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FIG. 04 · CHAPTER 04
Reading the Signals
A company tells on itself in public, constantly. Its job postings are its problems, written as help wanted ads. Its product pages are its promises, and the gap between promise and reviews is its pain. Its news is either momentum or damage control, and the difference is readable. Most candidates look these things up separately and see nothing. Read them side by side and a picture forms: growing or stuck, focused or scrambling, a team you want to join or a fire you would be walking into. These notes are about reading those signals honestly, including the uncomfortable skill of spotting the red flags early enough to act on them.
What do a company's job postings tell me?
The careers page is the company's problem list, sorted by urgency. Every open role is something broken or something bet on. Ten engineering roles and one marketer says build mode. Ten sales roles and a new VP of revenue says the board wants growth now.
I read the whole careers page, not just my posting. The roles around mine tell me what the company is becoming, and whether my seat is part of the bet or part of the cleanup. A second AE posting in the same territory is worth noticing. So is a customer success team doubling while sales holds flat, which usually means churn is the fire this year.
Then bring it into the room. "I noticed you are hiring across the whole revenue team, what is driving that?" is a question that makes interviewers sit up, because it means you looked at them the way they look at you.
How can I tell if a company is growing or struggling?
Stack three signals: hiring velocity, product motion, and news tone. Growing companies hire in clusters, ship visibly, and their news names customers and numbers. Struggling ones hire one role at a time, go quiet on releases, and their news reads like reassurance.
None of these signals is proof on its own. A quiet quarter can be a rebuild. A hiring freeze can be discipline instead of distress. That is why you stack them: one flag is noise, three pointing the same way is a trend.
Glassdoor and its cousins belong in this read, but read them like a scientist. Ignore the angriest and happiest reviews and look for the sentence that keeps repeating across months. When five different people in five different quarters mention the same thing, that thing is real.
What red flags should I look for before an interview?
Watch for the repost, the exodus, and the vague answer. A role that has been open or reposted for months means the bar is confused or the offer is weak. A wave of departures from one team means something happened there. And an interviewer who cannot say why the role is open is telling you something by not telling you.
You can check most of this in minutes. The posting's age shows on the job boards. Team departures show up as a cluster of "past company" entries within a few months of each other. The third flag you test live, by asking "what happened to the last person in this seat" and listening to whether the answer is a story or a dodge.
The caveat is that every company has scars, and a red flag is not a verdict. A struggling company can be the best offer in your pile if you walk in knowing the problem and pricing it in. The flag you find in research is not a reason to run. It is a question you now get to ask from a position of knowledge.
Questions people ask
How do I bring up company news in an interview without forcing it?
Attach it to a real question. Not "I saw your funding announcement" as a standalone flex, but "I saw the new funding is earmarked for the enterprise push, how does that change what this role focuses on in the first year?" News plus implication reads as thinking. News alone reads as homework.
Are Glassdoor reviews reliable research?
Individually no, in aggregate yes. Discard the extremes and hunt for the sentence that repeats across many reviews and many months. One angry review is a bad exit. The same complaint appearing for a year, in different words, is a pattern you should ask about.
How do I spot company red flags before I accept the interview?
Identify company red flags by analyzing executive turnover, reading between the lines of recent job postings, checkin…
What do job postings really say about a company's problems?
Analyze job postings for repeated keywords, unusual requirements, or urgent language to uncover a company's operation…
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