What the Top Editor Looks for When Deciding on a Career Move
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Pay Attention to What They Actually Do, Not What They Say Stop just listening to what a company claims about its culture. Look closely at where they actually spend their money and time. Real cultural values show up when a company has to make a tough choice, like promoting someone from inside or protecting the budget for employee training. If something sounds good but costs the company nothing, it’s probably just advertising.
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View Every Job as Something That Adds to Your Professional Worth Think about whether a role will make you more valuable in the job market later. Check where people go after they leave this company, and if people who left ever come back. Your main goal is for this job to act like a place that trains and improves you.
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Check the Structure to Make Sure Things Can Keep Going Well For a company to grow smoothly, it needs to avoid "culture problems" like slow decisions and unclear communication. Watch out for signs that things are inconsistent or that people are focused on office politics instead of getting results. When things are efficient, you avoid burning out.
Checking Your Options Strategically
Most people looking for jobs judge a company based on its website section about "Mission and Values" or pictures of a cool office on social media. This is a bad strategy. Relying on these things can cause you to build up "Culture Debt"—which means you spend too much time dealing with broken systems and office politics instead of learning the skills that keep you competitive in the job market.
When you pick a company based on its advertising, you risk more than just being unhappy; you risk your professional worth staying the same while you are stuck fighting the internal mess.
To avoid this, you need to start using a method called Signal-to-Noise Analysis. This method separates the "Cheap Talk"—easy things for a company to claim, like good work-life balance or free snacks—from the "Costly Signals."
Costly signals are the things a company actually does, the choices it makes about its structure, and how it spends its resources—things that are hard or expensive to pretend. By ignoring the noise from the PR department, you can figure out how things truly get decided and where the organization puts its real power.
This guide helps you move from just hoping for the best to having a real plan. The following seven signs will show you how to look past the company image and check out a company as if you were making a smart, long-term investment.
Guide to Checking How Healthy an Organization Is
Use this chart to quickly spot common problems and figure out which companies are built to last. Match what you see happening now with the signs, the real reasons behind them, what it means for you, and what you need to do next to make the right career move.
The Fake Fun Trap: Too much focus on office perks, social media posts, and general mission statements that don't mean much.
The hiring process relies on marketing because there aren't clear management rules to show off.
Ignore the "Cheap Talk" and check the real day-to-day experiences by talking to current staff.
Check for: The Fake Fun Trap
The Chaos Trap: Constant "urgent" issues, high staff turnover, and celebrating too much hard work or "grit.""
"Culture problems" caused by fixing things fast instead of building healthy, long-term systems.
Figure out the risk of your own value going down because you're wasting time managing internal mess instead of learning new things.
Check for: The Chaos Trap
The Good Signs: Clear proof of people being promoted internally, set work limits, and open discussions about problems.
Structural choices that treat employee growth as a key business asset, not just an expense.
Find the "Costly Signals," like how resources are used and how much freedom people have, to know your value will grow over time.
Check for: The Good Signs
7 Key Ways to Check a Company's Real Culture
As a senior career helper, I tell you to stop looking at what a company says* and start looking at what it *does. To avoid hiring the wrong person, you must look for "Costly Signals"—actions that cost the company a lot of money or effort, making them hard to fake.
Check how quickly people move up to management roles using sites like LinkedIn. Lots of internal promotion is a Costly Signal because it shows the company is actually willing to invest in its current staff, instead of taking the easy route of hiring outside to fix internal problems.
Look up where people go after they leave the company. If they often move on to great, growing companies, the old company is a talent school for you. If they don't, you might lose professional time and value by staying in a place that doesn't boost your market standing.
Look for people who left the company and later came back (boomerang employees). This suggests that after seeing other options, they decided the culture inside was special enough to return, even though changing jobs usually feels like you avoid a loss.
When interviewing, ask how the team handles a project that fails or misses a deadline. If the answers are vague or defensive, it likely means there isn't honesty, which creates Information Gaps where leaders hide the real situation from staff, leading to a messy and political workplace.
Forget the free snacks. Instead, ask for the exact budget they set aside for your own training and skill improvement. Putting real money into your skills is a smart move that stops your professional worth from decreasing while you work there.
