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Interviewing the Interviewer: Questions to Uncover a Company's True Culture

455 points by abhas9 2y ago

roenxi 2y ago
> What’s something you think the company could improve on? Interviews are serious business and if I'm in one I want to be hired; so I won't ask that. But there is a certain temptation to ask that as a counter question the next time "Please describe your greatest weakness" comes up on the theory that it'd annoy the interviewer if they were expected to put up with the silliness they make candidates go through. The trials and tribulations of being disagreeable. In all seriousness though, this is a bad question for exactly the same reason as "Please describe your greatest weakness" is a bad question. You're only testing the verbal intelligence of the person your talking to and they are, without a shadow of a doubt, going to give a diplomatic say-nothing answer if they have any sense in them.
- itronitron 2y ago
  Also, it shouldn't be a necessary question, as the company should already be making that clear to the candidate and how the the candidate will be an essential aspect of that endeavor.
- dejj 2y ago
  > “Please describe your greatest weakness“ I memorized to reply with “I have a weakness for Italian pasta.” Even though you may be tempted to reply with “You fight like a cow.”
  - itronitron 2y ago
    My greatest weakness? That would have to be interviewing.
- rented_mule 2y ago
  > Interviews are serious business and if I'm in one I want to be hired I absolutely get that sentiment, but I think it's far from unconditionally true for most people who aren't desperate for a job. Do you really want to be hired into a company where you'll be unhappy and likely to fail? I'd much rather wash out at the interview stage than be fired or leave in disgust two months later (the company doesn't want this either - hiring a candidate is typically not profitable until many months on the job). At its most productive, interviewing is about collaborating on the most accurate prediction of whether the candidate will be happy and productive in the situation being hired for. Many companies and candidates are bad at this, but I think it's the ideal we should be striving for on both sides. I rephrase the above question, just as I do when I'm the interviewer. For example, "Tell me about a change that's been made with the support of senior leadership to improve engineering culture. What were some of the things people were unhappy about that led to that change? What is and isn't working about the change?" If the answers I get are too diplomatic, then my suspicion is that changes aren't being made to improve culture, and therefore it's headed in a bad direction (without active curation in some form, culture goes downhill). If they give me an example that had flawless results, I say "Give me an example that didn't work so well." The more transparency and introspection I see, the more hope I have for where things are headed. Nothing is black and white here, but questions like this can separate companies if you're fortunate enough to get more than one offer. When asked well, questions like this suggest that the candidate thinks / cares about the health of the org and is willing to politely, but directly, ask tough questions to make a difference. That's leadership. It can directly increase the odds of a better offer. When I'm the interviewer and you're a candidate for a role in management or you're an IC with the word "leader" on your resume, it works against you if you don't ask probing questions like the above, because I'm expecting you to do so on the job.
  - nj5rq 2y ago
    > "Tell me about a change that's been made with the support of senior leadership to improve engineering culture." [...] If the answers I get are too diplomatic, then my suspicion is that changes aren't being made to improve culture. There is no "engineering culture" in a company. I don't know why everyone loves that word so much.
    - sethammons 2y ago
      > There is no "engineering culture" in a company There is, with out doubt, engineering culture. Culture really means "what customs we use and how we work." Every single company has a set of customs for working. Sales customs, engineering customs, management customs, etc. Engineering customs, or culture, dictate how the org approaches software development. Code reviews? How deep? Quality checks or not? Is quality encouraged?Level of collaboration between teams and teammates? is there a partnership with Product or does product dictate? How much and what gets written down? How are new solutions brought forward? Does the company intentionally grow/weed-out these customs? That is engineering culture. You should work somewhere where their customs are things you can adopt. Else, you are not a culture fit.
      - danielPort9 2y ago
        But that changes from team to team, and sometimes even from individuals to individuals. It’s rare the company (not faang level) that invests that much in engineering culture.
        sethammons 2y ago
        Of course it verifies from to team. Just like culture varies between any in-group. The culture of a larger group is kinda like the average of smaller inside-group customs. A company that does not consciously cultivate culture will still have a culture, but it may be like driving a car with no hands on the wheel. At 5 companies so far, someone or group is ay least attempting to steer.
