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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

#161

Post by jfb »

corey_moncure wrote: post #150
jfb wrote: post #57

I 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?

Demographic diversity, diversity of backgrounds, diversity of experience. Monocultures are actively destructive of successful outcomes, and lead to miserable working environments. The question is asked open-ended in that fashion because I want to discover what a potential employer thinks is important.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#162

Post by drongoking »

harimau777 wrote: post #63

A 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…

I came here to say basically this. I've worked at enough companies to know that their ideas of what their values are may not be accurate.

Instead of asking about values, ask about behavior. No one is going to say no to "Do you value code quality?" Aking what they've done (and sacrificed) to support code quality will give you a better idea of what their relative values are.

Asking about their tech ladder will get you an HR answer. Asking "Who was the last person promoted to X? When?" will give you a better answer. And if they can't remember the last time, that's an answer in itself.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#163

Post by SamBam »

tashoecraft wrote: post #98
harimau777 wrote: post #63

A 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…

I just feel that most interviewers when pressed on these are just going to lie unless the company truly does it, which will make it hard to tell whose telling the truth. I guess that's what the whole interview is, detect who is telling the truth about themselves. I think more detail on these questions, and to press on follow ups for specific examples.

I think the nice thing about the "tell me about a time when..."-style questions is that it makes it harder to lie, or at least harder top lie believably. None of the interviewers will bat an eyelid answering "do you value developer growth" with a one-word lie "yes," but I think most interviewers would feel uncomfortable making up a story whole-cloth, and that would show.

The risk, of course, is that you'll seem rude and high-handed asking interviewer-style questions yourself. If you have the upper hand (the job market is hot and they need you more than you need them), that's fine, otherwise not so good.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#164

Post by iamthepieman »

scarface74 wrote: post #131
iamthepieman wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just tell them how much time off I'll need during salary negotiations. I know you offer two weeks PTO and 3 weeks after 5 year, 4 weeks after 10 years etc. But I'm not restarting my PTO every time I switch companies. So I will come in with PTO equal to my experience at a minimum.

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.

yeah sure but depending on the company it's easier to take PTO than UPTO. People expect you to take all your PTO generally. That's not always true if it's unpaid.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#165

Post by smeyer »

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?

It sounds like they stayed there for about a year and had to move cities, so apparently the market in the area wasn't too hot for this to work. There are probably other people who stay longer, especially if they're not willing to move cities.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#166

Post by iamthepieman »

psim1 wrote: post #110
iamthepieman wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just tell them how much time off I'll need during salary negotiations. I know you offer two weeks PTO and 3 weeks after 5 year, 4 weeks after 10 years etc. But I'm not restarting my PTO every time I switch companies. So I will come in with PTO equal to my experience at a minimum.

Has this approach actually worked for you? In all places I have worked, PTO is a non-negotiable, other than "I already have this vacation/trip lined up for two months from now and require the time off," which is okayed even if it's outside of their normal new-hire policy.

Yes, I negotiated an extra week at my current job and my last one.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#167

Post by chaosite »

Diederich wrote: post #108

I'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…

> The responses to those three have been illuminating.

Please do share.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#168

Post by Zircom »

0xDEFC0DE wrote: post #139
mikepurvis wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 In principle but not magnitude, especially if you've relocated. Usually you cancel any other pending offers once you've accepted a position if you're nice, and that could close some doors because someone else takes those jobs. Might even get you red-flagged if you go back to them and say "this company lied to me so I quit" (the other person has no way to ve…

In the US at least, legally HR can tell them whatever they want. However if the supply anything besides employment dates, title, and whether or not they are eligible for rehire, they'll be open to a civil suit if the information given negatively affected their job prospects

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#169

Post by arethuza »

aglionby wrote: post #137
mikepurvis wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

At least in the UK I'm pretty sure that lying on your CV is fraud by false representation [1]. CIFAS (UK fraud prevention service) produced a suitably scary leaflet [2] to try to discourage recent grads from doing this. [1] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/pdfs/ukpga_20060... [2] https://cdn.prospects.ac.uk/2.0.9/pdf/Graduate-Employment-Fr...

I thought they were exaggerating about things like jail time for lying on a CV but it has happened in the UK - six months for saying she had 2 A-levels!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1260901/Woman-lied-...

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#170

Post by richardwhiuk »

mttyng wrote: post #61

> 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'd expect at minimum time off in lieu, unless the equity is significant, and resistant to dilution.
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