Questions to ask at interviews

Questions-to-ask-at-interviews.md

https://daveceddia.com/interview-questions-to-ask-company/?utm_source=hackernewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=working

• How big is the company?
• Why did you choose to work here?
• Do you enjoy this particular project?
• Is there flexibility within the org to move around to different projects?
• What's a typical day like?
• Software dev process? (agile/tdd/pairing?)
• Bug tracking system?
• Version control system?
• Dev. desktop vs server OS? Developer machine hardware?
• Is the product live in production? If not, what's the schedule for developing it?
• How often are releases done?
• Who supports the product once it's released? Pager duty? Monitoring email?
• Where do feature + bugfix requests come from?
• Who does the "design" of the product? Internal designers, devs, both?
• Would my work be full-stack, or focused on backend/frontend?
• How big is the code base? Lots of ties to external/legacy projects?
• Typical working hours? Flexibility? Crunch times?
• Working from home? Regularly vs. Snow days?
• Do you have a favorite part of the job? Least favorite?
• Do you have a time tracking system?
• Centralized IT dept?
• Gov’t contractor? Clearance required? Potential for clearance?
• Regulatory compliance? PCI, SOX, etc. Annual training?
• Do people hang out outside work? Company outings? Lunch?
• Budget for conferences?
• Internal lightning talks/brown bag lunches?
• Dress code?
• Does the company seem stable? Profitable? Any plans to sell?
• Bonus structure?
• Management style/structure? Frequent catch-ups aka one-on-ones? Something else?
• Room for advancement?
• Learning opportunities?

https://gist.github.com/markerikson/bc9e16de24e46712ff80bb658766185a

Questions

Company

• company location / remote?
• what project management method?
• good and bad company culture?
• performance reviews?
• what's the path to profitability?

Team

• work/life balance?
• meetings? tools?
• what's the dev environment like? how long does it take to get a dev env set up? how long does it take to get code from editor to production?
• team code review / source control process? how big are PRs? how long does it take to merge?
• how do you approach larger technical decisions?
• what general problems / goals are you working on atm?
• how much time is given to learning or exploration?
• what things about your job would you change? what are you biggest likes and annoyances on a daily basis?

Position

• actual potential position details?
• amount of coding vs "architecture" work? team lead?
• compensation / benefits / equipment?
• next steps?
• schedule flexibility (9/80? expected hours at all?)

Additional Suggestions

• Rands Employer Test: https://github.com/randsleadershipslack/employer-test
• vcarl's list: https://gist.github.com/vcarl/14275c72baf976ff1665392e14225dcc
• Dave Ceddia's list: https://daveceddia.com/interview-questions-to-ask-company/

Others

• byron:
  • What do you do when there’s a deadline but not enough time to finish the work?
• updog:
  • how seriously is developer productivity taken. things like, does it take an hour of builds for you to get your thing deployed
  • what are on-call expectations if any (do not take the fact that a company doesn't yet have on call as an indication that that will continue)
  • work/life balance like how many months of vacation can i get away with taking
• raptori:
  • What inspired you to start the company?
  • What's your vision for the future?
  • What are you worried about?
  • What's the hardest decision you've had to make so far?
  • What does culture mean to you? (aim to dig deeper into what kind of company they want to build, etc)
  • plus depending on time and what stage the company is at:
    • How are you planning to scale the business over time? (i.e. team structure, work practices, autonomy etc at a high level)
    • How do you aim to build and develop talent?
    • Why are you hiring for this particular role right now?