Some questions I've asked that (occasy) produce illuminating answers (and sometimes an illuminating lack of answers): "Production has just gone down. What happ

Some questions I've asked that (occasy) produce illuminating answers (and sometimes an illuminating lack of answers): "Production has just gone down. What happens?" "You're offering X share options in equity. What's that come to in terms of % of the company, what is your valuation based on your most recent round, and what is the strike price for those options when they vest?" "How long is your company's runway right now?" (Note: I was told 6 months, took the job, and it turned out to be 6 weeks. Everyone was let go.) "Do you have any engineering practices that you would like to adopt but can't for some reason?" "What does a typical customer of yours look like? What about an ideal customer? What are you doing to close that gap?" "How large are each of your engineering teams? How many teams are there? How do teams coordinate with each other?" (The most illuminating answer I got was "engineering isn't split up into teams, all 50 people report to me."). Alternatively, ask to see an org-chart. "Someone from sales just closed a huge deal, but they made a bunch of promises for custom functionality and features without running it by engineering for sanity checks or timeframe estimates. What happens now?" "What's your 'bus number'?" "Why does the CEO of a 10-person startup need a 'chief of staff'? "What's a cool feature you came up with that you decided to NOT build (or deploy)? Why? How was that decision reached?" (The best answers showed how dissenting opinions were handled, and who was allowed to express them). "You're just idly browsing through the company repos on a weekend (as one does). What are you looking (or looking out) for? a bug to fix, code to refactor, code to delete, tests to add, documentation to update, or something else?"