Questions and Notes during Tech Job Interview

interview-ideas.txt

Whats the worst part of working here?

Answer:
 if they say 'nothing' - then they are lying or not aware
 
 Do your engineers write unit test?
 
  Do you write unit test?
  
  - Idea is to open up discussion about Unit Testing
  -- Check if they are dogmatic
  -- Check if they even know about unit  testing
  -- Figure out how expert they are on their tools
  -- Look for evidence that they have thought objectively on their decisions (e.g. reasons why not to write unit tests)
  
How many ideas have developers proposed in the past 6 months?

- Idea is to check if there is a culture of allowing improvement. Developers are encouraged to think of suggestions for improvement.
- Most of developers I've known have very good ideas. But is unable to express them because there is no relax way to propose them.
- An improvement is a change. And change can be costly.

Do you keep a list of these proposal and how do you evaluate?

- Keeping things documented will help avoid things getting forgotten and neglected.
- Evaluating ides should involve everyone and not a "deciding expert group" for many objective reasons.

How do you onboard?

- No rockstar developer can get upto speed on his/her own
- If there is no onboard process, it is likely that the company is expecting you to get upto speed on your own with silent expectations
- A possible good process is with pair-programming after a short 1 hour high level orientation

How do you track work logs and bill clients?

- Check if Developers are not bogged down with duplicate admin work like logging work logs in 2 trackers (jira and keyedin)
- Check if Meetings like Employee Performance Evaluation is accounted for - in some cases, time spent on this is left hanging in the air

How many projects do you run on JIRA?

- JIRA that has too many projects and is hosted overseas is very slow causing task tracking to be unreliable

How do you feel about friday-afternoon deploys?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18533944

- This is a real problem that cannot go-away unless capitalism goes away. Profit > human friday nights and weekends.
- If a company answers that they have a policy that avoids this, is simply is a lie unless it's in the contract with triple-pay etc.
- The best answer probably is that they are working towards automating it (CI, test suite etc.) so deployments can be easy.


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19048108

- When was the last raise, what was the amount and time to raise it? What is the makeup of the investors (Angel vs. VC etc)?

- What is the next milestone on the fundraising side?

- What is the biggest competitive advantage/product feature the company has?

- What are the biggest issues facing product/development?

- How do you see my role helping the company?

- How can I best help the company if I come aboard?

- What is the biggest opportunity you feel the company has?

- What is the biggest risk the company faces?

- Who do I report to? -- this trips some startups up, but can highlight potential issues.

- How many employees are there today? How many do you plan to hire in the next 3, 6, 12 months? How many employees have left since founding?