Live data from Hacker News

Interview questions to ask your interviewer

daveceddia.com

121–130 of 183 posts

Re: Interview questions to ask your interviewer

#121

I would add Am I allowed to have side projects that I own? Am I allowed to contribute to open source from work? ie bugfixes for libraries we use. How many meetings are there in an average month? Does your insurance cover my preferred doctors? (obviously more of an email question) How strict are the requirements in whatever tracking software we use (jira,rally, etc) How many required programs are there? Outlook? Slack…

My go-to question is: Am I able to use Linux? This tells you a lot about the company. I avoided some Windows-only jobs in the past :)

had a great gig at microsoft, answer was yes

Re: Interview questions to ask your interviewer

#122
post #52

I recently did a round of interviews with a few companies, and I came up with a list of fun questions for the interviewer, mostly based on my own gripes with my then-employer or things other companies were doing that I didn't like. I caught everyone I asked these to off-guard. > "Every company gets criticized. What's a piece of criticism your company has received that you felt wasn't really accurate? What about the o…

> "How does promotion and career growth work? If hired, what steps would I need to take to get my next promotion? What holds people back in those situations?"

This one's mathematically interesting. Orgs are generally shaped in a way that literally most people can't "get a next promotion" after a certain point.

Something like "what do I need to do to ensure a good review and good compensation adjustments" would at least work better hold up better in managerial roles where "the next promotion" is possibly the job held by the person interviewing you. :)

Re: Interview questions to ask your interviewer

#123
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me you don't use Linux without telling me you don't use linux Wsl is pretty terrible in my experience. your better off using a vm you manage yourself. Every vendor has shared folders. Each one can use a x server to display programs in your windows window manager.

X servers suck though. Vscode renders sharply without having to do extra work. Both wsls are reasonably enjoyable. Much better than ssh-ing to a Linux host

You realize your using an x server to do that, right? It's just one thats bundled in with windows, and you don't have to configure.

Re: Interview questions to ask your interviewer

#124
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signing means accepting an offer. To sign, one needs to get a copy of a contract. So one always sees a contract before signing, no? Let’s look at it from a different angle. One does not file a resignation before receiving a countersigned copy from the company.

This isn't true unfortunately and there are absolutely horror stories of this happening to people. For example at some FANG companies you sign what you think is your regular employment contract and then move on down to the Valley excited to start your new job on the agreed upon terms... then as soon as you introduce yourself at reception just before orientation, you're made to sign a secondary agreement with terms yo…

Serious question then: do you really believe that they are going to show you “the second contract”?

It seems like the better question is: are there other documents than this contract on which this job depends to sign and can I see them. If yes, can you please put this in the contract.

Re: Interview questions to ask your interviewer

#125
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signing means accepting an offer. To sign, one needs to get a copy of a contract. So one always sees a contract before signing, no? Let’s look at it from a different angle. One does not file a resignation before receiving a countersigned copy from the company.

It's always a moving target. To continue working at a company, you are usually expected to sign every piece of paper that they put in front of you throughout your tenure. If you don't, the consequences could range from absolutely nothing, to being pestered every six months, to being kept off a project or not promoted, to being fired. If at some point you become popular or are seen as critical, you may be able to spen…

I’m so used to the European way of employment that this blows my mind.

Re: Interview questions to ask your interviewer

#126
post #52

I recently did a round of interviews with a few companies, and I came up with a list of fun questions for the interviewer, mostly based on my own gripes with my then-employer or things other companies were doing that I didn't like. I caught everyone I asked these to off-guard. > "Every company gets criticized. What's a piece of criticism your company has received that you felt wasn't really accurate? What about the o…

How do you go about bringing these up over the course of the interview?

Re: Interview questions to ask your interviewer

#127
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably just a personal thing, but that just defines which areas of our industry I probably don't want to work in. And WSL isn't helpful, because the goal for me isn't "run Linux", but "don't run Windows"; WSL won't save you from MS forcing updates down your throat, changing your browser to edge, spying on you, and sticking ads all over the system.

> WSL won't save you from MS forcing updates down your throat There was only one corporate laptop running windows 10 I've encountered during the pandemic that does not use policy to disable automatic updates and that is Microsoft. In my experience, everyone who pays for Windows Enterprise blocks automatic updates. I think Windows Home still can't into Hyper-V and therefore you have to go through hoops to install WSL…

Windows Home doesn't haven proper access to Hyper-V, but installing WSL 2 is relatively easy (and documented); Microsoft made special provisions for that. You can't use Docker to run Windows containers, but Linux containers (using WSL 2) seems to work fine.

Re: Interview questions to ask your interviewer

#128
post #52

I recently did a round of interviews with a few companies, and I came up with a list of fun questions for the interviewer, mostly based on my own gripes with my then-employer or things other companies were doing that I didn't like. I caught everyone I asked these to off-guard. > "Every company gets criticized. What's a piece of criticism your company has received that you felt wasn't really accurate? What about the o…

I would assume the interviewer is potentially under a non-disparagement clause on their employment contract. So the criticism question might not be a good one.

Re: Interview questions to ask your interviewer

#129
post #49

I've been maintaining my own list of questions for quite a few years. I added some based on this post and the discussion here on HN. Here's the full list - https://gist.github.com/autarch/6e7e25e85db62a359f91aa090033... There's a few that are very specific to my future travel plans and my height, but the vast majority are potentially useful for everyone. Note that my goal is to _get answers to these questions during…

I'm sorry, your height?

That piqued my interest enough to look through your questions. They are all great, but I didn't find anything related to height and can't think of any I would personally ask. (Ergonomics? Business class travel?)

Post reply on HN