Readings

The readings for this week focus on the hiring process and other employment issues such as negotiations, contracts, salaries, promotion, and mobility.

1. Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon Top Interviewer Reveals Secrets of Landing Dream Job

2. Why is hiring broken? It starts at the whiteboard.

3. Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued

4. Why Women Don't Negotiate Their Job Offers

5. What To Look Out For In Software Development NDAs

6. How Noncompete Clauses Keep Workers Locked In

7. What Is Stack Ranking? Microsoft Ends Controversial Employee Rating System, Yahoo Ramps It Up

8. You Should Plan On Switching Jobs Every Three Years For The Rest Of Your Life

Optional: Hiring

1. Here's Google's Secret to Hiring the Best People

2. We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

3. We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest

Optional: Negotiations

1. Facebook, Google and Netflix pay a higher median salary than Exxon, Goldman Sachs or Verizon

   Also: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon and Ask HN: How much do you make at Google?

   There is also: State of Global Tech Salaries

2. Ten Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer

   Also: How Not to Bomb Your Offer Negotiation

3. Why Recent Graduates Don't Negotiate

Optional: Contracts

1. Noncompete Clauses Increasingly Pop Up in Array of Jobs

2. How Companies Kill Their Employees' Job Searches

3. Why I Don't Sign Non-Competes

Optional: Promotion

1. Why Stack Ranking Is A Terrible Way To Motivate Employees

2. Amazon's Use of 'Stack' Ranking for Workers May Backfire, Experts Say

3. Getting a raise comes down to one thing: Leverage.

Optional: Mobility

1. In This Economy, Quitters Are Winning

2. Employees Who Stay In Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less

3. Apple, Google will pay 64,000 engineers to avoid trial on "no-poach" deal

Questions

Please write a response to one of the following questions:

1. What has your job (or internship) interview process been like? What surprises you? What frustrates you? What excites you? How did you prepare? How did you perform?

   What is your overall impression of the general interview process? Is it efficent? Is it effective? Is it humane? Is it ethical?

2. Did you negotiate your contract (or do you plan to)? Why or why not? On what points did you negotiate and how did that process go? Did you have to sign a NDA or non-compete in the process? What sort of cool perks and bonuses did you get?

   What do you make of the negotiation process? Is it ethical to ask for more? Is it ethical to challenge or modify the terms of your contract?

3. As you go through your job search process have you investigated how promotion and career advancement works at the companies you looked at? What is the common career trajectory for employees at your company? What systems of review and feedback do they have?

   What do you think of the stack ranking system common in tech companies? Is it fair? Is it ethical? How would you feel about participating in that process?

4. Where do you see your career headed? Do you plan on staying with one company or do you envision moving from job to job?

   Is there such thing as company loyalty? Should you be loyal to your company and should your company be loyal to you? How do things such as non-competes and trade secrets influence your opinion? Are these contracts fair? Are they ethical? On the flip side, is job hopping an ethical practice?