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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

#201

Post by toast0 »

scarface74 wrote: post #198
toast0 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employer contributions are tax deferred, not untaxed. Assuming you don't trigger penalties, you'll pay ordinary income on that down the line. I wouldn't expect to retire into a 0% tax bracket, especially if you're maxing the employee contribution.

Many companies offer Roth as an option for a 401K and will put your match into it. So they would be completely untaxed.

You can put the employee contribution into Roth, but the employer contribution is almost certainly going into traditional; I don't believe there is a provision for employer match into Roth.

(Working on the link)

https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/retirement-plans-faqs-o...

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#202

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

acollins1331 wrote: post #7

Interviewing the interviewer has been THE best way to get the job. It just oozes a confidence that you already know you're good enough to get the job, and you're trying to figure out if they are good enough for YOU. Figure out questions before hand that describe the type of good working environments or fixes for bad ones that you've had in the past. The interviewer will quickly shift and try to sell the position to y…

At a smaller place, sure. If you know the job would require working with the interviewer. But in places like Google, who you're interviewing has no relation to where you work within the company; team placement comes after hiring committee deciding they want you.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#203

Post by roland35 »

iamthepieman wrote: post #82
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…

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.

I agree it is terrible to reset the seniority clock after 10 years! I found it very difficult to negotiate this as well, but if you're hiring a senior position do you expect applicants to be happy about losing 1-2 weeks vacation time??

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#204

Post by longcommonname »

How often do you load to production? What's a project here you are most proud of? What was your last prod issue, how was it observed, how long to resolution, what changes did you implent to help going forward?

These are sre focused, the first one indicates if sres are toil driven or overloaded.

The second shows that you have agency as a sre and can have a positive impact.

The third goes into their culture around mistakes, monitoring and on call.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#205

Post by roland35 »

PhoenixReborn wrote: post #186
ed312 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unlimited PTO means you're at the mercy of the company, pretty much. I am lucky to work for a company with unlimited PTO where most people take 4-6 weeks off per year. Other places are far less lucky.

It would be nice to have a written expectation, but that kind of defeats the purpose!

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#206

Post by dominotw »

toast0 wrote: post #199
dominotw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As an occasional interviewee and mostly an interviewer, I would agree that the company has the leverage. However, the interviewee should be using the interview to find out what they need to know, to the extent that's possible. Is tooling important to you? Ask about that. Do you want to push to prod like a cowboy, or does that repulse you? Ask about that. Whatever frustrates you about your current job, you can try to…

> Is tooling important to you? Ask about that. Do you want to push to prod like a cowboy, or does that repulse you? Ask about that.

So at FAANGs for example, there are hundreds of teams that do all of kinds of stuff. You aren't necessarily interviewing directly with people from that team.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#207

Post by dpflan »

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…

That's rough, almost sounds surreal. Have you considered looking for remote opportunities?

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#208

Post by blaser-waffle »

snegu wrote: post #159
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How long were you at the job before this (crappy) one?

3.5 years at gig X and then 5 months at crappy gig Y isn't an issue -- new gig wasn't a fit, easy to play that off. "I tried to make it work but it felt like a bait and switch" would be an acceptable answer.

But a track record of ~1 year or less at places says that you're the problem or you make a lot of bad choices.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#209

Post by dver »

alistairSH wrote: post #22
viraptor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The interviewer will quickly shift and try to sell the position to you I wonder if that's often how it's perceived on the other side. I love when the people I interview ask me questions. If they're interested in something, not only am I going to answer as best as I can, I'm going to be interested in why you it's important to you. It can be a great conversation, and I'm not even trying to sell the position :-) Peopl…

The best interview I ever conducted, the candidate not only aced the technical questions, but was able to ask solid follow-up questions on those topics. "I solved it this way, what would you have done differently?" "This solution was quick to write and simple to understand, would you prefer a more performant solution?" And during the "social" part of the interview, he asked detailed questions about the company and ou…

Did they get an offer, if so did they accept?

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#210

Post by matneyx »

viraptor wrote: post #138
Diederich wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I refuse to wear noise cancelling headphones all day long. May I ask why? Even when I work at home alone, and there are no stray noises at all, I'll still wear my headphones when I want to really focus. Years of mental conditioning has led me to a place where it's much easier to deeply focus when I'm wearing headphones listening to white noise.

Not the op, but also wouldn't wear them. Weird ear shape means earbuds start hurting after a while, while the over-ear solutions make me sweaty/uncomfortable.

Not to mention earrings -- I've yet to find headphones that I can wear comfortably for a couple of hours that won't leave my piercings sore.
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