      - 2y ago
- nj5rq 2y ago
  I was going to type something like this. I don't know how the interviews are in your country, but in mine the interviewer doesn't take this well.
  - amonith 2y ago
    Outside of FAANGs, especially in lower cost of living countries (e.g. here in Poland) and high demand jobs (e.g. mid+ software engineers) employers compete for employees most of the time. The reason is simple: nobody's offering above market rates so you have dozens or hundreds of same-y softwarehouse-y companies to choose from. Most of my friends do not apply for jobs because they actually need them. They're looking around for something better while already working for someone.
- ford 2y ago
  It's a negative signal not to be able to critically assess how you're doing - both for an individual and a company. The best teams know that being embarrassed about problems, or, at minimum, acknowledging some of the downsides of an intentional decision, is not the best way to solve them.
- azangru 2y ago
  > In all seriousness though, this is a bad question for exactly the same reason as "Please describe your greatest weakness" is a bad question. You're only testing the verbal intelligence of the person your talking to and they are, without a shadow of a doubt, going to give a diplomatic say-nothing answer if they have any sense in them But why? Why would you not expect an answer like "our website is slow, and we are hoping you can help us with that"; or "we are thinking of improving collaboration between front-end and back-end engineers; and we were wondering what your experience has been in this area", etc?
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    Firstly because an HR would never know such details (assuming we're talking about first interview which is almost always with an HR), and secondly most people never want to admit any fault, not only their own but the company's.
- hinkley 2y ago
  I used to have a way of asking it where it was part of us figuring out if or how much I can help this team by working here. I’ve lost the knack, and also what makes me quit is feeling like a janitor, so coming in day one already thinking like the cleanup crew is a bad plan. So maybe it’s just as well I don’t talk that way anymore.
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    I have the same reflex because it was true for at least 80% of all my gigs (I am a contractor for good 8 years now, with a full-time career in several companies for 13-14 years before that). I get what you are saying though, if you are talking like that then people instinctively will want to allocate you where there are fires. Truthfully though, I gave up caring. Most companies are IMO a train wreck in progress anyway. Might as well score political / influence points by going in and measurably helping others.
CharlieDigital 2y ago
I ask these indirectly. "What types of people tend to succeed and do well with your team? What types of people tend to struggle in your team?" (Am I going to be a culture and work/life balance fit?) "What are your main objectives in the next 6 to 12 months? What's your plan to meet those objectives?" (Do these guys have their act together and an actual plan? Is the work going to be interesting?) "How do you see the candidate in this role contributing to that objective?" (Are their expectations for this role realistic? Do I fit those expectations? Do I want to be on that ride?) "Tell me about how the team collaborates and coordinates work" (Am I going to be stuck in 1 hour all-hands daily "stand-ups" every day?)
- the_real_cher 2y ago
  Brilliant
- dpb001 2y ago
  I have always asked the first part of your first question, but it never occurred to me to ask the second part as a follow-up. It reveals a lot about a manager - if there isn’t a thoughtful answer that’s a red flag for me.
- cj 2y ago
  One question candidates like to ask me: "What's your biggest challenge over the next year? Next 5 years?" and then.. "How is this role contributing toward solving that challenge?" (Sometimes people replace "challenges" with "vision" or "goal") These question catches me off guard sometimes. But if I were the candidate, they are great questions to expose whether a company is hiring this role to fix a problem (if so there are probably very specific expectations) or are they hiring the role to make a good thing better. Dirty secret about interviews: there are very few questions a candidate can ask that would leave a negative impression. You can literally ask "Are you profitable?" or "What is the turnover rate of your team?" or "If you had to improve our team culture, what's one thing you would change?" or even "I've worked at a lot of companies that don't know what they're doing. What's your plan?" On the interviewer side, there's also very few questions candidates won't answer. I always ask what their salary expectations are, where they are in the process with other companies, how they like to be managed, etc --- occasionally there's someone who's dodgy with these questions, but 95% of candidates are extremely transparent. I return the favor by happily answering any questions a candidate asks. It's a big decision on both sides to hire someone or accept an offer, so no point in putting on a facade.
