- Describe a current or upcoming project that I might work on
- How do you balance speed and quality?
- Do you do code review? Does all code get reviewed?
- What is your approach to testing?
- What is the development process like?
- Who is responsible for doing deployment? How often do you deploy?
- How do you balance support work and feature development?
- How often do you pair? What’s pairing like? How often do inexperienced people work directly with experienced people?
- What’s the onboarding process like?
- What’s your approach to technical debt?
- Is there a written roadmap all developers can see? How far into the future does it extend? How closely is it followed?
- How does engineering work get assigned?
- How are technical decisions made and communicated?
- How/when do developers talk to non-developers? Is it easy to talk to the people who are will be using your product?
- How are decisions made? Is architecture dictated top down? Are ideas from anyone welcomed? If so, in what scope/context?
- How are your teams structured? What is the management structure like?
- How does internal communication work? (e.g. async, schedule meetings, Slack)
- How do you support professional development
- Do you have any mentoring/support for junior developers?
- Do you contribute to open source projects? Which projects? Which teams work on open source?
- Do your employees speak at conferences?
- In what other ways do you support career development?
- What are the company and engineering values?
- What kinds of people really thrive in your organization?
- Why do people come to work for you rather than a competitor, and why do you think they stay?
- How often do you have meetings? Are there any scheduled/standing meetings? Who talks to customers (if appropriate) and how?
- What is your turnover rate like? How many devs were hired last year and how many left?
- Is there on-call rotation?
- What is a normal day/week like?
- How often do people work remotely and from home
- How is performance evaluated?
- How much are you planning to hire in the next year?
- Why did you choose to join this company?
These are tough to ask:
- When do people get to office and leave?
- How much vacation do people get? If there’s “unlimited” vacation, how much vacation do people normally take?
- How many hours do people work in an average week? In your busiest weeks?
- What time do people normally leave work?
- How often are there emergencies or times when people have to work extra hours?
- Do people work on the weekend?
- Do people check in when they’re on vacation? How often?