11 ms·

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

• reallydontask 7y ago
  friend of mine joined a company that in theory checked all the boxes, in practice, none. Extreme case but ...
  • RobertDeNiro 7y ago
    Not that extreme. Interviews are meant to ensure candidates aren't lying on their resumes, but nothing is done to ensure companies aren't lying too.
    • rat9988 7y ago
      I'm pretty sure you can leave in the first weeks easily in most countries.
      • freedomben 7y ago
        Sure, but then you've lost out on other offers that you may have declined, and you're back to unemployed.
        • WorldMaker 7y ago
          Indeed. The labor market is quite illiquid from the point of the laborer, with a lot of ugly sunk costs and worse opportunity costs. There's not enough safety nets if you buy the wine-and-dine sales pitch but find the reality is a lot more of a lemon than you were sold. (There are no lemon laws for the labor market, sigh.)
  • freedomben 7y ago
    It's happened to me twice now. I'm loving the ideas in this thread about asking the, "tell me about a time when ..." style questions because I've always delved deep into the culture and values philosophy, and have found that so far each company was describing their aspirational ideal, which did not reflect practice at all.
    • ticmasta 7y ago
      As an engineering manager I try to answer truthfully to these probing questions because (1) If someone quits after being hired under false pretenses it's more work for me, (2) I'm relatively new to the position so naive/earnest enough to speak the truth (I was a developer too!)
      • freedomben 7y ago
        This seems like such common sense to me that I'm surprised it isn't more common. At this point I think most managers are just too disconnected and don't realize how it really feels. I guess most people will also put up with a lot of pain before they go back out to the job market. I know I do. I guess this should be motivation to me to get back to work on one of my crappy ideas that could turn into a startup ;-)
• jbob2000 7y ago
  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).
  • r00fus 7y ago
    Or worse, interviews and hiring are with group A and the organization has you now working with group B. Obviously A knows little about B. This happens at FAAMG companies.
    • seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      M doesn’t really do that for anyone but new grad hires. I’m not sure either A does that either (the A closest to M doesn’t, I know from personal experience). F and G definitely do, they are notorious for it.
      • r00fus 7y ago
        Apple is notorious for it. In some groups, your title/manager often have little to do with what you actually work on. "secret projects" are de-rigeur.
    • eeZah7Ux 7y ago
      FAANG, for Netflix. Microsoft does not matter.
      • oarabbus_ 7y ago
        Care to elaborate? Why does Microsoft not matter, but Amazon/Apple does?
        • WorldMaker 7y ago
          I'm not entirely sure why, but here on HN especially I've seen a lot of the use of FANG with one A [Apple] used to mean Bay Area super-powers, as opposed to GAFAM for general tech majors, because some believe the Bay Area to matter more than the rest of the industry and Seattle-focused Amazon and Microsoft somehow "outsiders"/"foreigners" to the Bay Area. It's also fascinating to me from an anthropological/sociological view point because Microsoft has had some sort of Bay Area campus (almost continuously) for longer than several other members of GAFAM have even existed (with PowerPoint headquartered there from its acquihire in the 1980s until a reorg shuffle in the mid-90s and HoTMaiL/Hotmail/Live Mail/Outlook.com and other "web properties" carrying the torch up until a lot of recent acquihires expanded that campus again to more Office-relevant tools beyond just "web stuff").
• tashoecraft 7y ago
  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.
  • SamBam 7y ago
    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 and high-handed asking interviewer-style questions yourself. If you have the upper hand (the job market is hot and they need you more than you need them), that's fine, otherwise not so good.
    • denton-scratch 7y ago
      Yes. I love the table-turning style of these questions; but the fact is, they can always answer "No, we can't think of any such examples. Are you going to walk away from the job?" That is to say, hiring is usually a buyer's market.
      • flatline 7y ago
        In the tech industry it’s very cyclical. It’s hard to hire anyone right now.
      • muttled 7y ago
        If that's their answer to something you would want in a company, it's probably way better to find out before you accept.
      • Jolter 7y ago
        We spent all spring trying to hire two engineers. It's not a buyer's market right now, at least not in my town.
• drongoking 7y ago
  I came here to say basically this. I've worked at enough companies to know that their ideas of what their values are may not be accurate. Instead of asking about values, ask about behavior. No one is going to say no to "Do you value code quality?" Aking what they've done (and sacrificed) to support code quality will give you a better idea of what their relative values are. Asking about their tech ladder will get you an HR answer. Asking "Who was the last person promoted to X? When?" will give you a better answer. And if they can't remember the last time, that's an answer in itself.
