I was wondering if anyone else had any questions they always asked the interviewer in the “we’ll give you five minutes at the end to ask us questions” bit in interviews.
Personally I always ask what the staff turnover rate is. Mainly because in my first dev job I was one of four people who started on the same day. One of the other guys left after two days, I left after six weeks, and another guy left after two months.
Another I’ll be asking after my current job is if they have a mainframe. I’ve now worked at three companies with mainframes and they all were old corporations where they were outsourcing loads of stuff to unhelpful companies (often IBM) which generally meant lots of headaches.
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Here are some from a text file I keep around for these purposes:
- What has your team been working on recently? What new changes have you shipped in the last six months?
- What is the biggest difficulty your team is facing right now?
- How long has the team existed and how long have you been managing it?
- Is the team all remote? Are you?
- How long does it take for code to be deployed after being committed?
- How often do team members move teams?
- What kinds of (soft or hard) skills do you need most on the team right now?
- Do you have a defined onboarding process?
- How long does it take for people to get up to speed as new hires? How much would a new hire be doing in six months?
- Does the team maintain deployment infrastructure? Production infrastructure? Is there an on-call rotation?
- What does your planning cycle look like? Scrum? Kanban? Meetings?
- What’s one thing you would change or improve on the team if you could snap your fingers?
- What would you like to be doing less and more of on your team?
- How does the product representative interact with the eng team?
- Do you have a career ladder, with levels, and expectations at each of the level defined?
- What is your performance review cycle like? 1:1s?
lots of questions, I haven’t moved jobs in a while because I’m happy where I am but I’ve added to these even when interviewing people to join my team.
- what is your policy for overtime or comp time when there are evening or weekend emergencies?
- how often do people tend to need to be available outside of standard working hours?
- what does success in this position look like for me 6 months down the road?
- how often do tasks and priorities change last minute?
- how long has the average person been on the team?
- what is the policy on sick days, vacation days, etc
- what is the remote work policy
- how flexible are they on work hours? if it’s a salary position, generally you will have work to do, but many bosses won’t care if you take a 2-hour lunch and do some grocery shopping or whatever. as long as overall you’re doing your work and getting things sorted.
- when interviewing with team members instead of just the new management, it’s a good idea to ask them about the managers style, and what they like about working there.
- (generally by the interview you should have some idea of what the actual job entails, but if not, ask a bunch of questions related to that. what kind of system are you developing for, is it primarily supporting new feature or handling sustaining issues, what languages are used, what is the environment, etc)
Exploring Go High Level:
-
What’s the Enthusiasm About?
Hello there! Are you familiar with Go High Level? If not, let’s break it down. Imagine managing multiple apps for marketing. Sounds busy. That’s where Go High Level comes in. It’s like that friend who has a solution for everything. Whether you are working on creating an outstanding sales funnel or sending out an email campaign, this platform has your back. The best part? They let you test drive everything with a 14-day free trial. It’s like trying out a new car but for your business. And if you ever need assistance, their support team is just a click away. Pretty exciting, huh? -
So, How Much Does It Cost?
Alright, let’s talk about the financial side. Go High Level offers 3 main plans. The Agency Starter Plan is perfect if you’re just starting or have a small business. It’s loaded with all the essential tools, and it’s quite cost-effective. But if you’re looking to scale up, the Agency Unlimited Plan is your best choice. It’s like the VIP pass at a concert, giving you access to everything without any limitations. Not sure about committing? Remember that 14-day free trial I mentioned? It’s a great way to give it a try without any obligations. Lastly, they offer a Pro plan that includes “SaaS mode,” where you can white label the product under your brand. Fantastic! -
Why Everyone’s Raving About It:
In a world full of sophisticated digital tools, Go High Level is like that all-in-one Swiss Army knife. There’s no need to switch between apps because it has everything under one roof. Whether you’re a newcomer or an experienced marketer, it’s super user-friendly. It’s not just about launching impressive campaigns; they ensure you understand their performance with top-notch analytics. There’s even a white-label feature for marketing agencies, so you can add your brand and impress your clients.
Here is a link to their 14-day free trial:
https://www.gohighlevel.com/?fp_ref=get-started-now.-
I’d ask why I’m only getting 5 minutes at the end to ask my questions.
Here’s a few from me:
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How many separate projects are developers working on at any given time? (Because I want to know if they expect developers to be context switching all the time.)
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Is anyone sitting there with a stop watching checking what time I get into work in the morning? (Because I’m not hourly and don’t expect to be treated as such.)
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Describe the work-life balance.
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Are you agile? Not agile? Scrum teams?
