Have you ever missed payroll? When was the last time? In my case the, answer was “not recently, but..” and led to further discussions where it became obvious the company had a tenuous business model and every payday was a gamble. Literally the ceo told me this, just cause I asked.
Ask HN: Best questions for an engineer to ask a CEO during a job interview?
121–130 of 132 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best questions for an engineer to ask a CEO during a job interview?
#122“Why do you think, you are the right CEO to lead this company?”
And start listening for BS-Bingo, CV flattering or the real reasons.
Why is this question so important?
Because the CEO of a company sets just-cause, cultural, visionary goals.
If he fails to bring that to the table, you job will be problematic by good chance.
The problem always starts from the top, so find out if he’s a problem or a solution.
Re: Ask HN: Best questions for an engineer to ask a CEO during a job interview?
#123I don't have a specific question to suggest, but I find it very helpful to think about and clearly write down three things about any question you intend to ask others for evaluation purposes:
1) SO WHAT - why am I asking this question? What am I trying to learn? How will I use the answer to make my decision? 2) what are some possible answers to this question? is there a "best"/"worst" answer - the answer I (don't) want to hear? This can be objective or subjective, but you have to have a strong opinion. 3) two good follow-up questions, especially if the answer is neither extremely good nor bad.
I find that rubber duck thinking through this cuts out a lot of questions that seem superficially okay but actually give you no useful criteria to make a decision.
Re: Ask HN: Best questions for an engineer to ask a CEO during a job interview?
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which examples bother you?
To name some: - "You have enough money you live the rest of your life in idle luxury. You could just go to the beach and never come back. If I had your money, that's what I would do. Why the heck are you still working?" (this is incredibly assuming) - "Will you share slides from the last board meeting?" (I think if you need this information you'd probably be on the board) - "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" (th…
First one is worded arrogantly i agree, but the core idea of the question is very important. It is a variation of "what drives you? what motivates you?". It's purpose is to find a CEO that doesn't want to just sell out and cash in for himself - but to grow the company.
Slides from board meeting are about transparency, i do not want to work at organization that is not transparent about fiances(and especially not at one which has high profits, but very volatile cash reserves). If it gets deflected, but a summary is provided ,it isn't a red flag - it means that employees potentially have access to this data.
if you think asking about your future plans arrogant, why are you asking such questions to employees? this is a legitimate question about where you want to take this company towards.
In most western tech jobs - changing job after a year is norm - not an exception. over here it is frowned upon, but 2-3 years is a long enough time in most cases. And there are two main cases of job hopping: increase in salary is way more significant than any rise given; toxic workplace;
Last one isn't personal, but it has implied context of company itself. what are problems that you want to fix, and potential threats.
those questions are even more important if company is paying in equity. I wouldn't want to work there if i didn't get the answer at least to majority of them. It would be a huge red flag - or i would assume that equity is 100% worthless when comparing compensations between offers.
Relationships of power shifted - there is abundance of jobs, and scarcity of good developers. Quite frankly - there are plenty of bad companies, and few good ones - just like with candidates.
You would hate to bring in a bad horrible person in. We would hate to invest time and effort into useless endeavor.
Re: Ask HN: Best questions for an engineer to ask a CEO during a job interview?
#125Revenue rate - Does the company take any money in, or is it simply running off funding Runway length - Similar to above, trying to gauge if the company is self propelled or not If received funding, how much and when was it received, also ask for burn rate here. Very quick estimate of company health = Revenue per month - (burn rate per month + (head count * average monthly salary)).
These are investor questions, not employee questions. In my experience, you're either going to get a vague dodge or a flat-out "we're not going to share that / it's confidential" response unless you're applying for a C-level position. A better approach is to dive into the product and make a judgement... "What does the company need to do to secure its next round of funding?" VC-scale rule-of-thumb is you need a new fu…
oh yes they are investor-like questions.
And rightfully so.
Employee is investing time in effort and receives compensation and equity in case of startups. If equity is non-zero, then obviously employee will ask the same questions an investor would.
Salaries in startups are lower than in most corporations - the difference is what employee might consider to be their cost of investing in the company.
Re: Ask HN: Best questions for an engineer to ask a CEO during a job interview?
