Some tech companies engage in very focused Developer Marketing efforts to attract candidates, and you need to see through that. The more they try to sell you, or the more popular the company is, the more wary you should be.

Here’s a tip: If you accept a job somewhere and have to relocate, don’t use the real estate agents the company recommends. These agents sometimes have “back channels” to your new employer.

Information about you that would be illegal for your employer to ask or acquire through direct means can be acquired through these back channels.

And then this information can be used to pressure or exploit you.

Another employment tip: Never tell your coworkers or manager that you have a lease, or are locked into anything long term. Leave it ambiguous/private. If they know you’re “locked in” you are opening yourself up to exploitation.

I learned about this from a friend, who got exploited the instant their manager learned they had an expensive long-term lease.

At some companies, if they know you are paying back taxes (or a large debt) you are opening yourself up to exploitation. Always keep that information private.

Another employment tip: Have friends outside your company. Don’t turn your company into a “Corporate Tribe”. It’ll help you get perspective which is extremely valuable.

Many corporate devs we meet are totally and utterly sucked into day to day corporate politics. From the outside this appears very unhealthy.

At some point you’ve got to stop proving yourself. When you’re first starting you career you’ll have the strong urge to do this. At some point, stop. If somebody challenges you just move on.

Another employment tip: If you jump to a new company and leave in a few months (or within approx. the first year) because the place is bad or whatever, it’s going to put a ding on your resume. Companies know this and can use that to exploit you as well.

The more famous and well known the company, and the easier it is for that company to get new hires, the worse you will be treated (in my experience). Beware of that while shopping around for a new job.

At this one company, the only time I saw the president/CEO do a whole company meeting (at the office) all he basically talked about was how he manipulated the press. It took a while for that to sink in. It was a let down.

If you join a company and start to experience trauma bonding (look it up), you should walk immediately. Not every company is like that, and it isn’t worth it.

After joining this one Bellevue company one of the psuedo-managers kept ragging on a well known physics coder I respected. He joined the company and left for another after a few months.

Turns out, this coder realized how bad the work environment was and moved on to a more healthy company. So beware of stories like this as they could be indicative of a unhealthy environment.

If you’re working on a project hourly, think twice before becoming a full-timer. With hourly contracts the company must be careful with what they assign you to work on. Once you go full-time they will have much less incentive to value your time.

If you have to communicate with a very political, overly controlling company, always do so via CC’d email or conference calls with multiple parties listening. Never privately Skype or chat with anyone. This helps keep the overly political company honest.

People at large companies tend to self-censure themselves and behave better when multiple parties are listening. It definitely changes the tone.

If you work on a software project for a company and don’t contractually control the repo, then you don’t really control the project. The company can drop in coders at any time and wreck the project. Don’t sign deals like this.

Don’t work for free on a project, even if they sometimes pay you. The minute you start working for free you have devalued your time and your average pay will be less overall.

You can’t negotiate if you don’t have alternatives. Always have several active options and always be prepared to walk. If the company you are negotiating with knows you have no alternatives you can be treated like a dog.

I’ve seen this up close with a small game company negotiating with Microsoft. They knew the small company had zero alternatives so they got treated incredibly badly.

If somebody says to you “Only through me/us can you achieve success”, walk away. This is a common manipulation tactic.

Never have your company (or one of its owners) cosign your mortgage. You’ll be potentially locked in and when you want to leave it’s going to cause anxiety. (I’ve seen this happen.)

So-called “self organizing” companies are controlled by mass anxiety. Anxiety is contagious. I don’t think they are healthy places to work.

When signing a game development deal you need protection from last minute changes/additions to the design or features done by the publisher. Lock the features and basic design in contractually to protect yourself.

Don’t confuse “work friends” for real friends. People sometimes act very differently inside companies vs. outside. I’ve seen this over and over again. Money/status/power distorts things.

When you’re dealing with someone at a company: No matter how nice and cool that person is, you are actually dealing with that person’s manager. Learn what “triangulation” means.

If you’re dealing with a self-organizing company it’s more complex. You will be triangulated against multiple people and you’ll have to deal with group consensus.

Patent trolling attacks can be used by large companies to control individual developers who have open source software. It’s one tool in their aresenal.

When you start interviewing for a new gig, start at the least desirable company first and the most last. Interviewing (especially white-boarding) is hard and you’ll benefit from the practice at the less desirable companies first.

After you interview at the large company, you’ll then hopefully have multiple offers and can use them as leverage against the larger company.

If you and your work-friends experience a mass layoff, relax and start organizing. Identify the companies you and your friends want to work for. Send in people who don’t want the job to interview at each company to gather “intel” about the process, questions, tests etc.

After each interview get a brain dump from that candidate. Send in multiple devs if needed to gather more complete info about each company’s process.

I’ve seen this done and it works.

The devs who are sent in as “probes” will be getting valuable interview practice and networking, so it helps them too.

If you’re at a company and mysterious unexplained things start happening, and some people start leaving randomly with no explanation: you may be facing a mass layoff soon.

So-called self-organizing companies have a corporate arm somewhere controlling the entire operation from “above”. Find them and their friends to figure out who has the real power.

What you’ll find is that the corporate arm influences, controls, and “anxiety spikes” the self-organizing arm nearly constantly. It’s not self-organizing, it’s a company with opaque managers ruled through mass anxiety and fear.

If a company places massive emphasis on hiring and recruiting throughout their culture, turnover is either high and/or they are growing. Identify the cause and if it’s mostly turnover then the place may not be a healthy work environment.

Some companies make temporary strategic hires to help recruit from your social network. You may be disposed after a critical mass of new hires occur from your social network.

I’ve seen this happen first hand. The company was moving into a new field. They made the temp strategic hire then fired her a year later with no warning after they had hired up her friends and their friends.

