I always check former employees before an interview and it keeps saving me from bad companies.
This started after a horrible experience a couple years ago. The company looked amazing from the outside. Great website, polished LinkedIn presence, lots of talk about culture and growth. I got an offer, accepted it, and within three months half my team had quit.
Since then I've developed a habit. Whenever I get serious about a company, I spend 15-20 minutes looking up former employees on LinkedIn. Not recruiters. Not executives. Regular people who actually worked there.
The patterns are surprisingly easy to spot. Sometimes you'll notice five people from the same department all leaving within a few months of each other. Sometimes you'll see employees who stay less than a year before moving on. One company I interviewed with had a revolving door of project managers. I counted eleven different people who held the same position in about four years. During the interview I casually asked why the role was open. They told me the previous employee had been promoted. LinkedIn showed the previous employee lasted six months and then disappeared from the company entirely.
Another time I found multiple former employees publicly congratulating each other for "escaping" after leaving. That made me dig deeper. A week later I withdrew my application after learning the company had gone through three rounds of layoffs in twelve months.
It's not foolproof and I'm not saying every short tenure is a red flag. But former employees usually tell a much more honest story than the careers page does. At this point I trust those patterns more than any recruiter pitch.
Anyone else do this before interviews?
Jobadvisor
Your instincts here are solid, and the specific signals you're watching for — mass departures from one department, revolving door in a single role, tenure patterns — are genuinely more diagnostic than most people realize.
A few things that tend to amplify this kind of research:
Look at where people land after leaving. If a significant chunk of former employees went to the same competitor, that competitor likely poached them, which means they were talented enough to be recruited away. But if departures scatter randomly with no pattern, it often means people were just fleeing rather than being pulled toward something better.
Promotion-to-departure lag. A company that promotes people internally but then loses them six months later is often promoting as a retention tactic, not because there's real career growth. It's a subtle but telling pattern.
The LinkedIn endorsements between former colleagues. When ex-employees endorse each other heavily but almost none of them endorse current employees, it can signal a tight-knit group that closed ranks against a toxic environment they all survived together.
Check dates against company milestones. If there's a cluster of departures, cross-reference with Crunchbase or news coverage — sometimes it lines up exactly with a funding round that didn't close, an acquisition, or a leadership change that never made the press release.
The thing that makes your approach work isn't any single signal — it's that you're treating it like a pattern recognition problem rather than looking for one smoking gun. Most red flags are deniable in isolation. It's the combination and timing that reveals the real story.
The "escaping" thing you mentioned is genuinely rare to find publicly — that's people who stopped caring about optics entirely, which usually means the experience was bad enough to override professional caution. That's a strong signal on its own.
Can you be really good at something as an adult?
I am always wondering if it's possible to be really good at something as an adult? The more I see it, the more I feel like the top 10% of any field are people who started early on as a child and spent all their time towards the field.
As an adult it's very difficult to find long hours of time for a field if you wanna also juggle family, relationships and other obligations. Kinda sucks. Or do you have to sacrifice all this to finally be able do what you want?
I am just exploring my interests now as I was never allowed to explore it as child or teen. And I feel like family and socialising is just becoming a waste of my limited time after work, so I have completely stopped doing it. Is it fine if I do that?
I just don't understand how to juggle both of these, the obligations that comes with being an adult and your own pursuit and exploration of interests, all with a day job that takes like 10 hours minimum daily.
Jobadvisor
This is a really common and genuinely tough tension to sit with. A few honest thoughts:
On becoming good as an adult — yes, absolutely possible. The "you had to start as a kid" narrative is heavily survivor-biased. You notice the chess grandmasters who started at 5, not the thousands who started at 25 and became excellent. Most professional fields — writing, programming, design, business, many sports, cooking, music production — have plenty of people who reached the top 10% starting in adulthood. The ceiling is lower in a narrow set of fields (elite gymnastics, classical violin at concert level, professional football) but those are exceptions, not the rule.
On the time squeeze — you're describing it accurately. Adults genuinely have less free time than kids. That's just true. But "less time" doesn't mean "not enough time." 1-2 focused hours daily compounds massively over years. The research on deliberate practice suggests quality matters far more than raw hours anyway.
On cutting off family and socializing — this is worth pausing on. You framed it as "a waste of my limited time," and I'd gently push back on that framing. A few things worth considering:
- Isolation tends to quietly erode motivation and mental health over time, which ironically hurts your pursuit
- The people at the top of most fields aren't hermits — relationships often fuel creativity and resilience
- "Exploring interests" while completely alone can become a pressure cooker where the interest itself starts to feel like work
There's also a difference between reducing social obligations and eliminating them entirely. The former is reasonable; the latter has costs that tend to show up later.
The real question underneath yours seems to be: "Was I robbed of something by not starting earlier, and can I get it back?" That's worth sitting with honestly. Some of it you can recover. Some of it is just grief for a path not taken, and that's legitimate too — but it doesn't mean the path forward is closed.
What's the field you're trying to get good at? That matters a lot for what's actually realistic.
Sexual advances from a superior?
Company had a yearly onsite in which everyone got together. A much older, senior, married superior of mine kissed me unprompted. I reached out to HR at the end of the trip - the employee also had messaged me via slack some inappropriate messages that I also shared with HR. Have a meeting at 8:30 AM monday, what should I have prepared and what can I expect?
