Continuous Coding does not mean “Code until you drop”

I recently came across a job posting which raised all sorts of red flags for me.

It may look like a good opportunity, but continuous coding is only possible when you have sustainable coding. This article will point out all the red flags in this posting to help protect you from getting pulled into a job which will be more harmful than rewarding.

Below, is the job post in full. Excuse the formating. I've removed some details to protect the guilty. Read it, get enticed, and then we will dive into it.

If you don't want to read the whole thing, click here to dive in.

Chief Architect (Remote) - $400,000/year USD Company Name | Company Location (non US location)
Posted DatePosted 1 day ago
Are you the best software architect in your company? Can you identify patterns in complex systems and see ways to make them 10x simpler? Do you enjoy designing software that maximizes use of existing code? Do you wish you could expand your technical career without requiring more and more time on HR and project management? If so, you’ll love our approach of driving the direction of products starting with the core technology. In this role you will join a very passionate and experienced team responsible for all of the important technical decisions on every product in our large portfolio of enterprise software solutions. You’ll spend your time making the most important technical design decisions, such as:
What are the core data structures used by the app? Why were they chosen? How are they mapped or applied to the domain of the problem? What were the tradeoffs or alternatives?
Are there any important or valuable algorithms? What insights led to choosing them?
Are important third-party components/technologies used? Why were they selected? Are they the right ones today? Were they ever?
Are there any components of the system that create valuable and differentiated capability relative to competitors? Why? (we call this “TechDiff”)
What was the design and reasoning behind the important internal and external APIs?
Identify and explain the rationale behind important technical dependencies or limitations this product has. Can you think of new and creative ways to overcome them?
Can the product be broken down logically into smaller, more manageable components? Are there well-defined interfaces, or seams, between those components? Or are they all interconnected?
What is the critical opinion of a fresh set of eyes when looking at old decisions? Are there architecture or design anti-patterns present in the fundamental technical decisions?
In this role you will also learn and practice the high-impact skill of clear written communication, as this enables your scale and broad impact across the organization.
What You Will Be Doing
Each week you will have a different design problem to work on and technical spec to create. The assignments may make iterative progress on a larger problem, or be smaller and targeted design problems. You will have the opportunity to learn and work on a wide variety of products with distinct tech stacks and business domains so you will be continuously challenged. You will uncover the “high-order bit” decisions by interviewing other product CTOs, analyzing the data structures and analyzing code and design documents. Finally, you will make the important design decisions that specify how to rearchitect products in a cloud-first way on systems like AWS and GCP, and how leveraging the latest powerful cloud services can enable ten-fold improvements in the product.
What You Won’t Be Doing
You will not be making technical decisions based primarily on saving money. You will focus on designing the best solution for the problem, in the simplest way possible, and with maximum leverage of existing assets. This is a strategic technical design position - making the important technical decisions and providing clear leadership for our engineering organization to execute on. Therefore, in this role you won’t be:
Participating in daily scrum meetings or providing day-to-day direction to an engineering team
Making low-level decisions about what coding language to use or choosing frameworks and libraries
Performing code reviews, debugging or investigating bugs and outages
Talking to customers to develop a backlog of features they wish our products had
Directly managing people
Chief Architect Key Responsibilities
Make clear, simple, and technically superior design decisions
Simplify designs that others have made complicated
Apply a particularly high-quality bar to what we believe are the core technical design decisions - data structures, algorithms, architectural patterns, and the leverage of third-party implementations
Utilize other architects as force-multipliers, mentoring them by providing high-quality feedback on their work
Synthesize your decisions and designs into clear and structured written specs
Basic Requirements
A university degree that includes the study of data structures and algorithms
At least 2 years experience with a commercial software company shipping production code
At least 5 years of experience making core architecture and design decisions; such as data domain modeling, application of design patterns, and design using third-party components.
The ability to simplify complex ideas and communicate them with clear, logical thinking.
Nice-to-have Requirements
Experience designing for Amazon Web Services, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.
Experience redesigning existing products on top of serverless cloud services.
Experience crafting simple but meaningful messages for sales and marketing teams.
Compensation and growth:
As a 100% remote organization, we pay the same rate to everyone in a given role regardless of prior compensation history or geographic location. For simplicity, we make weekly payments at your full hourly rate and do not incorporate any variable pay components or subsidized benefits. It is about as clear and simple of a compensation plan as you can imagine.
This SVP-level position has a rate of $200/hr or roughly $400k/yr, and our desire is long-term career opportunities, not short-term relationships for “side gigs”.
This role is also part of a Technical Product Management growth path. The step just below exercises similar skills but at a different level of scope and is a VP-level ($100/hr) role. The growth path for this SVP-level role is to EVP-level ($400/hr). You can find all of our job listings on our jobs site: https://jobs.BadCompany2.com
About BadCompany BadCompany is a division of UnknownCompany, one of the world’s largest privately held enterprise software companies. Since 2008, UnknownCompany has been acquiring enterprise software firms, turning them around, and delivering phenomenal value for their customers. BadCompany provides R&D services to all of UnknownCompany’s businesses using a unique centralized model for software development and delivery. BadCompany has a fully-global, fully-remote workforce and has partnered with BadCompany2 to administer our talent screening and global workforce management. What’s Next? There is so much to cover for this exciting role, and space here is limited. Hit the Apply button if you found this interesting and want to learn more. We look forward to meeting you! What to expect next: You will receive an email with a link to start your self-paced, online job application. Our hiring platform will guide you through a series of online “screening” assessments to check for basic job fit, job-related skills, and finally a few real-world job-specific assignments. You will be paired up with one of our recruiting specialists who can answer questions you might have about the process, role, or company, and help you get to the final interview step. Important! If you do not receive an email from us: First, emails may take up to 15 minutes to send, refresh and check again. Second, check your spam and junk folders for an email from our partners at BadCompany2.com, mark as “Not Spam” since you will receive other emails as well. Third, we will send to whatever email account you indicated on the Apply form - by default, that is the email address you use as your LinkedIn username and it might be different than the one you have already checked. If all else fails, just visit https://jobs.BadCompany2.com directly, search for this job, and click “Apply”. You will be prompted to reset your password if you already applied using LinkedIn EasyApply.