  • war1025 7y ago
    I listened to a podcast recently [1] that talked about "embodied knowledge", which is basically the idea that what we know is often very different from what we think we know. The idea being that you will learn much more about someone / something if you ask questions that are anchored to a time and place rather than generic "unembodied" questions. So the first question you list "Do you value code quality?" is an "unembodied question" and there is no hook for the person to dig into reality and give you an honest answer. The second, "Who was the last person promoted?" is "embodied" in that it is anchored in time and place. And because of that, a person is going to use their memory, rather than their rehearsed "value system" answers. Anyway, it's basically exactly what you said, but I just wanted to recommend that I thought the podcast was a worthwhile listen. [1] https://www.thepermaculturepodcast.com/2019/1912/ https://www.thepermaculturepodcast.com/2019/1912/
    • Tronno 7y ago
      Without having listened to the podcast, another way to frame this is using the concept of yes/no questions, who/when/what/why/how questions, and open-ended questions. Y/N questions are not very revealing and are likely to lead to dead-ends in the conversation. WWWWH questions reveal a specific bit of information, but can also lead to dead-ends. Open-ended questions ("Tell me about...", "What do you think of...", etc) will foster good conversations and uncover new threads to pull. In my experience, this is by far the best way to interact with other people, whether they are interviewing you or not. Coming up with good/relevant questions on the spot is a skill that can be difficult to master, but is extremely valuable.
• brightball 7y ago
  You just made me feel really good about my team, because we've done all of those things multiple times over the last year.
• atulatul 7y ago
  I have asked questions like: Do engineers have access to safari books? Did you sponsor any conference passes/ training? (I got answers like we have certification amount re-reimbursement policy(turns out for only pre-approved/ business significant courses). We have internal Community Of Practice sessions, etc.)
• baddox 7y ago
  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.
• aniham 7y ago
  One question I like to ask is "Tell me about the worst day (work-wise) you've had in the last six months." Most of the answers I've had gotten generally have to do with escalations and I find that answers are quite honest and unpracticed. I think the way a team/company handles an unusual high-stress situation is in many ways telling of the team/company dynamic in general. And as a bonus, there's usually a good anecdote about a buried body or two in their codebase, process, you name it.
  • chuckdries 7y ago
    > I think the way a team/company handles an unusual high-stress situation is in many ways telling of the team/company dynamic in general What sorts of signals do you look for in these answers?
    • lvspiff 7y ago
      Beware the company that replies with "there haven't really been any" - they are lying or every day is stressful.
      • chinhodado 7y ago
        That's too cynical. I'm sure there are many places where things are mostly uneventful - or "boring" to some people.
        • dredmorbius 7y ago
          Not in my experience. "Firing the responsible" may be an overly-strong comment -- putting pressure on the line rather than improving line management is the upshot of what I'm getting at. Though truly boring can be a good sign if it's the result of good planning, drilling, practices, and rewarding competence. If it's from complacency, failure to recognise problems, or the ability to push fault or failure off on others (clients, customers, vendors, suppliers, other departments), not so much. The good sign then is understanding why and how they got to boring.
• duxup 7y ago
  I joined a team that does agile software development. Apparently that meant that occasionally a slack bot asks me what I did recently.
  • muttled 7y ago
    That's what happens when programmers get promoted, even your bosses try to automate their jobs.
    • duxup 7y ago
      That's a good point. I actually don't mind it. I'm a noob, it's a small shop, and i'm not sure I'd like a pure "agile" environment anyway... or would want to risk it going wrong.
    • crease 7y ago
      My manager does this. He is incredibly wary of adding process so he tries to automate it and it never gets implemented. For example, every quarter he tries to come up with some automated system for assigning code checks. It usually has some jank that causes it to go unused and we fall back on just asking one another as needed until he tries again.
  • rolltiide 7y ago
    hahaha I love it because its true, but you do assume that your manager reads the answers right? One thing I didn't notice for a few quarters was that the slack bot was not automatically configured to show the other people in the standup what was written. This is very important to the standup concept so you can discuss and help others on a task if it seems relevant, and everyone is aware.
    • duxup 7y ago
      I think he does read it. Not sure how "agile" it all is but it isn't the worst system as in it isn't as disruptive as everyone chatting all the time.
• hinkley 7y ago
  I can't recall the last interview when I was allowed enough time to dig into these sorts of questions. I'm gonna have to sort this out soon, and it's probably going to involve practicing my delivery at the risk of tanking the interview. It's like they're selecting for people who make major decisions based on little or no information. I'm sure that will end well...
  • crispyporkbites 7y ago
    Be assertive and ask for 10 minutes at the end for questions. If they don’t give you time to ask questions, don’t work there.
• forgotmypw 7y ago
  You have to ask tangential questions questions and then read between the lines of the answers.