and also the health insurance, 401k, and all that standard stuff.
You want to lure me away? You’re going to have to beat that. Start by offering a 24 hour work week.
Lack of core benefits make employees unhappy. Too low pay results in unhappy no matter anything else. OTOH high pay doesn't make employees happy -- a shit job with high pay never gets better than "barely tolerable".
Non-core benefits make employees happy but lack of them doesn't make them unhappy. For example, free lunch.
The division between core and extra varies to some degree between employees.
The major point is that the extras can never make up for a missing core. Poor pay or a bad boss is going to result in unhappy employees no matter the benefits.
I quit my previous job because I had 3 days a week remote, and I wanted to bump that to "unlimited but I can come whenever I want". Funny thing is that I would probably have come 2 days a week anyway most of the time. What I really want is to be able to work from home a few weeks in a row if I feel like it. Just decide as an adult if I want to come to the office or work from home. Maybe something like "10 mandatory office days" a year would have worked too. Or 3 mandatory office days a month, something like that. "Week" is the wrong granularity level.
- Salary
- A place that appreciates, once you get the work done well and on time, the rest of your time is basically yours.
- Interesting project / good people to work with or learn from.
- Less beauracracy as possible within reason.