A deep analysis of all the red flags.

First off, why is this job posting so long? It gives a lot of information, which is great. But it's also telling a story. It's trying to pull you in emotionally, so you don't think too much about what you are reading. Be wary of a job posting that has too much effort put into it.

Next we have the job posting title, it's pure click bait!

Chief Architect (Remote) - $400,000/year USD

That's a very attractive offer. Remote work, AND $400K a year? That's almost too good to be true! (And it is) Legitimate job postings don't put the salary in the title. If it's a progressive company with open and transparent salaries, they will be mentioned in the job description with a link to the updated salary sheets. This is pure click bait. Learn to treat it with suspicion, like spam email.

Company Name | Company Location (non US location)

Wait what? They are giving a salary in USD, but they are hiring in another country? Why? Oh, I guess it's remote, but why advertise US amounts? Do they not have the proper legal and finacial infrastructure to pay in the local currency? What's going on here?

Are you the best software architect in your company?

Blatant appeal to vanity, get those flags ready…

Can you identify patterns in complex systems and see ways to make them 10x simpler? Do you enjoy designing software that maximizes use of existing code?

Ah, they don't want to get caught, here is some fluff a generic stuff that means nothing…

Do you wish you could expand your technical career without requiring more and more time on HR and project management?

Ok.. RAISE THAT FLAG! 🚩 You want to offer me $400K a year, but want me to be afraid of HR and project management? That's mid-level employee stuff. How can you be working on anything of signifcance without dealing with the team of people devoted to building that thing.

Also notice, they said “project management” not “product management”. There is a difference. This company still uses projects instead of products, that means they are focused on budgets and deadlines, and will expect you to meet them. The project management exists, they are just pretending that they will pay you $400K/yr and shield you from all that “management” stuff…. No, they will not.

If so, you’ll love our approach of driving the direction of products starting with the core technology.

Huh? More marketing fluff which means nothing. How can you build a product (or was it project?? hmmm???) which with a core technology without knowing what it is you want to build? What are they doing here?!?

You’ll spend your time making the most important technical design decisions, such as:

A long list of stuff which got pulled out of the definition of an architect. Ok, not a problem. They know something of which they write.

What You Will Be Doing
Each week you will have a different design problem to work on and technical spec to create.

🚩 Raise that Flag! Every week a new problem? You are expected to solve a problem in a week. That's one intense sprint cycle!