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What might an average day look like for me? Walk me through from when I sign in and log off for the day.
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How do you perform automated testing here? (if they don’t, I’m concerned)
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Do you enforce code formatting?
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How do you deploy your code? (if it’s not a CICD pipeline, I’m concerned)
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How involved in DevOps are developers? (Will o be expected to work on CICD code? Infrastructure as Code?)
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What version control system do you use? (Of the answer is nothing, the interview is over. I will not work there. If it’s something other than Git, I’m not excited about it.)
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Is Docker used here? (Docker makes me very productive, I’m concerned if Docker is a tool I’m not allowed to use.)
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Are there any other programming languages I’ll be using other than <advertised language for the position here>?
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Are SOLID principles common practice here? Or rejected as unnecessary? (I love SOLID and think it’s useful much more than not. If SOLID is frowned upon, I probably won’t be happy there.)
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Can I choose what sort of machine I get to work on? (If I can’t work on MacOS, it could be a deal breaker… I love MacOS for development, sue me! 🤷♂️)
There are places that hire developers, but don’t use a version control? I’m so shock at this.
For agile thing. I would ask them to describe how they do agile also. You can have a waterfall that called agile as well. Or Agile that estimate ticket with time instead of complexity.
I work as a pentester in a medium-sized company, and since it was my first job, I didn’t realize for years that we’re actually not using VCS for any scripts or internal development. Even though I work on a hobby game project, and have used it for my personal project ever since highschool, I just for some reason didn’t realize it. Maybe because I wasn’t doing much internal developemnt, or that we didn’t share scripts that much and usually just used tools off github anyway.
But then I switch to part time, and got another part-time in a small indie studio, and we used VCS for everything. And that was when it hit me - I was supposed to develop a script for something in the pentest job, and since I was by that time pretty used to “first, make a repo.”, I started looking for one without a second thought. And realized that no, we don’t have any kind of company git and it was never needed.
I still don’t get how didn’t I realize it sooner - by that time I was there for 3 years. And it was suprising that noone, including seniors with decades of experience, ever saw the need for it. I guess it’s because we usually work alone on projects, or onsite, and since we are doing announced tests with AV disabled, there’s no need to recompile or edit open sourced tools, so there’s not that much to share.
We still don’t have a repo, but all of my tools or scripts related to work are on github now, which we share with a few colleagues.
But how does your team collect works as a reference or whatever? Like just upload then to the cloud or something?
We have a shared drive for that, on a VPN.
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Maybe this is because I’m still relatively junior (2ish years), but my favorite question to ask is, “What are some of the characteristics you’re looking for in someone in this role?”
I use it as a vibe check, especially at the end of interviews. If they start reading my resume back to me, or listing the things we’ve talked about during the interview…well, that’s a good sign. If they start describing a bunch of stuff that we didn’t talk about, it’s a chance to throw a ‘Hail Mary’ pass and show them how that’s me, as well - maybe we didn’t talk about something that was important to them, but I have relevant experience or a background.
If they start describing somebody else…well, that’s not great.
Exploring Go High Level:
What’s the Enthusiasm About?
Hello there! Are you familiar with Go High Level? If not, let’s break it down. Imagine managing multiple apps for marketing. Sounds busy. That’s where Go High Level comes in. It’s like that friend who has a solution for everything. Whether you are working on creating an outstanding sales funnel or sending out an email campaign, this platform has your back. The best part? They let you test drive everything with a 14-day free trial. It’s like trying out a new car but for your business. And if you ever need assistance, their support team is just a click away. Pretty exciting, huh?So, How Much Does It Cost?
Alright, let’s talk about the financial side. Go High Level offers 3 main plans. The Agency Starter Plan is perfect if you’re just starting or have a small business. It’s loaded with all the essential tools, and it’s quite cost-effective. But if you’re looking to scale up, the Agency Unlimited Plan is your best choice. It’s like the VIP pass at a concert, giving you access to everything without any limitations. Not sure about committing? Remember that 14-day free trial I mentioned? It’s a great way to give it a try without any obligations. Lastly, they offer a Pro plan that includes “SaaS mode,” where you can white label the product under your brand. Fantastic!Why Everyone’s Raving About It:
In a world full of sophisticated digital tools, Go High Level is like that all-in-one Swiss Army knife. There’s no need to switch between apps because it has everything under one roof. Whether you’re a newcomer or an experienced marketer, it’s super user-friendly. It’s not just about launching impressive campaigns; they ensure you understand their performance with top-notch analytics. There’s even a white-label feature for marketing agencies, so you can add your brand and impress your clients.Here is a link to their 14-day free trial:
https://www.gohighlevel.com/?fp_ref=get-started-now.As a company owner and lead dev of 15 years, I’ll be honest. If someone started with some of the barrage of detailed questions I see here I’d start to wonder whether I’d want to hire that person.
