Student Question:
My current job is in e-commerce operations. I’ve been at my first company for two years and have been thinking about making a move — what you might call “riding a donkey while searching for a horse.” I’ve been scheduling interviews after work each day.
You previously mentioned three dimensions to consider when evaluating a job: first, whether you can learn and grow; second, whether you have a good boss to learn from and a positive work environment; third, whether the salary is high. Any job that satisfies two of these three is a good job.
You also said to aim for the largest company you’re capable of joining.
Right now, the things I can assess are the financial aspects — salary and compensation, the economic cost of switching jobs, commute time. And for e-commerce operations specifically: category sales volume, gross margin, and commission structures.
For the other criteria, I’m less sure how to judge. Company scale I can gauge from size and headcount. For whether I can learn, I ask during interviews whether the company has internal training programs, purchased learning resources, or brings in specialists to teach. But I genuinely don’t know how to assess a boss’s actual capability — I can only form vague impressions.
At my current company, my boss impressed me during the interview as being genuine and straightforward — spoke plainly about certain things — and that’s why I joined. Now I ask interviewers specific operational questions: impression volume, bidding strategy, ad spend ratio, budget, gross margin, and so on. But I still can’t judge the other person’s skill level from these answers — or maybe my questions themselves aren’t sharp enough.
On top of that, some interviewers steer the conversation toward broad questions like my career plan and future goals. When that happens, I get even more confused.
Master Chi’s Response:
The three criteria I described for a good job are: good income, good prospects, and good happiness.
For young people, the most important thing is to work under a good boss — everything else is secondary.
But the reality is, you often won’t find a good boss, or you simply won’t be able to judge their caliber.
In that case, look at whether the boss is willing to teach you things, and whether what they teach actually solves real problems on the job.
Don’t pay attention to grand principles or big-picture lectures. Focus on the practical methods they show you. Try them yourself — you’ll know immediately whether they work.
- If you’re genuinely unsure, aim for bigger companies. At the very least, it’ll look good on your résumé.