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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

#121

Post by ed312 »

jrjarrett wrote: post #65

How much annual / personal / sick / parental / unpaid leave is available? This is a great question; when I have searched for jobs, it's one of the more important benefits to me. 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 c…

You generally have to offer the same benefits to everyone in a company (at least in MA). The easiest way to do that is to offer "PTO" as a bucket to everyone. The new "cool" way to do it is to have "unlimited PTO" ... which I have pretty mixed feelings about.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#122

Post by rajacombinator »

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…

Seems very rare that it will be the case that engineering effort is what’s stopping a company from making more money ... almost all companies will have sales pipeline or finding pmf as the answer to that. (If they know the answer.) Trading firms actually seem like one place where there is often a direction connection between code = money.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#123

Post by viraptor »

destitude wrote: post #102

What affects does it have on a company to not hire ANY junior level developers?

One effect I'm familiar with: lack of documentation. Everybody is experienced with the system, everybody knows how things work... until they don't. Having someone around to ask the simplest questions and prompt for explanations is very healthy.

Another is that people with lots of experience know and rely on straightforward, correct, reasonable solutions. It sometimes takes a someone new to say "why don't we try X?".

Finally, sometimes there's just work to do, not new things to figure out. If everybody is senior but lots of work is pretty basic, at some point they'll get bored and leave.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#124

Post by Cthulhu_ »

anon1m0us wrote: post #115
jcadam wrote: post #99

Problem: Interviewers lie. I once interviewed with a company that brought me into a new, shiny, well-appointed building on the corporate campus for an interview. I did well answering their questions. And they answered my usual questions correctly. Stuff like "Can developers here choose their own tools?" and "My title is going to be Lead Engineer, will I actually be a Lead Engineer?" After I was hired, I found out eve…

It's illegal to lie on your resume, but lying to your recruits -- oh, that's fine. Corporate Immunity.

Does that apply if your working conditions and responsibilities were to be encoded in your contract?

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#125

Post by mikepurvis »

anon1m0us wrote: post #115
jcadam wrote: post #99

Problem: Interviewers lie. I once interviewed with a company that brought me into a new, shiny, well-appointed building on the corporate campus for an interview. I did well answering their questions. And they answered my usual questions correctly. Stuff like "Can developers here choose their own tools?" and "My title is going to be Lead Engineer, will I actually be a Lead Engineer?" After I was hired, I found out eve…

It's illegal to lie on your resume, but lying to your recruits -- oh, that's fine. Corporate Immunity.

The only resume falsehoods that can actually get you in legal trouble are around your educational record, I think. See:

http://www.shakelaw.com/blog/lying-on-your-resume/

Mostly it's just the risk that you'll be found out and fired (which is similar to the risk on the other side of the table— that the employee will find out and quit).

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#126

Post by gonzo41 »

smashface wrote: post #47
uniclaude wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Red…

--companies where the company makes more revenue by having better software.

You can get vibe of a company by asking if IT is seen as a cost center. If software is a competitive advantage you know that it's green pastures for your and yours. But places where culture holds back engineering, like being slow on the uptake of GIT or CI/CD which is often talked about online, these are places to be wary of. Those latter companies are either going to have growing pains or will die out as digitization starts to take them on.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#127

Post by scarface74 »

smashface wrote: post #47
uniclaude wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Red…

Why does it matter? You negotiate your salary and in a couple of years if you find your salary not matching with your market rates you find another job. Salary compression is real regardless. A job is like dating not a marriage.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#128

Post by Cthulhu_ »

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.

I / we are in an interesting position in that regard, in that there is a policy installed on our laptops that gives us admin access on the one hand, BUT forces encryption and allows our employer to trigger a remote lock / wipe in case of theft. I think that's a good middle ground myself, I mean what if I get murdered and robbed abroad? I don't expect it but it's a possible scenario that might put our customers' code at risk.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#129

Post by [deleted] »

kemiller2002 wrote: post #109
relax88 wrote: post #43

Earlier 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"…

As a person whose straddled infosec and development, I always struggled with this. The multiple development machines is probably the best approach, but I've never truly seen it implemented correctly. I would love to not need admin access to my machine, but each time the companies I've worked for try this, it's always a struggle to do anything. This is everything from, "I need to modify/monitor core components of the…

[deleted]

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#130

Post by EnderMB »

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…

I often see your response to #2 brought up, and I would generally agree with it.

With that being said, in my experience of working at companies that actively sell software, whether it's as a product or a service, you are still incredibly likely to be as much of a wallflower as you are at a non-tech company. Your perception of freedom is higher, but ultimately your time and budget is limited by whoever manages you.

I'd be interested in the slides to see if your questions dig into one of the most common issues I see at tech-centric companies - micromanagement? Is it a thing - and if you say no, would a random selection of three of your developers tell me the same thing?

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