How every job on this site gets rated
The job wins
by not getting a bingo.
Job descriptions repeat themselves. After enough of them you stop reading and start recognizing — the same phrases, the same omissions, the same tells about what a place is actually like. Bad Job Bingo is that pattern recognition, written down and turned into a card you can play.
Go through enough jobs and the themes start showing up on their own.
When you go through as many jobs as those of us in tech kind of have to in order to keep a career going, you start to see the patterns. The way companies frame duties and responsibilities. What they signal about their culture without meaning to. What their actual values are, sitting there in the subtext.
I figured I wasn't the only one seeing those trends, and I wasn't the only one who'd benefit from spotting them faster — so I could get to the jobs that matched my skills and my values without reading four hundred that didn't.
Thus Bad Job Bingo was born.
I play it with every job that appears in the newsletter or on the job board. If a game does end in a bingo, at least you know what the problems are going in — assuming you decide to go in at all. That's the whole point.
Every square is a sentence I got tired of reading.
There are more than ninety of them. Each one is weighted — some are yellow, meaning notice it and move on; some are red, meaning stop and think. A card is five by five, drawn fresh from the pile, so no two games look the same.
Every square also has a reason attached, because "that's a red flag" is useless on its own. Here are six of them, reasons and all.
“We're a family”
One of the few squares that's always a major red flag. Whoever says it is either trying to take advantage of you or has a very poor understanding of professional boundaries. You work for a company in exchange for money. That can end at any time. Families don't do layoffs.
Offers “competitive pay,” no pay listed
By definition, compensation can't be competitive unless you can compare it. This usually means the company isn't confident it is, and is hoping you don't notice until you're too far into the process to comfortably bow out.
Lists salary range of $5,000 to $1,000,000
That's not a range, that's a placeholder to technically comply with pay transparency law while telling you nothing. They know what they've budgeted. They just want to find out what you'll accept first.
Lists free coffee and snacks as a benefit
Usually a yellow flag about leadership's grasp of work–life balance — snacks keep you in the office longer. It goes red when there are no actual benefits listed alongside it.
Describes its own culture as amazing
Cultures that are genuinely good don't usually need to announce it. The louder the self-congratulation, the more suspicious I get. If it were that amazing, the employees would be the ones saying so.
“You want a career, not just another job”
This implies that wanting stability, reasonable hours or a life outside work means you're settling. It's built to filter for people who'll overinvest — and to pre-justify whatever happens to them when they do.
How to play
Read the posting once, all the way through. No skimming for salary and bailing. The tells are usually in the paragraph nobody reads.
Mark every square the listing earns. Once each. A description that says "fast-paced" six times still only gets the one square, and it still tells you something.
The job wins by not getting a bingo. That's the backwards part. Five in a row is the job's loss, not yours — and it happens more often than it should.
Green Means Go
No flags at all, or green flags only. A true unicorn.
32 rated
Eh, It's Probably Fine
Yellow flags only. Worth noticing, not worth walking away from.
109 rated
Tread Carefully
A mix of red and yellow, fewer than five. Go in with questions.
147 rated
BINGO
Five in a row. The listing told on itself.
103 rated
Seriously, Maybe Don't
Seven flags or more. I'd want hazard pay.
53 rated
The part people skip
A bingo is not me telling you not to apply.
A job landing in a bad category doesn't mean you shouldn't go for it if it works for you. Rent is real. Health insurance is real. Sometimes the flags are worth it, and you're the only person who can do that math.
Equally: a job in a good category is not an endorsement of that company. I've read the posting. I haven't worked there, and just because it sounds good in theory doesn't mean it is good in reality.
Nothing gets hidden here because it rated badly. Every job I play gets published with its rating attached, including jobs from companies I love. You get the information. The decision stays yours.
- A recommendationNo
- A warning not to applyNo
- A review of the companyNo
- A rating of the people who work thereNo
Play it yourself
Both live in the Career Suite. Both are free.
Nothing is saved anywhere unless you ask it to be, and you don't have to create an account if you don't want to. The Career Suite is free and always will be — same as everything else here.
Got one for me
Send me a job and I'll play it.
Yours, one you're considering, or one you read and could not believe was real. Every listing sent in gets rated — nothing gets quietly dropped for being boring, and nothing gets a better rating for being submitted.
Send me a job →All of it is free.
None of it is free to make.
Bad Job Bingo, the board, the newsletter, the library, the Career Suite. No sponsors, no ads, no paid placements — which is the only reason I can say what a job posting is really doing.
Support if you can, don't worry about it if you can't. Support Human is for you either way.