If you’re at a place like this, you must learn who the corporate managers are, who are their friends, and the cliques. They are the ones with real power and everything else is an illusion.

At self-organizing companies with bonuses, workers will watch for rivalries between other coworkers to exploit. They will team up with one dev to bring the other (disliked) dev down a notch in some way. (I’ve seen this several times.)

Such battles can get VERY nasty and be almost invisible until the trap is sprung.

If the battle gets too big or nasty the corporate arm will step in to “referee”.

At self-organizing companies, coding must be done super defensively as anyone can come in and “turd up” the code you’re working on. You must design your systems for this inevitability.

Related: At places like this, you dare not depend on other systems actually working for any period of time. Copy/paste/rename the helper functions you depend on so others can’t quietly break or jankify your systems and make you look bad.

External hierarchical “Hired Gun” teams are used strategically by self-organizing companies to get key stuff done. If you work at a place like this, you must identify who controls this team as they effectively have access to a power multiplier.

At self-organizing companies, once you earn some “company bucks” it’s time to find key contractors to help amplify your abilities at the company. Always control the approval of their pay- never let a coworker control that.

It’s best to contract with famous devs, or well-known devs in different countries. They’ll be unlikely to ever want to accept a full-time offer and will be happy to remain a contractor.

There’s great risk involved in hiring contractors like this. But the rewards are potentially massive to you and the company. Hire very carefully.

If the group consensus turns against your contractor, you’re in trouble and you’re going to get dinged. So carefully manage the perception of your contractors.

On a competitive team within a self-organizing company, avoid asking for help unless you absolutely, positively need it. Any information you receive may be purposely distorted in some way. If you do ask for help, gather consensus from multiple devs.

Related: Route around problems vs. asking for help or modifications on these teams. Once you ask for help the other dev(s) have control and may purposely send you down a blind alley.

At a self-organizing company your coding style will change. Instead of modifying key headers and adding common helper functions, you may want to just define the helpers locally to your code instead to avoid political issues.

I know this probably sounds nuts or it shouldn’t be an issue, but I saw or encountered this problem multiple times.

On teams like this, it’s the Wild West. The devs aren’t working for the greater good of the company, they are working for good bonuses. This is one reason why bonuses in this type of environment are a really bad idea.

To earn a nice bonus at a self-organizing company, identify a feature or project that is valuable and team up with strategic partner(s) to make it happen. Over time you will find devs you work well with.

At a self-organizing company with bonuses: Once you modify a project you’re on the hook for anything until it ships. The team will hold your bonus hostage and claim your work broke something. It’s basically company-legalized extortion.

At self-organizing companies you must be very social. Early on you need to identify who is closely interacting with the corporate arm, who their friends and cliques are, and what they find valuable. If you fall outside this group’s favor be prepared for pain.

Related: You need a powerful “Sponsor” or “Baron” to back you. Figure out what they want and like. Watch or read “Hunger Games”. Once you get to this level you are almost untouchable.

At a self-organizing company: keep your test resources as low-key as possible/practical. If your team has setup a key test lab that you need to ship things, don’t advertise it outside your group. Other powerful teams/devs who want to see you fail will get it piled into a corner.

At a self-organizing company you must pay attention to subtle hints from the corporate arm. They just won’t come to you and say “work on this”. Events will just happen and you need to be wise and realize that nothing happens by accident at places like this.

Your mental model should be a hierarchical corporate arm with a self-organizing layer underneath. The corporate arm will reach into and influence the self-organizing arm using various tools.

Some tools are key strategic hires forced into the system, random firings, hints placed with devs that something is valuable or interesting, exposing devs to extra resources like the ability to pay contractors, destroying resources like test labs, or bonus payouts.

You can also just reach in and grab devs and force them to a new team. (That’s why you have wheels on your desk.)

If at one of these companies you find yourself in the basement with a stapler, working alone: be prepared to be fired unless you have a strong Sponsor and are taking an approved break.

Anyhow, I’ve given a brain dump of a lot of the things I remember while working for a so-called self-organizing company. IMO, once you throw bonuses in they become utterly toxic workplaces.

I do think they can work much better without the bonus incentive distorting everything. Also, as an external dev interacting with a self-organizing company I’ve had very good experiences.

If a connected person buddies up to you and starts showing you stuff, pay attention as they are basically telling you “this is valuable to the corporate arm”. If they start showing you their wealth that’s the corporate arm telling you “we will make you rich”.

If you’re running a self-organizing company, you need to have a measure and understanding of the current average and peak Anxiety Level within the self-organizing arm. Or it blows up and talent walks.

Random firings, messing around with key resources like test labs, encouraging toxic behaviors through massive bonuses, and forcing devs to move around randomly are all anxiety increasing/morale decreasing events.

And this is why I walked away from a self-organizing company 1 week after being given options. It was just too unhealthy a workplace, and it impacted my health too much. I would say most of my coworkers where ridiculously stressed out (I learned some had to go on meds to cope).

I came in one day and my coworker (let’s call him Bob) disappeared, his desk wheeled into the hall to be picked clean. “Where did Bob go?” I asked. I got replies like “Bob who?” or “don’t talk about Bob”. I realized then that I had no idea what I had got myself into.

Another type of temp strategic hire you can make is to recruit a well-known author, a famous dev, or a person with specialized skills (like an economist). Have them write gushingly about their amazing experiences at the company. Once you’re done with them quietly let them go.

At a self-organizing company you can easily spot the strategic hires made by the corporate arm. If they didn’t need to be interviewed, or the interview was purposely watered down, the corporate arm is making an exception.

In cases like this sometimes the corporate arm will quietly train the strategic recruit before the actual interview. They’ll give them all the questions for the white-board interview.