> What's the on-call plan/schedule? (what's the pay for standby and call-out)
I’ve never been in a position where we were paid for on-call (i.e. fix prod at 2am) work. Is that not typical?
Questions to ask a company during a job interview
61–70 of 467 posts
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#62Data science version of this is highly required and must be asked with every company one is supposed to join.
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#63A problem that I've had is that every company says that they value code quality, emphasize developer growth, value developer's technical feedback, etc. even if they don't in practice. I've debated taking a page from old school behavioral interviewing and asking questions like:
Tell me about a time that you made a decision to improve code quality or architecture at the expense of a deadline.
Tell me about a time that you invested resources into an engineer's technical development even though there would be no immediate, short term benefit to the company.
Tell me about a time that you pushed back on a decision from business or design because one of your engineers said that it was the wrong technical decision.
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#64I'm slightly bothered by the "reverse-interview" concept. To me interviews should be bidirectional you are there to find out about the company as much as they are there to find out about you. It should be treated as the starting phases of a negotiation where you gain information about the value of the asset you are going to acquire.
I'm certainly happy that viraptor shared this valuable resource, don't get me wrong, every little step in the right direction is a good thing. I simply would have liked it to have a better name in order to convey a different message.
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#65 How much annual / personal / sick / parental / unpaid leave is available?
Sadly, however, I've found most places have gone to "PTO" -- combining time off for illness and vacation into one bank -- how have others successfully negotiated an appropriate level of time off?
(Context: For a very long time, I worked for companies where sick time was essentially a non-issue; it was essentially unlimited, with appropriate rules around requiring a doctor's explanation or having to switch to short-term disability after a protracted period, but the occasional day or two to recover from a cold and not spread virus to the whole company without having to choose between that and visiting family.)
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#66> What's the on-call plan/schedule? (what's the pay for standby and call-out) I’ve never been in a position where we were paid for on-call (i.e. fix prod at 2am) work. Is that not typical?
I've never been in a position where I've not been paid for each call out. (And only one place which didn't pay for standby)
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#67Data science version of this is highly required and must be asked with every company one is supposed to join.
I'm not familiar with that environment, but if you have specific questions - there's always space for more sections :-)
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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"…
Both excellent points. Maybe the better question is: how do you prevent your lowest-bidder corporate antivirus marks from marking git-bash as malware, stopping all work for the team for two days? Developers don’t need admin access, they need ways of getting their jobs done with the best available tools. That’s a damn difficult balance to find!
Yes! Will add this to my list. Just going thru this where I work all in the name of "ISO Certification."
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#69> Is there a support / marketing / other call-heavy team close to my new team?
This is so important.
I can probably live with most open plan set ups, sure there will be annoying times, but if there is a call-heavy team nearby, forget it.
I refuse to wear noise cancelling headphones all day long.
FWIW, interviewers will blatantly lie.
I asked at an interview about equipment quality and was told that they'd not heard any complaints.
This was 100% bullshit. I was given an ancient laptop, which seemed to re-ignite complaints about the quality of the equipment and were taken up with, none other than my interviewer.
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#70A problem that I've had is that every company says that they value code quality, emphasize developer growth, value developer's technical feedback, etc. even if they don't in practice. I've debated taking a page from old school behavioral interviewing and asking questions like: Tell me about a time that you made a decision to improve code quality or architecture at the expense of a deadline. Tell me about a time that…
friend of mine joined a company that in theory checked all the boxes, in practice, none.
Extreme case but ...