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Questions to ask in interviews
- avip 9y agoWeird list. I usually ask, in no particular order: What do you do, how do you do it, how can I help you, can I remote.
- expertentipp 9y agoInterviewed by some startups (Berlin) I have been asked if I know or to explain them what they are doing... and the funniest thing is they were serious.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoMaybe they want to know if you know their business? Seems like a fair question to ask.
- user5994461 9y agoIt's a fair question. The only trouble is that the vast majority of companies can't be understood if you don't already know the business.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoResearch before the interview. Always know going into the job what the company does, as it'll help you infer where you can add value.
- user5994461 9y agoMy point being that the vast majority of research will not tell you anything meaningful about the company.
- matwood 9y agoAnd that’s a valid answer. “I went over your web site and read some press releases but I’m not quite sure what you do yet. I think it is along these lines...can you explain further?”
- Kluny 9y agoMost companies should have that explained on their website - If you haven't done enough diligence to repeat what's on the website, you may not be a good candidate.
- s73ver_ 9y agoI've probably read it, but I doubt I'll have memorized it enough to regurgitate it back. And usually it's just BS marketing fluff.
- matwood 9y agoC’mon. You should at least know the industry and major product.
- expertentipp 9y agoOftentimes what the website says, what the sales team is selling, and what the engineering team is doing are three different things
- toast0 9y agoWhy would you interview at a company if you don't know what they do? Interviewing is a chore, I'm not going to invest my time in doing it unless I think I'll enjoy being there, which requires at least approving of what the company does. (I would be a little less choosy if I didn't have a current job, but still probably don't want to write software I have strong moral objections too)
- avip 9y agoOf course I know what they're doing (or the external reflection of thereof). I still ask. I have yet to find a question that will tell me so much using so little.
- exabrial 9y agoSide note: I'm to point now if I get pointless algorithm pop quiz questions in an interview I'll politely ask to move on.
- peterlk 9y agoWhat response do you receive when you ask to move on?
- ben_jones 9y agoProbable response: `${GENERIC_APOLOGY}, i'll show you out.` Probable thought process of interviewer: * What a prick * LOL we have 200 resumes on file for this position * Dammit I'm going to have to interview more people * When can I go back to being an actual engineer, the job I was hired for
- packetslave 9y ago+1 for the thought process. You left out "Damn, I suck at interviewing. I can't believe they want ME to help decide who we hire. I'm still trying to figure out how I snuck in the door."
- exabrial 9y agoI answered the question on big o and gave some examples. The guy asked to have me implement something ridiculous, I responded, honestly I wouldn't, I'd use the one in the jdk. He was a little shocked and kind of stuttered onward. I didn't get the job, and I'm fine with that.
- dominotw 9y agoI am at this point too. But I am yet to find someone who hires without these, unless you are going in with strong referral.
- ioddly 9y agoI've had several interviews that were pretty practical. They do exist but there's unfortunately no way to know in advance unless the company advertises it.
- dominotw 9y ago>What are you trying to figure out about a candidate in an interview? Why do you think your current process does that effectively? I asked this to my netflix interviewer, he just mumbled some incoherent answer about "netflix values" and didn't answer my question. He seemed to get angry when I reworded my question and asked him again. Seems like they have no idea why they are following that process, just blindly copying "industry best practices" .
- kevinr 9y agoIt's going to depend a lot on the individual interviewer how well they can answer that question. If recruiting and the hiring manager don't both have good answers to that question, though, that's a big red flag.
- milkytron 9y agoA reason for that might be because if they tell you straightforward, then it gives candidates a chance to "fake it" just for the job when they might not be the best candidate.
- leakydropout 9y agoNetflix is very (in)famous for their culture deck. I could understand they got a little piqued. Assuming you did not read it before the interview, they are looking for: good judgment, communicative, impactful, curious, innovative, courageous, passionate, honest, not selfish, performant, smart, professional team players. Hah. https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664 https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664 (17 million + views) I am on the fence about the second part of your question. On the one hand: If they are free to grill you about hypotheticals and process, why can't you do the same? On the other hand, should you really? It is a very cheeky ("courageous") question that would catch me off guard. "Who are you to question the very job interview we are currently having? How is this relevant to your prospective job? Current interview not up to par for you?".
- dominotw 9y agoRecruiter made me read through the slide deck. He called me the second-time and 'pop quiz'ed me on the contents of deck. What a strange company.
