What are the hardware specifications of the average developer workstation?
Questions to ask a company during a job interview
301–310 of 467 posts
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#302Earlier 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…
I've been at companies that were "engineering-driven" that were total disorganized messes and totally immature workplaces. I've also worked somewhere at a "lesser" company where I was firmly on the cost-center side of things, but my work was seen as absolutely business-critical, I was treated well, I survived all reorgs and department layoffs and had my salary tripled from the time I started. Working in unsexy compan…
This. I've worked for an ISP as a software engineer for almost 3 years and even though the company doesn't directly make money from what we do, we are quite respected for the value that we provide.
Also that last statement hits way too close to home.
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#303Interviewing 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…
> The interviewer will quickly shift and try to sell the position to you
"How long has this position been open?"
is useful to subsequently ask
"so why is this offer letter expiring in 48 hours?"
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#304> 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've never been in a position where I've not been paid for each call out. (And only one place which didn't pay for standby)
Ditto. On-call work was just regular hours, and we could use those against our 40/week obligation aka cut out early, or else file for comp time.
We had a quarter of big router changes and I got enough comp time to take a decent vacation (padded by PTO days, mind you)
Some data center techs I knew would get time-and-a-half for any on-call work they had to do.
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#305Interviewing 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 my job, we have "do you have any questions for us" part as a standard part of every interview -- and my experience shows that most people always have at least one question.
When I interview that's my first question, because it helps set the stage for being it a dialog instead of a Q&A barrage. It's much easier to also wash people out at this stage (depending on what # you are in the interviewing sequence) when they have strong opinions of on call rotations, remote work, etc. Questions often come to mind as you go along through an interview process and I'd rather you ask up front then have it sit in the back of an interviewee's mind as something they want to remember to ask.
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#306One of the most important questions:
What is the attrition rate for the manager and for the company in general. If a manager has high attrition rate, that's definitely a red flag.
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
I joined a team that does agile software development. Apparently that meant that occasionally a slack bot asks me what I did recently.
hahaha I love it because its true, but you do assume that your manager reads the answers right? One thing I didn't notice for a few quarters was that the slack bot was not automatically configured to show the other people in the standup what was written. This is very important to the standup concept so you can discuss and help others on a task if it seems relevant, and everyone is aware.
I think he does read it.
Not sure how "agile" it all is but it isn't the worst system as in it isn't as disruptive as everyone chatting all the time.
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#308I'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…
> Of the dozens of Google interviewers I've spoken to over the years, only one responded with a number range, and the rest of the responses were largely grouped into either active playful discomfort. That's because most employees don't know, and the ones who do, know that it's a company secret.
Sure, I never expected a real answer.
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#309Earlier 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).
What if as a condition to accept a job offer you request a meeting with the CEO? Would the company refuse or do they value you enough to make it happen? I have never taken a job without talking to a top executive. You get a view of the company bigger than your team, you get to ask those business questions your manager may not know, and you have a head start on making good connections with upper management.
I've worked in some companies under 300 people size and the CEOs had no problems meeting you to discuss. And talking to a senior VP was almost standard part of interview for a experienced role (but maybe less so for junior roles.)
Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview
#310Earlier 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.
> PTO is a non taxed benefit. I'm not sure what you mean by that, but income from PTO/vacation/sick leave is taxed the same as any other income.
If you make 140400 a year and are getting 2 weeks of vacation. You are making $2700 a week. If you took another week off of unpaid time off. You will lose $2700 for that year.
If they gave you an extra week of vacation. Your taxes wouldn’t change. If instead they gave you an extra $2700 in salary and you took a week off of unpaid time off, you have to pay 24% in Federal taxes on that income + 1.45% in Medicare (you are already over the social security maximum).
You would need to make $3621 more just to start breaking even ($2700/(1 - .24 - .0145)). But even then you are paying taxes on the extra 3621-2700. I’m sure there is some formula to break even but I would just ask for an extra $4000 and call it a day.