Pro tip: Get the stuff that is important to you into the contract!
Questions to ask a company during a job interview
141–150 of 467 posts
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
> (which is similar to the risk on the other side of the table— that the employee will find out and quit)
Someone more left/anti-capitalist might argue that this is disproportionately in favor of the employer. The employee is depending on this job for food/shelter. Replacing the employee is much less disruptive to the employer than the employee. Especially considering the employee may have had to move to the area for that job.
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Strong disagree; it is not always this way. I'm no celebrity, and I flail at adversarial technical whiteboard exercises, but I've been paid well to do software-related things for over 20 years. Maybe in part because I insist on treating every interview as bi-directional. It is not necessary to accept a "please may I have this job" attitude towards a potential employer. Software developers are radically more empowered…
if you don't think you're interviewing the company too, you're doing yourself a big disservice and selling yourself short. Absolutely. But outside of places like SV or NYC, there may not be a lot of jobs available. For someone with a similar length of career, I'm not as flexible about being able to move to where there are more jobs. Is one just SOL when trying to improve their career; take what you can get?
In the top 10 metro areas in the US outside of SV or NYC, there are still plenty of openings at any given time - speaking as someone who has spent 20+ years in Atlanta.
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#144For 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…
Good questions, lousy choice of counter-example.
Financial markets companies are now engineering and quant driven. Machines place 80% of orders in US equities exchanges, not humans. The company you mention just announced a $100M project to rewrite its core equities trading platform to optimize latencies at scale across markets. Great engineering culture too. Meritocratic, respectful, and you won't find people there going around referring to developers in other industries with the disrespect you do, for example.
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#145I tried this in my last round of interviews. It is very difficult to get any meaningful information from this process, because, just like candidates, interviewers are incentivized to not tell the full truth. Except in the worst cases when the interviewer just dgaf, they can’t really share negative information for fear of reprisal. (And it doesn’t benefit them either.) Your best bet is to ask a question that allows them to answer honestly, without sounding like they are answering negatively. The problem is it’s hard to come up with such questions.
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#146I've been interviewing with Google since 2006 or so, off and on, though I've never accepted an offer from them. I do this because I always learn several things from the rigorous on-site interviews, it's a lot of fun, and the machine that runs the process seems to not mind being turned down in the past. Back in the beginning of that time period, I used to ask (fairly jokingly) the same question: "How many servers do y…
What were the responses by Google to those three questions?
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#147The phrase 'hiring is broken' seems to have become synonymous with companies improperly judging candidates.
BUT! This problem pales in comparison to the difficulty involved for candidates trying to judge companies.
Now, I won't go as far as some of the other posters here and point to rampant deceit. However, interviewers will generally try to be positive, and it's very difficult for an interviewer to say "don't work here".
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
PTO is nothing special. It’s just another benefit you can place a monetary amount on. If they won’t give you more than two weeks paid time off and they will let you take unpaid time off, add the amount that week of unpaid time off is worth to your required salary - of course take into account that PTO is a non taxed benefit. I feel the same way about 401K matching.
Ok, but how can you value 401K tax benefits? It seems complicated.
Simple.
For nice round numbers. Say you’re making $140K (above the social security maximum to make the calculations slightly simpler).
A 5% match is $7000. But since it is an untaxed employee benefit and if I think I can already max out my 401K plan, I would have to take into account the 24% Federal 6% state (GA), and 1.4% Medicare tax - 31.4%
That means I would need to negotiate at least 7000/.686 = $10,204 extra.
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#149In my experience it's important to not ask "easy" questions that can be answered by a simple yes/no.
Instead of: Are you friendly to remote work? Ask: Will I be working with anyone who is remote, or who works from home on a regular basis?
Instead of: Is the work life balance good? Ask: How responsive are people to emails/Slack over the weekends and after 6pm?
Instead of: Can I have a good career path? Ask: Did any of your senior engineers start out as junior engineers here?
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#150I am now a Mr Manager Person, so I have a different but related set of questions: 1. What is the demographic breakdown of the engineering team? And, what does the company affirmatively do to foster diversity? 2. What resources do the founders have available — investors, board, mentors, for instance — to help them as the company grows? 3. What is the near term vision for the company? 1yr/5yr? 4. What resources are ava…
What does "diversity" mean in your question #1 and how is it relevant to successful outcomes?