- ben174 9y agoOne thing I wish I'd asked before starting the job I currently have is how much IT likes to dictate what you can and cannot do on your work machine. They block iCloud, Messages.app, have some horrible resource-heavy anti-virus, and a ton of other restrictions on my machine that impair my ability to get my job done.
- base698 9y ago"can I expense equipment I deem adequate if the tools you give me don't suffice?"
- BoiledCabbage 9y agoAnswer: "Dependent on circumstances and cost"
- santaclaus 9y ago> iCloud, Messages.app At least you get to use macOS at work, mad jealous!
- pmalynin 9y agoCome work at Intuit, we get to use a Mac and the apps aren't blocked.
- cdancette 9y agothe company that lobbied against a free and simple tax filling software ?
- indemnity 9y agoFirst thing I did when promoted to a position of responsibility - Gave all developers Macs if they wanted them. Cue disappearance of frequent grumbling about “IT”, since worst they can do now is install McAfee, which is worked around by exclusions for devs (with absolutely everything thrown into exclusion folder!). Shit actually gets done and “fuckin IT” is no longer a valid excuse for not delivering.
- Kluny 9y agoIf you ask too many of these questions you're going to set off red flags that you're an entitled person who's looking to receive more value than you contribute. I'd focus more on asking about the company's future plans and strategies.
- rajathagasthya 9y agoWhy? I think you're perfectly entitled to ask questions that affect your day-to-day. It isn't a one-way street.
- user5994461 9y agoThe wording of the questions could be improved.
- devmunchies 9y agoAlso, you can ask them differently. So instead of "How late do people usually arrive/stay?" you can ask "How early do most people get to the office? Am I encouraged to come early?" Makes you sound better.
- ianamartin 9y agoA lot of these work culture and life and tech questions can be backed into. My series of questions when I get the chance to talk to an engineer on the team I'm interviewing for is just this, "What's a normal day at work look like for you? Not a fire drill day or anything crazy. Just walk me through what you think of as your routine." And once you can get that conversation going, you can pretty easily suss out the answer to very many questions in the article without coming across as even really asking questions, let alone seeming like a special snowflake. Some questions can be more direct than others. But I think many of them can be figured out through a healthy conversation in the interview process. If you can't engage someone in that kind of a conversation someone ought to be seeing some red flags.
- s73ver_ 9y agoWhy? Why on earth would wanting to know about the place where you're going to spend the majority of your day cause you to seem "entitled"?
- stephengillie 9y agoOf all my interview questions[0], the favorite is "what is the biggest technical thorn in the company's side." It gets a different response from every person, which gives an interesting perspective of a company. [0] http://gilgamech.com/docs/resume/interview.txt http://gilgamech.com/docs/resume/interview.txt
- uiri 9y agoAnother question that yields different responses from everyone that I like to ask: "what is your more favorite and what is your least favorite thing about working here?"
- wellpast 9y agoWhen I evaluate a job, I usually optimize for a few things (position, location, salary, tech) but very TOP of the list (i.e., non-negotiable) is what my sense of happiness as a contributor/developer will be. A very good metric to this (for me) is lines of code. Take where they say their product is (in terms of features etc) and then weigh that agains their LOC (if they're willing to give it to you)... If you get a sense that the LOC is far too much wrt the capability of the product (experience/intuition will give you a feel for this over time, as you start paying attention to the metric)... this will give you a good sense of how many late nights you'll be spending trying to fix some nasty bugs or contend with spaghettini instead of delivering real value.
- sidlls 9y agoExperience and intuition give you approximately no useful, valid "feel" for how much LOC is appropriate for a given thing, with the possible exception of outliers or incredibly trivial programs. We don't value LOC as a measure of productivity because it is a terrible metric to use. That doesn't change just because a person is on the developer rather than the manager side of things.
- wellpast 9y agoLOC can be a huge indicator of quality of code imho—would you want to work on a 100k loc app that is more or less crud operations for a specific domain? Etc.
- loteck 9y agoHopefully someday I'll be such a sought-after resource that I could grill a company in the way this post suggests. As it is, I choose my interview battles carefully. One of my favorite questions I ask is whether my position is new (rare for my situation) or if I am replacing someone who left. This very naturally opens up a conversation about expectations from both sides. If someone separated, why do the interviewers think it didn't work out? If this is a new position, how do they imagine the first year? Suddenly you're talking about culture, performance and policies without having asked directly about any of those topics.
