Questions to ask a company during a job interview • Hacker News Board

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#151

Post by mfoy_ » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #112

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…

Hey! That was my experience. New product direction; needed some designers. Show up, and everybody is working on firefighting old bugs with a fake Agile approach. The kind where the manager hands out tickets to folks and the only metric is how many trivial bugs have been closed this week. Every time I spent any time looking into the code (million lines of crap) to see if anything could be done, I'd get widely criticiz…

I love fake-Agile, it's such a hilarious concept.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#152

Post by toast0 » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 2:49 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #124

anon1m0us wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Breach of contract is not illegal. It's a tort, and you might be able to seek recompense through the courts, but I don't know how they would determine damages.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#153

Post by kingbirdy » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 2:49 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #124

anon1m0us wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Most employees (at least in the US) aren't given a contract, they're given an offer of employment. This provides no guarantees as to what work you'll do, or the conditions you'll do it in, and both can change at any time.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#154

Post by chii » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 2:50 PM UTC

theamk wrote: post #58

chii wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

qubes-like solutions are great at preventing malicious code from accessing your internal websites, but pretty useless from "code leak" perspective. If you have downloaded a trojaned "super library" and put it to your build process, it will, by definition, be in the same security domain as your source code. Unless you audit all file accesses and outgoing internet access, you won't be able to prevent code exfiltration.

is code exfiltration really the threat model though?

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#155

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 2:50 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#156

Post by vinceguidry » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

magashna wrote: post #136

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…

This almost sounds like a joke it's so bad. When a market is hot, how can they expect you to just go along with it?

The reason the market is so hot is precisely because so many shops are like this. If they were better managed then they could get away with fewer technical resources.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#157

Post by nathan_long » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #17

a3n wrote: post #3

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

Because unless you are some sort of celebrity engineer, "interview is a conversation between both parties" is nonsense. Company is interviewing the candidate not the other way around, no matter what we like to think. Edit: Sorry I should've clarified. I am specially referring to companies that don't really have to care about your feelings towards their interviews. FAANGs for example. They simply don't care and there…

> Because unless you are some sort of celebrity engineer, "interview is a conversation between both parties" is nonsense.

I disagree. Unless the candidate desperately needs this job, he/she can walk away. The candidate is free to consider "company won't bother to answer my questions at the point when they have most reason to be nice to me" as a bad signal.

> I am specially referring to companies that don't really have to care about your feelings towards their interviews

"This company doesn't have to care about my feelings because they are huge and have lots of applicants and a giant incessant interview machine chugging through them efficiently" is certainly something I'd consider in whether I want to work for them, because it tells me I'd be a cog in a machine. (And if enough people consider that, perhaps they will have to care.)

To the parent question: I wouldn't ask a whiteboard question exactly, but I would certainly ask some questions about existing architecture and rationale so I have an idea what I may be working on.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#158

Post by richardwhiuk » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

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…

>> Don't be the chump that's at Goldman Sachs acting as a code monkey for the traders.

> I don't think the GP intended to call engineers at those kinds of companies lesser.

Yes, they did - bit difficult to argue good faith when you are calling people chumps.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#159

Post by snegu » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 2:53 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #112

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…

Hey! That was my experience. New product direction; needed some designers. Show up, and everybody is working on firefighting old bugs with a fake Agile approach. The kind where the manager hands out tickets to folks and the only metric is how many trivial bugs have been closed this week. Every time I spent any time looking into the code (million lines of crap) to see if anything could be done, I'd get widely criticiz…

Are you working on my project?

I'm trying to get out, but not having much luck. I wonder if recruiters are turned off by the fact that I'm looking for another job again after just a few months.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#160

Post by smashface » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 2:53 PM UTC

gonzo41 wrote: post #126

smashface wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 com…

I think this may be a better way to phrase what I was thinking. It doesn't have to be directly related to revenue. The revenue relation just makes it easier to be counted as core to the business model. I think it's important to say business model too. IT is core to essentially every business now, but when IT is core to the how the company fundamentally positions itself in a market it really changes things.

Though in the context of this thread, I don't know a good question to ask in an interview to tease out that information when it's not already clear. If you simply ask "is IT/engineering considered to be vital to the business model or core to company success", everyone will answer yes regardless of how the IT/engineering is actually viewed.