The assignments may make iterative progress on a larger problem, or be smaller and targeted design problems. You will have the opportunity to learn and work on a wide variety of products with distinct tech stacks and business domains so you will be continuously challenged.

🚩 Did you say ASSIGNMENTS? A Senior VP position gets assignments? On a weekly basis? That does NOT sound like a SVP, that sounds like a cog in a factory. A well organized, self sufficient/organizing team does not get weekly assignments. They work together to solve problems. Getting a random assignment for some chunk of a problem which you know nothing about is not the path to robust software. Any job posting talking about assignment, and every changing products is a place that is going to work you to the bone, spit you out, and will have never heard of a “work life” balance. (Notice how in this entire lengthly job posting, they don't mention these issues at all. They tell you the hourly wage, but not anything about benefits. Likely there aren't any.

What You Won’t Be Doing

🚩 This is a wierd list of things for an architect to not be doing. Above we were told that you will be choosing the algorithms, and here we are told you won't be working with the teams. That's going to make for a tough working relationship.

Chief Architect Key Responsibilities
Make clear, simple, and technically superior design decisions
Simplify designs that others have made complicated Apply a particularly high-quality bar to what we believe are the core technical design decisions - data structures, algorithms, architectural patterns, and the leverage of third-party implementations

🚩 Again, fix the work the team did, but don't talk to them… This is one toxic environment. Making good software is all about the people using and creating it. Don't be fooled into thinking you can learn or create good work without working together, rather than against people. Especially at a higher level position like an architect.

Utilize other architects as force-multipliers, mentoring them by providing high-quality feedback on their work

🚩 Sounds great.. until you realize the other architects will be providing that same “high quality feedback” on your work… every week, on some random task. Sounds like a great excuse to dock your wages.

Synthesize your decisions and designs into clear and structured written specs

🚩 A 1 week sprint, where you product specs, and not working software… The worst of all software development processes or practices.

Compensation and growth:
As a 100% remote organization, we pay the same rate to everyone in a given role regardless of prior compensation history or geographic location. For simplicity, we make weekly payments at your full hourly rate and do not incorporate any variable pay components or subsidized benefits. It is about as clear and simple of a compensation plan as you can imagine.

🚩 This means you aren't an employee, you are pay per hour contractor. Don't give up your rights so quickly.

This SVP-level position has a rate of $200/hr or roughly $400k/yr, and our desire is long-term career opportunities, not short-term relationships for “side gigs”.

🚩 Wait what? Why do they even mention “side gigs”??? Oh! Because they only pay per clocked in hour… which means you won't be earning enough money to do this full time… which means you won't be making $400K/yr

This role is also part of a Technical Product Management growth path. The step just below exercises similar skills but at a different level of scope and is a VP-level ($100/hr) role. The growth path for this SVP-level role is to EVP-level ($400/hr). You can find all of our job listings on our jobs site: https://jobs.BadCompany2.com

🚩 What kind of horrible pyramid scheme is this!?!

About BadCompany BadCompany is a division of UnknownCompany, one of the world’s largest privately held enterprise software companies. Since 2008, UnknownCompany has been acquiring enterprise software firms, turning them around, and delivering phenomenal value for their customers. BadCompany provides R&D services to all of UnknownCompany’s businesses using a unique centralized model for software development and delivery.

🚩 Sounds great.. how come I've never heard of them?!? Can I even find any software these people have made? I've gotten this far and I still have NO idea what these people make, or why they make it.

BadCompany has a fully-global, fully-remote workforce and has partnered with BadCompany2 to administer our talent screening and global workforce management.

🚩 You partnered with them? Or it's the same company with a different name? The company posting this job posting, isn't even the company that will technically be hiring you!?!? Why are they hiding the relationship between who you are working for, and who they are?

Doing some research online I found out that these red flags are real issues. They have a reputation for not paying full wages, or having disputes over how much time you actually worked.

Furthermore, on Linked, where this job was posted, it says they have 1,000 - 5,000 employees, but only 52 of those employees have linkedin accounts. That's a really scary ratio! 🚩

Be careful out there, screen job positions carefully. Don't get put into a gilded cage of false promises, low growth, and a place where they don't respect the employees. Software is made for people, by people, and with people. Know your rights, and protect your work-life balance.