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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

#271

Post by jbob2000 »

sgustard wrote: post #196
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).

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.

You can cross off any company over 1000 people from your list, if you had that as a requirement. My company is over 80,000 people, if our CEO met with each potential employee, he would never sleep.

And also, I have to say, it's a bit arrogant to think that you deserve the attention of top executives. You can't expect them to prioritize your interview over all of the other activities their company does.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#272

Post by sanj »

sanj wrote: post #29

For many years I gave a talk titled "Questions Engineers Should Ask" This list is missing the two most important [busines] questions: 1. How do you make money? If you can't understand, or the interview can't explain, then I'd run away. This can also lead to interesting questions about risks, competitors, etc. 2. What's preventing you from making more money? The answer that you want to hear is engineering effort . If…

In response to folks feeling that I'm being disrespectful of developers in other fields: you're right. And I apologize.

By way of explanation, this phrasing came out the slide deck itself, which was used as part of a recruiting effort at colleges for new hires. In many cases we were competing with offers from finance firms and felt the need to distinguish ourselves to compensate for their salaries

Having said that, I stand by much of my statement: assuming you have a choice between those two types of roles, you'll end up in a better place where your job is a path to more revenue rather than a cost to be minimized.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#274

Post by baddox »

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…

In my own experience I have found that small (usually before market fit and series A) Bay Area tech startups tend to be fairly earnest about what the programming role would be like. I've had no shortage of interviews where I was told plainly that experimenting and shipping quickly is prioritized over having ideal code quality and architecture. Granted, I make sure to ask these questions of the most senior non-founder programmer at the company.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#275

Post by astura »

sgustard wrote: post #196
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).

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.

The last company I worked for was hiring around 20-25 people a week for a couple years. Do you honestly think the CEO would agree if a random potential new hire asked to talk to him?

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#276

Post by neilv »

> What's the status of / view on diverse hiring?

As someone who believes in value of diversity (just to be clear), for both organizational and societal reasons, I think this is an important question, for a variety of reasons -- but also a question that candidates might not want to ask.

Candidates might not want to ask, due to not knowing how the asking will be perceived. Or due to not wanting to mention some unapparent quality (e.g., being gay), because they don't know how welcome that will be, or they just want to be treated as, say, a developer, at that stage of meeting prospective colleagues.

It's much better if the company communicates its real policies/practices/culture and status proactively (beyond the standard HR equal opportunity statements), so no one has to ask.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#277

Post by denton-scratch »

kingbirdy wrote: post #153
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that apply if your working conditions and responsibilities were to be encoded in your contract?

Most employees (at least in the US) aren't given a contract, they're given an offer of employment. This provides no guarantees as to what work you'll do, or the conditions you'll do it in, and both can change at any time.

An offer of employment is a contract, if there is an exchange of benefits involved in the agreement (you work for us X days a week, we pay you Y).

Even if it's only verbal, it's a contract; contract law applies, and if you can prove the conversation happened, you can enforce the contract in law.

This is the same in the USA and in the UK. But of course, it's much better to get a written contract before starting work (or moving home, if that's what it comes down to).

And (of course) it's much harder for an employee to enforce a contract against an employer than v.v. Contract litigation can be very expensive.

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#278

Post by karmelapple »

SamBam wrote: post #163
tashoecraft wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the nice thing about the "tell me about a time when..."-style questions is that it makes it harder to lie, or at least harder top lie believably. None of the interviewers will bat an eyelid answering "do you value developer growth" with a one-word lie "yes," but I think most interviewers would feel uncomfortable making up a story whole-cloth, and that would show. The risk, of course, is that you'll seem rude…

Maybe I’m weird, but I wouldn’t find a question like that rude. I’d think the interviewee is very thoughtful, and is pretty darn interested in our company if they took the time to think that up. (even if it’s a canned question)

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#279

Post by goatinaboat »

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.

Are all developers allowed to have local admin access of their computers?

These are the same devs who install random things with curl|sudo bash right? Or write code that can only run as root in production?

No thanks. These days of virtualenvs and similar, only incompetent devs insist on being root too. In fact, this will make an excellent interview question, thanks!

Re: Questions to ask a company during a job interview

#280

Post by korethr »

SamBam wrote: post #163
tashoecraft wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the nice thing about the "tell me about a time when..."-style questions is that it makes it harder to lie, or at least harder top lie believably. None of the interviewers will bat an eyelid answering "do you value developer growth" with a one-word lie "yes," but I think most interviewers would feel uncomfortable making up a story whole-cloth, and that would show. The risk, of course, is that you'll seem rude…

It seems to me that offense at such questions being asked back is itself an indication of a misunderstanding of the meaning of the word "interview". The "inter-" part of the word denotes mutuality or reciprocity[1], that the questions and answers go both ways, so both parties may learn more about each other. An interview is not supposed to be solely an inquisition wherein the potential employer evaluates the applicants worthiness of the privilege of employment. It's supposed to be an exchange wherein both evaluate if this is a mutually beneficial business deal. And if a company considers it rude for you to want it to be anything other than a one-way inquisition of you, I think that's an indicator that management culture at that company will make for a work environment that's more stressful and less fulfilling than the rose-tinted one they present in the interview.

An aside, I say the above now, but damn, I wish I'd had understood it 10 years ago.

1. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/inter-

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