“The One Question You Should Ask About Every New Job” is a NYT article by a Wharton School professor. The young person who has never had a job is supposed to figure out the corporate culture and then decide on where to work based on which company has the best. Let’s assume that the 22-year-old can correctly make these judgment calls. Isn’t this still terrible advice? Wouldn’t the most important criterion for an ambitious young person be “How fast is the company growing?” It is pretty easy to get promoted if the company needs to promote half of the employees every year in order to accommodate growth. And perhaps a second criterion should be the extent to which the company is a leader in its industry. It is a lot easier to go from a perceived leader to the next job than from a perceived laggard.
What am I missing?
Pretty sure most of the job applicants should just say yes to the job. Then if it sucks, either fight to move up or start applying elsewhere.
When Eric Schmidt was hiring people at Google before the explosion he said, “This is a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat you’re getting, just get on.” It was good advice. Google at the time was a distant second to Yahoo! as a portal to the Internet, something that changed.
Apple had a market share of 2%, which Steve Jobs famously said was the same that BMW had of the car market and he was much happier to be BMW than GM. But, obviously, if you signed on when they were NOT perceived as the market leader (i.e. what Jony Ive did) then today you are much happier than if you took the similar job at Dell Computer (or Yahoo!, see above).
By “a leader in its industry,” Colin, I didn’t mean the leading market share. It could be any kind of leadership, e.g., technical or marketing.
figure out the corporate culture and then decide on where to work based on which company has the best. Let’s assume that the 22-year-old can correctly make these judgment calls. Isn’t this still terrible advice? Wouldn’t the most important criterion for an ambitious young person be “How fast is the company growing?”
This question is moot. Aside from, perhaps, a few sharp Ivy League grads, new college grads do not have the luxury to select among more than one job offer.