Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Types of questions to ask team members before accepting role?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 76 posts

Re: Ask HN: Types of questions to ask team members before accepting role?

#51

Post by swaggyBoatswain »

Jeremy1026 wrote: post #41
edw519 wrote: post #38

1. % time spent programming, % time spent not programming? 2. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you love your job? 3. The biggest thing that would raise answer to last question? 4. On a scale of 1 to 10, the quality of the business requirements you receive? 5. The biggest thing that would raise answer to last question? 6. On a scale of 1 to 10, the quality of the technical specs you receive? 7. The biggest thing tha…

#16, never asked that one, but absolutely should. Next time.

Chinese buffets are nasty though... once you've seen mop bucket chicken you don't come back

Re: Ask HN: Types of questions to ask team members before accepting role?

#52

Post by francisofascii »

cryptozeus wrote: post #28

IMO Some of the questions here are opinion based , you may not get right answer and you may set a red flag for yourself. For example if someone asks me what are working hours, do you work on weekends ? I take that as a sign that interviewee may be looking for easy job role and not committed. I would suggest to ask process related questions i.e what is the build/deployment process? What happens when you take down site…

For many, weekend work is a deal breaker. There should be full transparency about the frequency of weekend work or work hours above 40. It should be in the job ad.

Re: Ask HN: Types of questions to ask team members before accepting role?

#53

Post by bespoke_engnr »

I made a video with a list of questions I like to ask (and how to ask them): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9XPTay-x8g

They've saved me from some bad gigs.

The second half of the video covers questions for your would-be future managers. Some of the commenters have also added excellent questions to ask.

Here are the co-worker questions:

1. What's the most interesting thing you've gotten to work on (or learn about) here?

2. What's the balance between firefighting and project work in an average week?

3. What's the one thing you wish you could improve or change about your everyday work life here?

4. Every company is carrying some amount of technical debt -- what's the tech debt situation here? -how much they think there is -what they're doing about it

4. What is the policy/practice as far as WFH or remotely? 5. What does the on-call rotation look like?

Re: Ask HN: Types of questions to ask team members before accepting role?

#54

Post by Nebasuke »

cryptozeus wrote: post #28

IMO Some of the questions here are opinion based , you may not get right answer and you may set a red flag for yourself. For example if someone asks me what are working hours, do you work on weekends ? I take that as a sign that interviewee may be looking for easy job role and not committed. I would suggest to ask process related questions i.e what is the build/deployment process? What happens when you take down site…

I asked a few questions (working from home due to a long commute) like this during an interview and had my potential manager react like you. This was a great way for me to know I will never work there, until that culture element is changed.

A candidate is also testing you, and if you do not respect a candidate's concerns you're making it clear you're not committed to ensuring the potential employee gets the most out of the role.

Re: Ask HN: Types of questions to ask team members before accepting role?

#55

Post by bhuga »

One general rule: avoid binary/rating questions. So not:

"Do you like working at X?"

This question has a "right answer" (yes), and you'll always get it. Instead:

"What's your least favorite thing about X?"

Phrase all of your questions as free-form responses instead of multiple choice. This is very helpful to get interviewers talking.

For specific questions, there's a lot of good ones on this thread, so the only specific question I'd add is this one, which I found very helpful for startups and fast-growing companies:

"It's 2 years from now, and X has failed. What happened?"

Well-run businesses had a well-understood answer about their biggest risks; poorly-run places had platitudes and "it could never happen."

Re: Ask HN: Types of questions to ask team members before accepting role?

#56

Post by kapilartistry »

This thread has lot of good questions that can fit into any role. For InfoSec, I would ask following questions to team members:

1. How do you share knowledge about new vulnerabilities, detection techniques etc.

2. Did you attend any conference recently? Which one is your favorite security conference?

3. Does the management support presenting in conferences?

4. Have you (or any team member) presented in any security conference in the past?

5. How were the team dynamics when responding to critical vulnerabilities like Heartbleed, POODLE, Struts Vulns

6. Does the Chief Security Officer has any seat in the enterprise leadership

7. How often are you required to share metrics around state of security

8. Do you feel overwhelmed for crunching numbers as oppose to doing security review

9. Have you (or team) published and CVEs?

10. What do you think about developers and how much time do you spend in developer's security education?

11. How often the team members go for training and certification like SANS, Offensive Security, ISC2 etc.

These questions will judge whether the team has empathy for developers, encourage research, environment for training and development, management backing for security etc.

I have been in InfoSec for 9 years and have been taking interviews for last 3 years.

Re: Ask HN: Types of questions to ask team members before accepting role?

#59

Post by slipwalker »

Check the restrooms. That's where disgruntled employees act on their frustrations and take revenge on the company. Broken and dirty restrooms are a red flag.

Also, try to find out who left the company recently, reach to them on linkedin and try to chat a bit about the reasons to leave. Take it with a grain of salt, thou.

Re: Ask HN: Types of questions to ask team members before accepting role?

#60

Post by schaunwheeler »

I wrote this specifically for data science jobs but I think it translates reasonably well into any technical role:

https://towardsdatascience.com/data-science-career-advice-to...

The short answer is that it all depends on what you are looking for in a position.

The longer answer is ask them what they do (as a company, team, etc.), then ask them what infrastructure (technical and organizational) they have in place to do that. Then ask them about non-managerial growth paths (unless you're a manager).

Finally, ask them to give you a question - some business problem they're trying to solve - that they themselves don't know the answer to. Ask to sit in a room with the people who would be involved in planning a solution to that problem, and actually plan out the initial steps of solving it. That will tell you more about the team dynamics and the workplace environment than any explicit questions you might ask.

Post reply on HN