How do you research a prospective employer?

Question

Say you've got a job offer from some company. How do you go about doing your research on that company? Are there any resources or forums on the net where information about a company's work culture, benefits etc. are available and where people post their own experiences ?

Answer 1

• PR Front. Public Image of the company. How has it been in the news lately?
• Past financial performance of the company. I don't jump around much so I consider a sort of long term investment and investigate the hell out of it
• Change in living expenses if I move to that company?
• What does the company do? Have they built something that I use and like?
• Talk to employees that currently work there. Ferret out information.. salaries / working conditions / work done at that location / gripes / likes
• Talk to employees that have been there. You may get valuable information from this segment too.. especially why did you leave? Apart from personal aspirations, any other reasons should be worth investigating
• How hard is it for someone to get in? As Marx said 'I wouldn't want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member'.. Look if the company takes hiring seriously. Its bound to have good people to work with if it does.

Note: I haven't found what I've been looking for yet. But did God want developers to be happy? :)

Answer 2

The first resource I always hit is the companies own website. Depending on the information I get from it, I can usually get an idea where to go to next: Clients, Partners, Current Employees, Media Releases.

Finding a current employee to talk to is always easier than trying to find an ex-employee.

Answer 3

Presumably you would have had an interview where you can ask questions about the work environment, e.g. what tools are used, what process is used, etc. You also have to take into account that the company may be putting forth its best foot though and claim some things that aren't necessarily 100% true.

I would be careful about postings about a company's work culture and environment as it is easy for there to be biased views, e.g. disgruntled employees may bad mouth a company while others may make it look better than it is if they are recruiting.