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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

#101

Post by busterarm »

smashface wrote: post #47
uniclaude wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's highly disrespectful to software engineers working outside of software companies. There are many of them and they are not necessarily less smart than others. Working in the profit center of a company is often enviable, but let's not forget that cost centers in large companies can also offer benefits in things like work/life balance.

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 companies is a tremendous opportunity because if you're good at what you do, people literally think you work miracles.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#103

Post by neogodless »

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, executives - I did work there, on a second or third floor, corner office with windows! For about a week. Then I was moved a mile down the road to the building they got through an acquisition. I was on the ground level (I think?) and I had a whole office! But the office was small, dark brown and had no windows. Even the door was solid dark brown. (The office wasn't all that old or terrible - the kitchen was kind of awesome. But the actual area where I worked was pretty dreadful.)

I don't exactly feel like it was intentional, or at least, it didn't occur to me at the time. But looking back, of course they didn't want to highlight that they really wanted someone to grind through reports. And they clearly didn't intend for me to spend my time occupying a corner office with windows!

I was there for about 4 months.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#104

Post by username3 »

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…

Why did it take a year to find something else?

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#105

Post by clinta »

okaleniuk wrote: post #38

I think, the "source control question" comes from the Joel Test which is 19 years old. Almost every company uses source control now so it doesn't make as much sense. A better question would be "why do you use [the source control they use]". The answer, if coming from a knowing person, may tell you quite a lot about how the technical decisions are taken in the company.

This is also role specific. Almost every developer is using source control. But it is not yet standard that operations and infrastructure teams are using it.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#106

Post by L3monPi3 »

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…

Just curious, why did it take so long the move to another company?

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#108

Post by Diederich »

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 you have?" I would use the response to gauge the interviewer, and mostly just for fun.

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.

In my last two rounds of interviews (with various companies, including Google), I asked three questions:

1. What brought you here?

2. What keeps you here?

3. What keeps you up at night?

The responses to those three have been illuminating.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#109

Post by kemiller2002 »

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"…

As a person whose straddled infosec and development, I always struggled with this. The multiple development machines is probably the best approach, but I've never truly seen it implemented correctly. I would love to not need admin access to my machine, but each time the companies I've worked for try this, it's always a struggle to do anything. This is everything from, "I need to modify/monitor core components of the operating system" to "The development tools came out with an update that needs to be installed." Most of the time, the response I've received was, "Enter a ticket, and we'll get to it." Often management seems to understand, "I'm waiting someone else" as "I'm behind, I'll work the weekend." You're right the downloading random things from the internet is an issue. Sadly I think a lot of this can be solved by the organization spending the money to buy all the needed tools and evaluate the correct open source ones, but there always seem to be budget and time constraints.

I think a lot of this stems from the fact that most of the managers in infosec for companies aren't developers and haven't ever been one. They really have no idea what developers really do. I'm not belittling them. It's just not the career path they took to get where they are. It's difficult to explain to them how frustrating being hindered is, and this causes a lot of good people to just leave an organization like that to find something better.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#110

Post by psim1 »

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.

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.
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