It's surprising no one comments with the obvious: ask things YOU care for. I hate crunches and overtime so I always ask about those.
Interview questions to ask your interviewer
91–100 of 183 posts
Re: Interview questions to ask your interviewer
#92This is probably too involved to be a question for your interviewer, but I kinda want to ask, "Imagine you have multiple instances of a production service with different 90% latencies, how would you measure the overall latency of the service?"
A surprisingly large number of SWEs are really bad at statistics, which is kinda necessary when you're asking whether a service is fast enough.
Re: Interview questions to ask your interviewer
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I suppose I can be grateful that Docker Desktop is slowly fading away. May I ask why you're grateful? I'm pretty inexperienced with Docker/Kubernetes/containers in general. So there's probably a good reason I'm unaware of. Docker Desktop was nice for me to run the one or two basic things I needed. I've moved away due to the licensing changes, but I'd like to understand why it was a problem.
MacOS Docker had performance problems and odd limitations because it was really a Linux VM under the hood (Darwin can't run containers) and any host passthru stuff needed that additional hypervisor translation, which wasn't always perfect either. People raising bugs against "production" wouldn't tell you that they found it their Macbook so you'd go on a wild goose chase thinking it was a real issue and not simply Mac…
Gotcha. Thanks that helps. I can definitely see that translation between the VM and the container being a problem.
Re: Interview questions to ask your interviewer
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wsl 1/2 are quite painful, but the issue is also windows, you might get a wsl3 that is good and it would still be surrounded by windows, i would still tolerate windows but Microsoft isn't offering windows to you as a product that gets out of the way, doesn't touch defaults, doesn't show you ads on the desktop etc, it's using a software to push on you other stuff, so nein So there are many companies and many projects…
I have exactly the opposite idea. I hate Mac and WSL2 is perfect for development. I've never seen an ad in windows 10 as well.
While one point of view is subjective, truth isn't, but I'll play the game and ask you if i and others news source are just having a collective visions https://duckduckgo.com/?q=windows+10+ads+start&t=fpas&ia=web
Re: Interview questions to ask your interviewer
#95This is probably too involved to be a question for your interviewer, but I kinda want to ask, "Imagine you have multiple instances of a production service with different 90% latencies, how would you measure the overall latency of the service?" A surprisingly large number of SWEs are really bad at statistics, which is kinda necessary when you're asking whether a service is fast enough.
What's your answer? I'm tempted to average them?
Re: Interview questions to ask your interviewer
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "What are the company's non-compete rules? If I wanted to make and sell an app in my spare time, is that allowed? What isn't allowed?" I would not be surprised at all if the people interviewing me gave a nice answer and then on day one I'm asked to sign a contract that doesn't match what they said. Ask if you can see the employment contract before accepting an offer.
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 you will likely have never seen before. If you so much as object or raise an issue about it you risk being terminated there and then. There was just such an article posted to HN years ago about this happening at... I want to say Google... but my memory of that is hazy.
Re: Interview questions to ask your interviewer
#97A lot of these questions don’t really matter and are a waste of time. The only real questions to ask imo are: 1. How is performance/promos determined? 2. How are peoples interpersonal skills in other teams? In the first question, look out for cues regarding inefficiencies or resentment about the performance process. In the second one, the interviewer can discuss whether people are cooperative or assholes without bein…
Your questions don't matter as well, I couldn't care less about those. The only real questions that matter are those that matter to you (the applicant). E.g. I always ask about working hours, their flexibility and make sure the counterparty understands well I don't crunch or overtime unless on rarest occasions. Because those are the things that matter to me.
Like I said, ask your recruiter those questions, not the interviewer. I have interviewed 100s of candidates personally and you can only comment about your own working hours and the flexibility of your team, not the company.
The other questions I stated give you information about more than just the immediate environment of the interviewer.
If those aren’t questions you care about, that’s fine. Though I find it impossible to believe you don’t care about the way your performance is measured or whether you will be working in a hostile environment. If you care more about the flexibility of your working hours than that, more power to you.
Re: Interview questions to ask your interviewer
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "What are the company's non-compete rules? If I wanted to make and sell an app in my spare time, is that allowed? What isn't allowed?" I would not be surprised at all if the people interviewing me gave a nice answer and then on day one I'm asked to sign a contract that doesn't match what they said. Ask if you can see the employment contract before accepting an offer.
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.
There are multiple things to sign. At my company, you sign most of them on your first day on the job. I probably could have asked to see them during the offer stage, but there's no guarantee that's the same document you'll be asked to sign (and likely the part of HR involved in giving you the offer is not the same part of HR that makes you sign the first day).
Re: Interview questions to ask your interviewer
#99I 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 :)
I thought that way before my current job. I learned the error of my ways. In companies like mine, you'll get a Linux account on a server, and will not have root privileges. So you're quite limited on the SW you can easily install (try installing Emacs with all its dependencies from source).
Since then, whenever I shifted teams, I'd pick ones where I don't have to use Linux. At least I can customize my Windows laptop easily, and Emacs works just fine on it.
Re: Interview questions to ask your interviewer
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Am I allowed to have side projects that I own? > Does your insurance cover my preferred doctors? (obviously more of an email question) Your contract specifies that and other answers to other questions. Don't ask your interviewer this question, the only thing he/she can do is rely to HR. Best ask HR directly. > Why did the person before me leave? It is unlikely you are ever going to get answer to that and even if yo…
If I'm interviewing with a future teammate, then they should know what the contract is. If the company is so big that they have bespoke employment contracts, then the first interview is usually HR. As far as the person im replacing, that's more of a poker move to feel out if there is a toxic boss driving people away. Perhaps a better way to do that would be to ask about the turnover rate for the team/department/compa…
Even if a potential teammate has an overly restrictive IP clause, in my experience a lot of companies are genuinely using boilerplate, never thought about it much, and are happy to redline to "Company's IP if on company time / company equipment / directed by company". I don't think it's inappropriate to bring it up with a manager, but I wouldn't trust any answer until you get to contract negotiation.