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can see you're not from a hot job market for software engineer. Here (Bay Area) people usually don't apply for jobs, specially jobs at startups, unless they're really into the products/team/tech/... Even old-school walking-dead companies like Cisco/IBM/HPE pay way better than most startups in term of cash compensation. And given the high risk of failure, startup should sell itself hard to attract talents. I also fo…
I must say that I am indeed not in the SV bubble. I come from a CS background and I now find myself in a position where I'm hiring people for my own company. This means I totally understand both sides. I'm mostly recruiting in the Amsterdam area though, and software engineers are not seen as rockstars here so it's a big cultural difference.
In the Amsterdam area the done thing is to treat software engineers as disposable trash, unworthy of a proper salary. This is an important piece of context when considering your attitude towards them, which to me personally doesn't speak of a large capacity for patience when it comes to the kind of questions meant to give people peace of mind.
Re: Ask HN: Best questions for an engineer to ask a CEO during a job interview?
#127The arrogance of many of the questions posted here surprises me. I am not unwilling to give answer to all sorts of questions that aren't the employee's business, but for some questions posted here the tone is so hostile and assuming that there is ill-will that I would probably not hire those people based on arrogance. The fact that software engineers are in a good position market-wise, doesn't mean you can say whatev…
When your company is worth a billion and/or very profitable then it might be arrogant otherwise I don't really see the CEO as some higher being. Personally, I know more about accounting, finance/markets and economics than most tech startup CEOs that I have met.
If I have learned anything from startups it is that anyone who can talk a good game can raise money (fyre festival/theranos).
Re: Ask HN: Best questions for an engineer to ask a CEO during a job interview?
#128“Let’s say that I want to spend $5 a month on a SAAS that will save me x hours a month. What process do I have to go through? What if the SAAS is $25 a month? Or $150?” Of all the questions I’ve ever asked, I consistently learn the most from this one.
Sorry if it isn't obvious and I come off as clueless for asking, but is this to gauge bureaucracy?
Re: Ask HN: Best questions for an engineer to ask a CEO during a job interview?
#129Revenue rate - Does the company take any money in, or is it simply running off funding Runway length - Similar to above, trying to gauge if the company is self propelled or not If received funding, how much and when was it received, also ask for burn rate here. Very quick estimate of company health = Revenue per month - (burn rate per month + (head count * average monthly salary)).
Might annoy or alienate a CEO (maybe that’s a warning sign?). But, these are the right questions to ask.
Its really dependent on the candidate and the position. A quality senior engineer may be gauging the feasibility of ideas that may take _years_ to come to fruition. That requires a lot of non-technical information and both trust and a good working relationship with sr. management. If they are not willing to freely share information, they probably won't utilize the caliber employee who would typically request it. Its no guarantee but personally when I've interviewed people who have asked these types of in depth and / or difficult to answer questions they've turned out to be orders of magnitude higher quality. They know what successful companies look like, and aren't interested in taking chances on companies that won't or can't utilize them to their potential. Doing so requires sharing enough information and trust that the employee can help steer the ship.
Re: Ask HN: Best questions for an engineer to ask a CEO during a job interview?
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can see you're not from a hot job market for software engineer. Here (Bay Area) people usually don't apply for jobs, specially jobs at startups, unless they're really into the products/team/tech/... Even old-school walking-dead companies like Cisco/IBM/HPE pay way better than most startups in term of cash compensation. And given the high risk of failure, startup should sell itself hard to attract talents. I also fo…
I must say that I am indeed not in the SV bubble. I come from a CS background and I now find myself in a position where I'm hiring people for my own company. This means I totally understand both sides. I'm mostly recruiting in the Amsterdam area though, and software engineers are not seen as rockstars here so it's a big cultural difference.
Yea this is a location thing. Im no rockstar ninja wizard, nor have I ever lived in a 1st tier tech hub like SV. I'm a competent professional with 2 decades of experience, but not particularly remarkable in any way. Here in the US there is a good market for competent professional software developers, and not just in the SV bubble. Any competent professional with 5 or 10 years experience can get 100k USD or more a year job with a 40 hour work week at a stable(non-startup) company in almost any medium or large city in the US. It may not be their very first job offer, but with a little work they can definitely find one. Thats one reason why maybe 10 to 15% of my US based coworkers are Europeans who have come here in large part for the better job opportunities.