Wondering who to work for?

TL;DR: UIUC students deserve to recognize that companies spend millions to sway your perception and make you work for them. this is a guide to researching companies based on what they actually do, how they do it, and whether you're okay with that. Whether thats uncompetitive salaries or human rights violations, that's up to you and you deserve to make that call!

Why recruiting feels the way it does

I'm already struggling to find a position. Beggars can't be choosers right?

In some ways yes, especially for those struggling financially. But that doesn't mean that companies aren't actively swaying your perception of what you should do with your life. This is to help recognize that and make an eventual acceptance offer that you decided out of your own will.

You're saying that recruiters actively sway perception, but how so?

Free swag and campus events are not truly free. Recruiters spend millions of dollars each year to gain a presence on college campuses. Companies will flood academic buildings with recruiters. These events, as well as companies sponsoring events in pre-professional clubs or similar student organizations, create a sense of prestige and exclusivity that makes them seem like the right thing to strive for, especially for students who don't know what to do after education¹

For controversial companies like Palantir, ICE contractors, the defense primes, and national labs that recruit heavily at UIUC, there are even countermeasures and strategies for handling protestors on college campuses.²

What if I'm in the process of being hired or in the interview stages? Am I swayed right then?

Take for example, cognitive and personality tests. This is an industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars; the tests do correlate with job performance, but they're often deployed opaquely and in ways that disadvantage applicants from non-traditional backgrounds.³ Resume scanners can also encode bias from the historical data they're trained on. Companies will decieve you by pretending their hiring process is much more rigorous, precise, and personalized to you than it actually is.

There are some red flags you can spot in interviews that are pretty well documented. Things like:

• Compensation and growth are too good to be true⁴
• Lack of preparation from the interviewer
• Role lacks specific responsibilities
• Negatively talking about current or former employees⁵

How to actually research a company

Here are some questions to start asking yourself:

• Am I okay with my company working with/for the government, and to what extent?
• Am I okay with my company potentially having negative drawbacks to their customers, such as social media algorithms or targeting to minors?
• If my company focuses on AI, how do they handle deployment safety, content moderation, or their data centers?
• What level of environmental impact am I okay with contributing to?
• Does compensation or prestige sway my answers or thoughts to these questions?
• Could I reasonably make a change from within?

I want to recruiters to answer honestly about workplace culture or recent events, I always get the same response of 'a fast-paced and collaborative environment' or 'admittedly something the company is working on'

You need to pose more direct questions about certain topics you are concerned about. If you are scared recruiters won't move forward with you and write it off as a "bad culture fit," maybe that wasn't the right company for you in the first place.

Questions to ask recruiters:

• Can you tell me about how your company has handled recent layoffs?
• How are raises and promotions decided, and how often?
• What does the bottom 25% of performers' experience look like at this company?
• What's the hardest thing the company is dealing with right now?
• how does the company think about (specific contract/product/incident)?

(extra note: It is always beneficial talking to current or recent employees too. DM alumni on LinkedIn, ask friends, or post in relevant subreddit or discord servers)

What should I look for then? How can I find accurate information?

Look for news articles, investigations, and legal controversies. Even things unrelated to the topics you care about could sway your decision depending on severity.

For investigations and reporting:

• 404 Media: worker-owned outlet doing original tech investigations
• Electronic Frontier Foundation: digital rights nonprofit
• Access Now: international digital rights org

For workplace info:

• Layoffs.fyi:tracks tech layoffs over time
• Glassdoor: reviews
• Blind: anonymous employee posts
• Levels.fyi: compensation data and promotion timelines

I would recommend reading the Tech Workers' Bill of Rights and Collective Action in Techas starter points in what other people in tech are concerned about, and what you might want to be concerned about too. Lastly, consider brushing up on media literacy skills and source finding skills!

Who are YOU to write any of this?

I'm just a graduating CS student with a job offer lined up that I'm really glad fits my values. I've had the opportunity to take great classes like CS 211 and CS 464 which has made me spent a lot of time thinking about this kind of stuff before accepting that offer.

To align with everything I've said already: take everything you've read with a grain of salt and do your own research.

If this guide makes you question what you want to do with your tech degree, I recommend reading escaping flatland that this took inspiration from.

Any way to contact you?

@.soupy on discord :]