- dogruck 9y agoThat's truly a brilliant variant of "What will it take to succeed in this role?" Fantastic!
- arielm 9y agoI (founder) actually love hearing these types of questions because they convey actual interest. However, by no means am I saying ask for the sake of asking because I’ll read through that and will probably try to turn it into a conversation you’d be expected to participate in ;)
- AdamJacobMuller 9y agoSame here. Very often it's the questions the interviewee asks in the interview that make my mind up on a hire/pass decision.
- malyk 9y agoThis one is a killer. When I talk to candidates in an interview we do a 30ish minute problem and then you get 30 minutes time to ask anything you can think of with your potential boss. So many people have no questions. You really don't care if we don't use source control, do waterfall development, make people work 14 hour days, or code in pascal? (None of that is true, but if you never ask...)
- john_moscow 9y agoIs your team diverse? Is diversity a priority, and if so, what do you do to promote it? Am I the only person to call BS on this one? How this is likely going to be interpreted by an interviewer is "can I excuse my poorer skills/performance by capitalizing on my gender/race?", so you will get a politically correct answer like "diversity is among our core values and we promote it by giving preference to <...> among the candidates with equal skills and backgrounds" and will never hear from them again. I mean, diversity is a legitimate value, but asking this during an interview when you are trying to advertise yourself as a valuable addition to the team, is a bit strange IMO.
- venantius 9y agoI care about diversity. I've had experience with enough teams to know that teams that are homogenous (in whatever way -- this isn't exclusive to white guys, though that's the obvious example) tend to have problems.
- john_moscow 9y agoI think I know what you're talking about. I've seen teams where everyone tries to look exactly the same way and is expected to have exactly the same interests and hobbies. That usually ends up being quite toxic and demotivating. The trouble is - once the company starts setting quotas and special rules for enforcing diversity, it attracts the type of people that focus on gaming those rules instead of bringing in added value and this quickly creates another form of toxicity. In my opinion the ideal work environment is somewhere between those 2 extremes.
- oddlyaromatic 9y ago> it attracts the type of people that focus on gaming those rules Can you tell me how you know this or what makes you think it is true? It sounds like a readily available stereotype.
- john_moscow 9y ago
- nunez 9y agoNote that the questions re: business plan are more appropriate for a startup unless you’re applying for an executive role, in which case you aren’t interviewing in this way anyway. (Interviews for exec level positions are MUCH more thorough/prolonged and take a lot of time given the $$$ and responsibility involved). Also, the questions re: benefits etc. are more well-suited towards the recruiter you’re working with or HR; it is highly unlikely that the hiring manager knows enough about those things to answer your question effectively. Everything else is pretty good, though I wouldn’t ask it at once (overwhelming and a negative social signal)
- kafkaesq 9y agoA mixed bag. Questions like: Tell me about your hiring process — how many rounds, how many interviewers? Is there anything special about your interview process I should know? Are coding interviews on a whiteboard or laptop? What resources do candidates have access to while coding? Assuming the process goes well, how long does your hiring process typically take? How long do candidates who are given offers have to decide on an offer? are perfectly fine, because they're simple and objective, and can be immediately answered by the company (if they have their shit together on any meaningful level). But questions like: What are you trying to figure out about a candidate in an interview? Why do you think your current process does that effectively? What biases have you decided to accept in your hiring process? Which are you trying to change? would be a red flag, because really now, it's not like employers have huge swaths of time available to holistically explain the raison d'être of their hiring process and how it got that way. If anything it's the exact opposite -- if they company is successful, then their people have almost no time at all to wax philosophic which each and every candidate about such topics. So to ask questions of the latter sort strikes me as a bit obtuse.
- kevinr 9y agoCompanies above garage size literally employ people to answer candidate questions. If the company hasn't invested the time to answer "What are you trying to figure out about a candidate in an interview?" and its recruiters don't have a simple, objective answer, they should stop interviewing and go answer that before they start again. A simple answer is something like, "We want to figure out whether a candidate can do the work we need them to do. We do that by giving candidates sample work problems which are streamlined versions of problems we've actually solved at the company in the past. People we hire are more likely to still be employed with us than they are at our competitors after a year. We know we don't hire enough women and URMs into technical roles, and we're instituting a rule that at least one woman or URM candidate needs to be interviewed for each open role."
- kafkaesq 9y ago"We want to figure out whether a candidate can do the work we need them to do." Well, yeah, that's the thing - the answer is (or should be) so self-evident that one wonders if one wonders whether the question is really worth the bandwidth.