When reading employee reviews, look at the biggest differences in scores between departments, not just the average score. A company with very different staff experiences often means there's a high chance of Personal Bias—meaning your success will depend more on the specific boss you get than on what the company officially stands for.
Ask your potential teammates how long it takes to make and share an important decision. Slow, unclear decisions show "Culture Debt," which makes the company overly worried about making a mistake, so it stops getting things done. This forces you to waste energy dealing with rules instead of producing results.
Key Questions to Ask When Checking the Real Culture
Situation: Handling Interview Talk
During an interview, the manager repeats the company's values (like "We are honest") which sound exactly like the company website. You need to find out if they mean it or if it's just advertising.
"I have read your values, but I want to know how they affect hard choices. Can you give me a recent example where the company decided to lose money, say no to a client, or postpone a launch specifically to stick to one of those values? I want to see the actual trade-offs the leaders are prepared to make."
This question forces them to move past simple words and provide a specific, provable action that shows their culture is genuine.
Situation: The Recruiter Focusing on Perks
A recruiter or HR person talks a lot about the fun parts of the job—free food, parties, and nice offices—instead of talking about how much work there is, turnover, or chances to grow. You need to shift the talk to things that affect your long-term career value.
"The office sounds nice, but I am mostly focused on the solid structure of the team. I want to make sure I spend my effort growing my skills, not dealing with broken systems. Can you tell me about how many people are promoted from inside the company, and how the training budget compares to the budget for office treats?"
This focuses the conversation on long-term investment and system quality, showing that you are checking for risks that could lower your professional worth.
Situation: Getting the Real Story From a Peer
You are chatting casually with someone who might be your future teammate. You want to know if the team is stuck in "Culture Debt" (politics and mess) without sounding like you are gossiping.
"Every company has tough spots, but I'm trying to tell the difference between what they advertise and what it's like day-to-day. In a typical week, what percentage of your time is spent dealing with office politics or fixing system errors over doing the actual work you were hired for? I want to make sure I join a team where I can stay sharp and focus on high-quality results."
This frames the question using numbers (percentage of time) to uncover system problems (Culture Debt) while showing you care about doing important work.
Cruit Tools for Checking Culture
To Verify Facts Networking Tool
Check the "Costly Signals" by connecting with people who have been there and using your contacts for outreach.
For Planning Your Talk Interview Prep Tool
Practice asking the important questions about how the company runs to avoid "Culture Debt" when you interview.
For Making Choices Career Guidance Tool
Use guided thinking to understand culture signals and spot your own weak spots so you don't lower your future value.
Common Questions
What if the company is old and its processes are just slow because that's how they always do things?
In older or very strict industries, it's easy to confuse "being steady" with "being stuck." To find the real situation, check for the "costly signal" of internal promotions.
- Does the company promote people from within, or do they always hire new leaders from the outside?
- If they spend money training their own people for leadership roles, the processes aren't flawed—they are the basis for growth.
- If they only hire outsiders for the top jobs, you will probably hit a wall with your career growth there soon.
Can a strong team protect me if the rest of the company has bad internal issues?
A good manager can act like a temporary shield, but that usually doesn't last. To see if your specific team is safe, check their "Budget Independence."
During the interview, ask how the team handles small, unexpected costs or changes to a project.
- If your potential boss has to get approval from three different levels of management for small things, they won't be able to protect your time or your career growth when the company's internal problems get serious.
How can I find "costly signals" in a brand-new startup that is only a few months old?
When there's no company history, you must look at the "Founder's Time Allocation." Time is the most valuable thing a founder has.
- If the leaders spend most of their time on public relations and social media instead of the hard, unexciting work of building reliable systems and talking to customers, they care more about image than long-term worth.
- A founder who is deeply involved in the messy, unglamorous parts of the business is showing you they are building a real structure, not just a trendy name.
Focus on what matters.
Changing your approach from just looking at the surface to using a "Signal-to-Noise" system turns you from someone asking for a job into someone making a strategic investment. Instead of being fooled by mission statements and free snacks, you are now ready to spot the real actions that prevent bad workplace cultures. By focusing on where a company actually puts its money and time, you make sure your next job increases your professional value instead of leaving you stuck with office drama and broken promises.
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