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

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#311

Post by jrjarrett » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #310

Stratoscope wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

Assuming you CAN take unpaid time off, and not have that penalize you.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#312

Post by walshemj » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 6:38 PM UTC

blaser-waffle wrote: post #304

viraptor wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the UK at a large company, I took TOIL for out of hours working at OT rates 1.25 up to 8pm 1.5 up to midnight and Saturday and I think it was 2x plus a day on Sunday.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#313

Post by lokar » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 6:41 PM UTC

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"…

I can be done will, with effort. Google manages it.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#314

Post by tomp » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 6:42 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #244

relax88 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We ought to protect data, not code.

Code is more dangerous than data. Personally, I'd be most worried by someone getting a virus that hacks into other computers and encrypts them and/or wrecks the network. Both can be protected against, first by cold backups and second by resilient / disaster recovery network, but both would also severely affect the company for a few days, so I'd rather avoid them.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#315

Post by pkaye » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 6:43 PM UTC

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…

I'm okay with this as as interviewer as long as they allow me to ask my own questions. There have been a few candidates over the years that swamp you with their own questions that you don't have time to ask them your own. In this case it just leaves doubt in my mind.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#316

Post by war1025 » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

drongoking wrote: post #162

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…

I listened to a podcast recently [1] that talked about "embodied knowledge", which is basically the idea that what we know is often very different from what we think we know.

The idea being that you will learn much more about someone / something if you ask questions that are anchored to a time and place rather than generic "unembodied" questions.

So the first question you list "Do you value code quality?" is an "unembodied question" and there is no hook for the person to dig into reality and give you an honest answer.

The second, "Who was the last person promoted?" is "embodied" in that it is anchored in time and place. And because of that, a person is going to use their memory, rather than their rehearsed "value system" answers.

Anyway, it's basically exactly what you said, but I just wanted to recommend that I thought the podcast was a worthwhile listen.

[1] https://www.thepermaculturepodcast.com/2019/1912/

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#317

Post by baron_harkonnen » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 6:50 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?

I don't think it's the case for the parent but the "golden handcuffs" of RSUs+bonus as a major part of total comp is a pretty real problem. I used to think the very idea of "golden handcuffs" was ridiculous but by the time you realize the depth of the mistake you've made (2-3 months) you realize that you just have to fake it for a few more review cycles and then you get leave with an extra $100k in your pocket.

It helps that places that are awful also usually can't imagine that you would want to leave. Good places, ironically, worry a lot more about employee satisfaction. Bad places typically believe that everyone is really worried that they might not get promoted/have a long career at company XYZ so are very weak at spotting employees that have checkedout. The stick they wave is usually "you won't get promoted next year if you don't play the game!"

Of course this depends a lot on how much energy the job drains from you, but if you can still learn some stuff during the day and don't feel drained when you go home, a year is not such a bad sentence to serve for a nice bump to your savings... just don't make a career out of it.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#318

Post by Jarwain » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 6:53 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #194

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…

Your advice is correct, but depressing. These body-language games people play with each other are manipulative, and sometimes deceptive. Even if there's truth behind the assertion of confidence, the assertion was made to manipulate the outcome. No doubt, the most obvious rebuttal is that the interviewer will be doing their best to manipulate no matter your tactic, so you either circumvent them or acquiesce to them.

What would you say is the distinction between influencing and manipulating an outcome?

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#319

Post by hinkley » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

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 can't recall the last interview when I was allowed enough time to dig into these sorts of questions. I'm gonna have to sort this out soon, and it's probably going to involve practicing my delivery at the risk of tanking the interview.

It's like they're selecting for people who make major decisions based on little or no information. I'm sure that will end well...

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#320

Post by hinkley » Mon, Sep 09, 2019, 6:59 PM UTC

drongoking wrote: post #162

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…

The charitable way to put it is that the stated values of most companies are aspirational, not descriptive.

But it's hard in some cases not to feel lied to when you see the gap. At least in dating when this happens you can get out early. You don't get the same trial period with work arrangements.