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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

#241

Post by grogenaut »

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.

Asking these questions a lot in interviews to candidates most people lie by either talking in generalities, or back off and are honest like "were going through that now" both give you an answer. I have not asked this directly in an interview but my normal tactic is to have lunch with the engineers and no manager which gets you lots of examples.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#242

Post by atulatul »

jcadam wrote: post #119
logfromblammo wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it wasn't on the west coast of the US? Because the ancestor poster is older than 30? Because that company had some secret non-poaching agreements? Because companies were preemptively binning the resume for not staying at the previous company long enough? The only people who could really say, won't.

I'm in Florida and nearly 40 :) I've landed a fairly good spot now, might actually stay longer than my usual 1-2 years.

> my usual 1-2 years A genuine question...(I am not from USA.) Is this 1-2 years period normal for many people/IT companies? Is it similar to contracting- benefits and tech/business exposure wise?

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#243

Post by Diederich »

chaosite wrote: post #167
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.

Some here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20919442 (in response to another reply). I might type more up later on.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#244

Post by quotemstr »

relax88 wrote: post #43
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.

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"…

> use a good software whitelisting program that tracks elevations & the reasons for them, instead of just blanket giving everyone local admin on their own PC

You can propose such a thing. If you're in charge at a company, you might get to implement it. But if you do, know that it's a huge black mark against your company. I've seen how these whitelists work in practice. They're massive wastes of time. They get in the way of actually doing one's job, as creative work can't be constrained and approved in advance by some committee with a ten-business-day turnaround on getting some damn file conversion utility to run.

The golden rule of "security product" culture is this: inconvenience is a feature, not a bug, since friction reminds people that the infosec group exists. When it comes to stuff like this, all the incentives are lined up to just inconvenience people, not protect them. We ought to protect data, not code.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#245

Post by BurningFrog »

jcadam wrote: post #234
BurningFrog wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recruiters will possibly say anything to get a sale. But when talking to your future peers/team mates, I think you can expect a lot of honesty if you ask the right questions about how things really are. I know I'm always 100% honest, because if they get hired, we'll be coworkers, and they'll know if I lied!! PS It's weird that you didn't get the title in the contract

Oh, my official title was "Lead Engineer" in the HR system. I just wasn't given any "lead" tasks or responsibilities.

How annoying :(

At least you can put the title on your resume!

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#246

Post by astura »

BurningFrog wrote: post #222
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…

Recruiters will possibly say anything to get a sale. But when talking to your future peers/team mates, I think you can expect a lot of honesty if you ask the right questions about how things really are. I know I'm always 100% honest, because if they get hired, we'll be coworkers, and they'll know if I lied!! PS It's weird that you didn't get the title in the contract

I've never flat out lied to a candidate, but I know part of my job as an interviewer is to sell the company/position, so I put a positive spin on things. Same thing the candidate is doing.

It's not even uncommon to be hired for one role and end up in another role for whatever reason.

Another thing is, policies change. Your interviewer could be grandfathered in and not know it (or know it, but don't mention it...). Or they could simply mention the last policy they remember, which isn't the current policy.

Some people also would rather just make up an answer rather than say "I don't know."

>It's weird that you didn't get the title in the contract

Job titles are not always correlated with job responsibilities. Hence we have "senior engineers" with a year experience. Title inflation is a real thing.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#247

Post by protomyth »

neogodless wrote: post #103
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…

At first, I was like, it's crazy that this company did this. And then as I was reading through the description, I realized this actually happened to me. It wasn't identical, but there are similarities. First, the project was described as "green-field, we're doing cool stuff writing MVC apps from the ground up." I was assigned to build SSRS reports. Second, the shiny building with the sales people, recruiters, executi…

I worked at a place that had decided to increase office space in an unusual way. They once had done their own power generation with an oil boiler and had a very large underground concrete oil bunker. They eventually tore down the power plant and "cleaned" out the bunker. So, someone, bless their soul, came up with the idea of putting a cube farm in the bunker. Well, even cleaned and sealed, concrete 'bleeds' oil for a while. No problem, they just built a box in the bunker and vented around it to remove any fumes. So, the cubes are in a box in an underground bunker with a constant wind between the bunker wall and box wall.

Had an office with a nice view and plenty of sun. Got moved into a cube that neither cellphones nor radio got a signal with this constant wind noise since I was up against the wall. I left in 8 months (for other reasons amazingly enough). I dearly wish that there were transcripts of the meetings that went into that project.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#249

Post by alistairSH »

dver wrote: post #209
alistairSH wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes and yes, and still on my team 5 years later. So I suppose I aced their portion of the interview as well.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#250

Post by seanmcdirmid »

r00fus wrote: post #182
jbob2000 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This only works if you're interviewing with decision makers. At a larger organization, I don't think the person you're interviewing with would have any capacity to answer these (which could be a red flag for you, but also a very limiting one).

Or worse, interviews and hiring are with group A and the organization has you now working with group B. Obviously A knows little about B. This happens at FAAMG companies.

M doesn’t really do that for anyone but new grad hires. I’m not sure either A does that either (the A closest to M doesn’t, I know from personal experience). F and G definitely do, they are notorious for it.
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