- kabdib 9y agoOne dev I worked with asked the following question at the companies he interviewed at (he got offers from all of them, btw): "What percentage of your co-workers would you like to see fired?" Most interviewers responded in the ten percent range. One notable exception was a place where they responded with "fifty percent" -- I can't imagine what it was like there.
- ramzyo 9y agoAmazed he got offers from all of them. If someone asked this during an interview I would most definitely not give them an offer. It seems indicative of a vengeful and toxic mentality.
- watwut 9y agoI would give joke answer with random number. There is no way I would give you honest answer to that question, if would indeed wanted to see some of my colleges fired. You are testing interviewer personality, not the company there. Without other information, 50% may mean a lot of bad colleges or arrogant self-aggrandizing interviewer.
- emilecantin 9y agoI think the "Team" and "Tech" section are interesting, it's the kind of question that you genuinely need to know, but the interviewer might find them a bit "personal".
- eradicatethots 9y agoAsking questions for the sake of asking questions, while currently necessary, is stupid. I wish it would go away.
- arielm 9y agoAs a founder who sits in on all interviews I agree, but also believe that every question/answer is an opportunity to show more personality — on either side — and as such welcome it.
- peteretep 9y agoMinimum viable interview research: https://codeformore.com/minimum-viable-interview-research/ https://codeformore.com/minimum-viable-interview-research/ Knowledge is power: Why are they hiring? https://codeformore.com/knowledge-power-hiring-new-developer/ https://codeformore.com/knowledge-power-hiring-new-developer...
- quickben 9y agoHunt for red flags, you can thank me later: -The person I'm replacing, why did they leave? -How much overtime is done and is it paid? Are weekends required? Are people asked to volunteer for a weekend shift? Do you have "deployment days" where people have to stay until/past midnight not accounted anywhere? -Who is going to be my manager/technical lead? Can I talk to them? -Is this a full time position, or full time supplemental (ex: IBM) Oh, it's full time suplemental, is overtime paid? Do I have vacation days and health insurance? -Can you show me the exact spot where I'll be sitting? -Can I take two weeks to decide on the offer considering I have currently three more interviews in progress?
- CommanderData 9y agoA trap I see promoted by recruiters and companies with poor culture (typically big corporate settings) is to not ask any probing questions. Interviewers should have no problems answering questions about their work culture unless it is unhealthy or broken. I was once told I was egotistical after the interview (because of my probing questions) but was offered and accepted the job anyway - it was a admirable brand. Quickly found myself regretting. My questions were based around work culture (Is this a new position? Have many people have left recently? etc.) Discovered the department was toxic, aggressive members with terrible traits. Structurally very secure from legal and HR so unlikely to change anything. Thankfully was early in my career and left. Lesson? Take the time to thoroughly question the interviewer and reject any company that seems avoiding. Take the advice from this article. Never had a bad role since.
- tjalfi 9y agoOne question that I like is “Who do you admire on your team?”
- yeeeeeeeeee 9y agoReading this as a single founder startup is both hilarious and very useful.
- _Codemonkeyism 9y agoI thought I was good at hiring - doing it for 20y - but have no idea. Three things I want to learn from a candidate: - Does she/he feel responsible? - Does she/he self reflect and learn or blame others? - Can he/she solve problems on her/his own? Any ideas on how to find out?
- kthejoker2 9y agoSituation Behavior Outcome questions do a good job of forcing candidates to reveal their motivations and thought processes. Some examples https://www.themuse.com/advice/30-behavioral-interview-questions-you-should-be-ready-to-answer https://www.themuse.com/advice/30-behavioral-interview-quest...
- _Codemonkeyism 9y agoThanks!
- yangshun 9y agoAnother list of questions can be found in this Tech Interview Handbook: https://github.com/yangshun/tech-interview-handbook/blob/master/non-technical/questions-to-ask.md https://github.com/yangshun/tech-interview-handbook/blob/mas...
- b0rsuk 9y agoOne thing I would like to figure out is how often I can ask for help. Any ideas how to phrase that ? I worked in a small company where I was the only programmer and had to figure everything on my own, plus search engines, IRC, StackOverFlow. Then an interviewer at Intel was mildly unsatisfied that I didn't ask about a test question that wasn't entirely clear. Also, one company where I worked very briefly considered question asked a sign of weakness.