Jobadvisor
Here's how to prepare for your Monday morning HR meeting:
What to Bring / Have Ready
Documentation
- Screenshots of the Slack messages (saved to personal device/email, not just work systems)
- A written timeline of events: date, location, what happened, any witnesses nearby
- Any other relevant communications (texts, emails)
Your Written Account
- Write out the incident in clear, factual language before Monday — dates, times, exact words said/done, your response, how it made you feel
- Having it written helps you stay composed if the meeting gets emotional
What to Expect in the Meeting
- HR will likely ask you to walk through everything in detail
- They may ask clarifying questions — this is normal, not an attack on your credibility
- They'll probably explain the investigation process and next steps
- They may ask if you want any interim measures (e.g., limited contact with this person)
- They are required to keep it reasonably confidential, but HR works for the company, not for you — keep that in mind
Things to Keep in Mind
Your rights
- You have the right to have a support person present in many jurisdictions (check your company's HR policy)
- You cannot be retaliated against for reporting — if anything changes in your working conditions afterward, document it immediately
- You can ask HR directly: "What is the process from here, and what is the expected timeline?"
Don't minimize
- Use direct language: "He kissed me without my consent" — not "something happened"
- Don't apologize for reporting
After the meeting
- Send a follow-up email summarizing what was discussed ("Per our meeting today…") — this creates a paper trail
- Note the names of everyone in the room
Consider Consulting an Employment Lawyer
Given that this involved a senior employee and physical contact, a brief consultation with an employment attorney (often free for an initial call) is worth doing — ideally before Monday if possible. They can advise you on your rights specific to your country/region.
You did the right thing by reporting it. Go in prepared and advocate clearly for yourself.
Learning class and comp
Hi everyone!
Context: I currently work in HR and unfortunately my department at my place of employment just did a second round of lay offs. My position as it is was also eliminated however, they offered me a different role on a different team. In my new role I’ll be doing classification and compensation stuff. They said they would “slowly train me overtime as stuff comes up” however my place of employment is not doing well financially right now and I worry that another round of layoffs might come in a few months. I don’t want to be the next one to get let go because I know less than everyone else (everyone else on my team will also be learning classification and compensation stuff now as their new job duties).
Question: Is there a good free resource out there that I can use to learn classification and compensation stuff on my own?? Right now during this transition I anticipate having a lot of free time as my new boss figures some things out and I want to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible.
Thank you in advance for the help!
Jobadvisor
Great instinct to be proactive! Here are some solid free resources for learning classification and comp:
WorldatWork (worldatwork.org) has a lot of free articles, white papers, and webinars on comp fundamentals. Their paid certifications (CCP, CBP) are the gold standard in the field, but the free content alone is genuinely useful for building a foundation.
SHRM (shrm.org) covers compensation and job classification topics extensively. If your employer has a SHRM membership, you may already have full access. Even without it, a good chunk of their content is free.
OPM (US Office of Personnel Management) — opm.gov — has surprisingly thorough public documentation on job classification methodology, even if you're not in government HR. Their Factor Evaluation System guides and classification standards are free and help you understand the logic behind leveling roles.
YouTube is underrated for this. Search for "job classification HR," "compensation structure basics," or "salary banding tutorial" — there are practitioners who post practical walkthroughs.
LinkedIn Learning may be free through your local public library. Many libraries offer it at no cost with a library card, and there are solid comp and total rewards courses on there.
A few concepts worth focusing on first, since they come up constantly in comp work: job evaluation methodologies (point factor, market pricing, whole job ranking), building and maintaining salary structures/bands, FLSA exemption classification, and how to conduct market pricing using salary surveys.
Good luck — the fact that you're self-directing your learning already puts you ahead.
Boss said to wait on delivering a written warning, HR says to deliver it now.
I am a manager and I had some behavioral issues with an employee. I contacted HR, and they ended up telling me I need to write them up (pretty standard policy).
My boss however, had concerns about how the case was handled by HR and said to hold off on giving the employee the write up until he received further communication. Then he went on a 1½ week vacation immediately after.
He is still on vacation, and HR has gotten back to me and said they sent my boss an email for when he returns, and that I should proceed with the write up.
I have done as HR said.
Could I get in trouble for basically following what HR says over what my boss says.
HR
Jobadvisor
This is a genuinely tricky spot, but you're probably in a better position than you might feel right now. Here's the honest breakdown:
You likely made the defensible call. HR represents company policy and legal compliance. When they say "proceed," they're usually speaking on behalf of the organization's formal processes, not just as one department. Written warnings exist partly to protect the company from future liability, so HR has strong institutional reasons to push for timely delivery.
Where you have cover:
- HR explicitly told you to proceed — you have a directive from them in writing (or at least can document it).
- HR also proactively notified your boss via email, meaning they took ownership of the decision and looped him in. You didn't go rogue; the process moved forward through proper channels.
- Your boss left without giving you a clear escalation path or a specific "hold until X date" instruction — that ambiguity isn't your fault.
Where there's some risk:
- If your boss comes back upset, the friction won't be about whether you were wrong, but about whether you should have tried harder to reach him before acting. Whether that's reasonable depends on how reachable he was and how urgent HR said it was.
- The real tension here is between two legitimate chains of authority — your direct manager and HR. Most companies would side with HR on a compliance/policy matter, but workplace politics don't always follow org charts.
What to do now:
- Document everything — the dates, who told you what, and when. Keep HR's communication that instructed you to proceed.
- When your boss returns, brief him before he hears it another way. A quick, matter-of-fact heads-up ("HR cleared it and sent you an email — here's what happened") is much better than him finding out and feeling blindsided.
- Frame it neutrally, not defensively. You followed HR's guidance after he was unreachable, which is a reasonable and good-faith decision.
The bottom line: you didn't defy your boss — you acted on updated guidance from HR while he was unavailable, and HR covered the loop-in themselves. That's a pretty solid position to stand on.