Although then again, I don’t even ask all that many questions myself. Prefer to get a (technical) conversation going whilst gauging intelligence, speed and flexibility of thought and general character.
Thrn again, we handle all the main (software development) concerns I see here and I tend to be very flexible as long as someone is productive.
What I’m trying to say is, relax? :)
Genuinely curious to see what questions you found to be too detailed and causing you to wonder if you’d want to hire that person. I had a lot of questions in my comment here and I’d love your feedback on them as a company owner!
(Thanks in advance!)
Dont want to call anyone out, because most of the questions are good. It’s the sheer quantity, I counted between 10 and 20 questions. An interview should be fun, don’t stress me out please
Although I would say that one list is far too focused on financials, you’re a dev, not an investor. Some other lists make me want to ask, ‘who hurt you?’
Maybe it’s because we’re a small company focused on hard problems with unknown solutions with a bunch of intelligent and flexible, fast thinking people. We do all the various buzzwords, microservices, clusters, resilience, automated testing trophies, reproducible dev envs, machine vision, machine learning, various p=np problems, etc.
But if the lists are too detailed and rigid I might wonder if you’re better off at a more standard company tackling standard problems in a standardized manner. If this comes of as derogatory. The reverse can also be said, that we’re a bunch of incompetent cowboys. It’s a style thing as well :) (slow is smooth, smooth is fast is a principle I like. We follow all the useful best practices when it comes to cicd, testing and code. I do not have the time for rework)
I enjoy not knowing what I’m doing, if you don’t enjoy the cutting edge (and falling of said edge once in a while) you’re not going to to enjoy working here :)
Edit: about your list in particular, they’re good questions, just try to ask them conversationally instead of slapping a sheet on paper on the table and rattling them off. Except for the macOS thing. We’re a Linux shop, noob ;)
Except for the macOS thing. We’re a Linux shop, noob ;)
Ha! I’d be fine working on a Linux machine! It’s that *nix terminal I’m addicted to. I just love the MacOS trackpad “gestures” and Homebrew has been a pleasure. Everything I deploy is to Docker/Linux environments anyway. I just really don’t want to develop on Windows if I don’t have to.
Thanks for the feedback! 🫡
Tbh, these days WSL2 might be slightly better than macOS at being Linux. As it is Linux (in a very transparent vm) instead of posix or *nix
But for most dev work all three are good options. I’ve noticed that once you start deploying against stuff like kubernetes or, less so, doing docker stuff you run into limitations on Mac and wsl2. Just random weirdness, especially with new the m1 chips and say cockroachdb. At that point there’s no substitute for the real thing :)
You can have my MacBook Pro when you pry it from my cold dead hands!
Something I’d ask the recruiter, long before the interview, would be “do you use safe agile?”. The only place I worked at that did safe agile was awful and everything about safe agile was a nightmare.
Technical things:
- What’s the development process like? Scrum, Waterfall, … No clear process would be a red flag.
- Is there source code versioning? Git and maybe Mercurial are acceptable. Only SVN would be a red flag. (At “No” I would probably leave the interview…)
- Is there a CI Pipeline? Automated testing? Unit tests?
General things:
- What would my first few weeks here look like? Is there a special introduction program?
- Is this a new role, or am I replacing someone? If the latter, why did they leave?
- What’s the on-call process like?
- How much time off on average do developers actually take?
- What is the testing and QA process?
- How do you measure success of a project?
- When and how do you evaluate employee performance?
I want to make sure my work-life balance isn’t going to be awful, and hearing that they have Unlimited Vacation doesn’t tell me how much vacation people actually take. I also want to know that the place isn’t just doing what a manager thinks “feels right” but actually measures and has standard processes for making decisions.
Another question I usually ask that may be relevant for many of you: what proportion of your developers are women? And: are there any women in tech leadership roles?
Personally, with that one, I’m mostly just looking for a normal response and that it isn’t zero. I don’t want to be the only woman around.
I like to open with “I know crunch happens. It’s part of our industry. How often would you say crunch happens here and when it does happen, how long does it last?”
At bad companies, they’ll justify how crunch is unavoidable but don’t worry, their stock is gonna make you Rich™. At good companies, they’ll crunch a couple times a year, for a week, maybe two. At the best companies, they’ll talk about how their Process eliminates crunch time.
I’ve asked this question ever since I interviewed at a place where the lead dev had a cot in his office.
