How to Spot Toxic Software Jobs From Their Descriptions
You can infer a lot from what people write.
Disclaimer: All views expressed are my own.
When you’ve worked in industry long enough you get a feel for the tactics people use to sugarcoat things.
For example, “Own any and all parts of the Software Development Life Cycle” basically means, “We have no strong process here, and everything’s on fire so we need you wherever we can put you.”
That previous example especially hurts me because years ago when I was recruiting, I wrote that description believing it sounded awesome. Coincidentally, that was also when it dawned on me that we were constantly on fire and wanted more engineers who could do “everything.”
People put a lot of time into writing fancy job descriptions or playing mind games with you during interviews. My motivation in writing these stories is to help make sure you don’t fall for any of that garbage. Frankly, you deserve better. We all do.
The keys to a good job requisition include the following:
- A clear, concise summary of what the company does without excessive use of buzzwords
- A clear, concise summary of what you would be doing in this job without…
