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Questions to ask a company during a job interview

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Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#41

Post by fatnoah »

alistairSH wrote: post #28
a3n wrote: post #3

Why doesn't the interviewee ever ask the interviewer a whiteboard or puzzle question, "to see how you think?"

Ask their own whiteboard question? That would be strange, as I'm a manager and don't write much code these days. But, if I ask a whiteboard question (or any tech question), asking me related questions as a means to further the discussion would be a good signal.

> That would be strange, as I'm a manager and don't write much code these days.

I'm a manager that rarely codes as well, but was still asked coding questions in an interview. It's a bit annoying, but having had managers that have never written a line of code ever, I understand wanting to verify that the manager could theoretically do the work themselves.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#42

Post by nitePhyyre »

okaleniuk wrote: post #38

I think, the "source control question" comes from the Joel Test which is 19 years old. Almost every company uses source control now so it doesn't make as much sense. A better question would be "why do you use [the source control they use]". The answer, if coming from a knowing person, may tell you quite a lot about how the technical decisions are taken in the company.

Almost is the key word there. Although I would say that "what source control do you use?" is important also.

Cause if the answer is "source safe" or something like that...

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#43

Post by relax88 »

protonfish wrote: post #24

One I am going to start to ask is "Are all developers allowed to have local admin access of their computers?" I've struggled against this in my last 3 positions. This is a dealbreaker for me, and should be for all developers.

From an infosec professional perspective, this one is always a challenge for security sensitive places.

I agree with you that developers need admin rights on their development machines, but I have witnessed first hand why many companies attempt to take away local admin rights.

When I'm responding to security alerts where developers have downloaded random .dll files from the internet, or some "troubleshooting utility" that is actually malware, it doesn't take long until the local admin conversation comes up.

This is one of those classic "technical solutions for bad human behaviour" scenarios where a small number of idiots ruin it for everyone. If you want local admin as a developer, then we need to be able to trust that you aren't going to do something stupid.

It seems the best way to do this is to issue developers multiple boxes (corporate laptop + dev box only for dev), and or use a good software whitelisting program that tracks elevations & the reasons for them, instead of just blanket giving everyone local admin on their own PC.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#44

Post by alistairSH »

fatnoah wrote: post #41
alistairSH wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask their own whiteboard question? That would be strange, as I'm a manager and don't write much code these days. But, if I ask a whiteboard question (or any tech question), asking me related questions as a means to further the discussion would be a good signal.

> That would be strange, as I'm a manager and don't write much code these days. I'm a manager that rarely codes as well, but was still asked coding questions in an interview. It's a bit annoying, but having had managers that have never written a line of code ever, I understand wanting to verify that the manager could theoretically do the work themselves.

I can theoretically do the work and I certainly understand the technical problems my teams are solving. I'd happily write some pseudocode to prove I know general things, but asking me to write the fastest version of X isn't going to prove I can manage people. Heck, that's not even a good question for most developer positions.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#46

Post by theamk »

acollins1331 wrote: post #7

Interviewing the interviewer has been THE best way to get the job. It just oozes a confidence that you already know you're good enough to get the job, and you're trying to figure out if they are good enough for YOU. Figure out questions before hand that describe the type of good working environments or fixes for bad ones that you've had in the past. The interviewer will quickly shift and try to sell the position to y…

At my job, we have "do you have any questions for us" part as a standard part of every interview -- and my experience shows that most people always have at least one question.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#47

Post by smashface »

uniclaude wrote: post #37
sanj wrote: post #29

For many years I gave a talk titled "Questions Engineers Should Ask" This list is missing the two most important [busines] questions: 1. How do you make money? If you can't understand, or the interview can't explain, then I'd run away. This can also lead to interesting questions about risks, competitors, etc. 2. What's preventing you from making more money? The answer that you want to hear is engineering effort . If…

That's highly disrespectful to software engineers working outside of software companies. There are many of them and they are not necessarily less smart than others. Working in the profit center of a company is often enviable, but let's not forget that cost centers in large companies can also offer benefits in things like work/life balance.

I don't think the GP intended to call engineers at those kinds of companies lesser. I think the point that was made was that working at companies where the company makes more revenue by having better software is a better company to work for. If your role is a cost you're treated (explicitly or implicitly) as such. It's a lot easier to show your value to a company by being part of the revenue side of the equation. Reducing costs is great but there is a bias towards investing to generate revenue vs investing to reduce cost.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#49

Post by chii »

relax88 wrote: post #43
protonfish wrote: post #24

One I am going to start to ask is "Are all developers allowed to have local admin access of their computers?" I've struggled against this in my last 3 positions. This is a dealbreaker for me, and should be for all developers.

From an infosec professional perspective, this one is always a challenge for security sensitive places. I agree with you that developers need admin rights on their development machines, but I have witnessed first hand why many companies attempt to take away local admin rights. When I'm responding to security alerts where developers have downloaded random .dll files from the internet, or some "troubleshooting utility"…

i wonder if making the development machine use something similar to qubes (https://www.qubes-os.org/) by default works.

Also, if a compromised machine on the internal network destroys your company's security assumptions, then there must not have much defense in depth.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#50

Post by smashface »

wodenokoto wrote: post #45

> Is there a support / marketing / other call-heavy team close to my new team? What does that mean?

I assume the author meant that since those teams will be speaking a lot to people as part of their daily work they add a lot of ambient noise to a workplace. That could matter to some people in open office plans or cube farms where you can't separate yourself from that noise.
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