Agile job descriptions in plain English
Do you ever read a job description and somehow end up knowing less about the role than before?
Job ads are notorious for this. They feel mostly like marketing or "employer branding" to me, instead of giving an accurate picture of the role. But if you look carefully and gather a bit of contextual data, you could decipher them!
Let's start with the information that is usually there
title
your boss
industry / environment
benefits
tech stack
If you are lucky you also get
project description
salary range
working practices
Let's take a look at those one by one and try to figure out what they could mean.
Title
There is only one thing I usually try to figure out and that's objective seniority and management responsibilities.
Any title that contains the prefix Director, Lead or Manager will have leadership duties associated with it in some form. The bigger the org and the further from consulting it is, the more responsibilities and direct reports you can expect. For example a Director of Software Engineering can have responsibility for anywhere between 5 and 100+ people so be mindful of the context.
I find that seniority is very relative in terms of skill, but quite consistent in terms of responsibilities relative to the size of the team. For example, as a Senior you are expected to handle large initiatives within the scope of the team independently, including all planning and communication. More senior titles assume cross team scope.
As teams grow and applications become more complex, getting things done requires a lot more skill. Therefore, try to understand if taking this job would entail more responsibility or increase in complexity (or both).
Your boss
In certain roles, they will highlight who you report to. It can be a good clue if the job and company description was too vague.
to the CTO as an engineer -> very small tech team
to an innovations manager -> corporate land
to a team lead -> possible more old fashioned culture
to an Engineering Manager -> probably a modern software company
to a Delivery Lead / Manager -> agency / consulting world
For figuring out what's behind a (management) title it's often best to search for people in that role at that company on LinkedIn.
Industry
When it comes to industry you should try to answer two things: Where does the money come from and how much red tape is there surrounding it.
When they speak of clients, it's most likely an agency / consultancy so the money is tied directly to hours billed to the client.
Beyond that, it's important to check if the company sells software i.e. you'd be working on a product or if they build their internal tools. In one case, you are a cost center, in the other scenario, you build things to generate revenue. Very different animals in terms of culture and salaries!
And last but not least, you need to figure out how regulated this space is. Certain industries will have much more stringent requirements and they will reflect how much red tape you are likely to encounter. The amount of bureaucracy people associate with an industry tends to be a reflection of the culture you'll find in the companies working in that space.
Project
The main thing you want to figure out is: Is this project about creating more revenue or optimizing costs?
For example, if you are building a large feature that's been requested by many enterprise users, you will probably encounter higher pressure, but also higher rewards.
If on the other hand, you are working on optimizing the amount of time spent on support tasks e.g. by automating data imports, the environment might be lower pressure, but if the company isn't doing too well, this team is much more likely to have their budget cut.
Tech stack
When you are in technology keyword town, you should be concerned with:
is it a good fit for you
is it modern - how new is the application, how well maintained is it
is it exotic - due to real need or gut decision
It's very unlikely that you will get a clear answer just by reading the listed technologies, but it should tell you what to ask about during the interviews.
Working practices
Time to brag and tell everyone how smart and different we are, woo!
hackathons - free overtime, yay! very likely a young crowd, can be fun though
we release n times - try to figure out if it's automatic or if there is a manual process involved. that speaks mostly about their CI/CD capabilities and the amount of trust they've built with their tests
____ rotations - any mention of round robins is a sign that teams are self organized and don't rely on managers
we do TDD - means do it or get out; they might teach you though
we don't do ____ - we are very very smart. look out for this at the interviews
Benefits
the country specific standards - in the Czech Republic that's 25 days vacation, 3+ personal days, private pension of 3%, meal vouchers, gym vouchers.... these are derived from local corporate tax rebates so scroll past them
industry standards - mac pro and sometimes choice of linux
gear budget - ask about how to access that cash, but generally any kind of freedom in how you equip your home office is a good
learning / conference budget - same, ask, can be great, can be typical expense process in disguise
yoga / Pilates / whatever - they shell out 100$ per month on virtual classes or give you a subscription for an app that costs less than a good coffee per month
flexible benefits - buy (almost) whatever you want - this is becoming more popular. you'll love it!
stock options - yes we get it, you are a startup, BUT if it's not a startup, cool, because you might be getting already publicly traded stock at a discount so that's a complicated but pretty neat bonus
snacks - a fruit bowl in the kitchen for the most part. just like coffee, unless it's somehow exceptional in quality, they may as well not mention it
non standard items - if it's there, it will be the most "honest" one, because someone probably made a real effort to make it happen
You can never get the full picture from a job posting, but it's really worth paying close attention to details.
It will also get easier as you spend more time in the industry, because you get to know the company names and the culture associated with them, so you will know what to expect from their alumni.
Good luck on the next job hunt!