A list of company-related stuff—mission, core values, and culture—that I research before considering applying to a job.
Sure, it’s nearly impossible to find a company that will satisfy every single point, but it helps me at least in finding better matches against my personal preferences and values.
The list doesn’t follow any specific order.
- Smart and inspiring leaders (CEO, founders), over megalomaniacs and tyrants
- Driven by a good and meaningful mission/cause, over greed (betting/casinos, scammy cryptos...)
- Small to medium-sized (50-60, 100), over growing rapidly to unsustainably large and a high entropy environment
- Bootstrapped, over heavy reliance on VC funding
- Remote-first, over just remote-friendly
- Asynchronous communication and collaboration, over synchronous by default
- Trust, over pervasive monitoring
- Clearly defined core values, over toxic behaviors
- Flexible work schedule, over mandatory overlap beyond my regular work hours (9am–6pm/7pm)
- Respect time off (non-working hours, weekends, OOO/vacation), over always-on culture
- Minimum mandatory vacation days (a total of 35-40 days available for vacation or national holidays), over tricky “unlimited vacation” policies
- Career mobility options, over haphazard moves and stagnation
- Committed to professional development and personal growth, over stagnation and burnout (excessive hours on the side)
- Diverse environment (nationality, ethnicity, gender, age...), over sameness and exclusion
- Almost-flat organization with minimum levels of middle management, over a complex hierarchy with convoluted communication chains and multiple levels of indirection
- Transparency and open communication, over opacity and unknown direction
- Pragmatic, effective lean-inspired methodologies (streamlined like Basecamp’s “Shape Up”), over micromanagement or dogmatic and filled with unnecessary ceremony
- High-quality work and open documentation practices, over poor practices and knowledge silos
- Supports and fosters personal health (sick leave, mental health), over neglecting it
- Product and design-driven, over exclusively engineering-driven