switch007 2y ago
Much better to ask current or past employees if possible. An interview is PR and the hiring managers know it. You won't get honest answers And you just risk not getting the job
- pigeonhole123 2y ago
  How can I find these people? Especially people who were fired or pushed out for example?
  - switch007 2y ago
    I didn't say it was easy hah. Meetups, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.
  - sensanaty 2y ago
    I usually just find former employees on LinkedIn. I feel like most people are pretty honest once they're no longer part of the company (unless they're manager/execs or slightly adjacent, those types are in PR mode 25/8), and people tend to want to help others out if it's a truly shitty company they didn't enjoy. Of course, take what they say, praise or otherwise, with a grain of salt. It's more about looking at the general theme between a few people, rather than what an individual or two says.
KingOfCoders 2y ago
I think you can see the culture of a company already in how they deal with you. How they answer mails, how long you have to wait for answers, how bureaucratic they are, how they negotiate the contract etc. If nothing is possible to change in the contract, then there is nothing to change inside the company either. There are not two companies, the recruiting-company and the working-company. The way they deal with you as a candidate, they deal with you as an employee.
- neilv 2y ago
  There's a lot of truth to that. However, I think a significant number of pragmatically good situations can happen when some corporate processes are poor, but the team you'll be working on is great, and your superior shields you to a large degree from corporate. One of the ways this happens is just that you have, say, a mixed engineering department, but your manager happens to be great. Another way is that a company got good engineering talent and culture in its formative years, and carries on, but the business or corporate side evolved distinctly. Note that in some companies this might mean that you're only one great manager quitting away from being exposed to a ruthless corporate culture grown by stack-ranking Hunger Games and deadly-sharp elbows. Or it could mean that your team's brilliant product design and solid engineering end up having the market opportunity ball dropped by the dysfunction of others just going through the motions. And maybe you should've suspected that, based on hints during the hiring process.
  - datavirtue 2y ago
    Ok...but managers last about as long in a position as a head of lettuce.
    - neilv 2y ago
      So store your manager with paper towels, changed frequently, to help them last longer.
      - datavirtue 2y ago
_the_inflator 2y ago
Senior Manager here who build up a career from being dev at agencies to overseeing 500 devs at a global large company. All is speculation. Culture is a term that has no meaning. There are niches for everything everywhere. We are all on a spectrum. If AI and ML reminded us of anything, than it is that there is always a spectrum. The only question is, whether you are willing to take risks or not. If you have a boss, you live by his mercy. Bosses change, circumstances do as well, team members do, workspace and subjects to work on. All not in your control. I think of my pay check in terms of punitive damage to a certain extent. High enough to stay? High enough to find out? If you have a somewhat plan b worrying about culture becomes meaningless. I saw it many times, there are no predictors. Slow processes? Fantastic people bound to decisions. Friendly encouraging folks wanting you? Crazy sociopath who forget about you, once lured in. Fantastic tech stack? Yeah, at the beginning. So what do you do? Professional attitude that honeymoon means nothing. Money and options do. There might be one exception that I used and that was bluntness. I told people that I look for people who care about professionalism. I told them, about what we are really doing, how our tech stack came to be and is managed over time. What our career model really is. Nothing shiny 24/7/365, but great devs with challenging technical objectives looking for similar people or others who want to have a more relaxed supportive function. Nothing wrong here. I quite talked them out of the job so to say. Addressing mistakes and how you cope with them might be the only helpful predictor I am looking for.
- oneepic 2y ago
  Also, candos are trying to flag potential "warzones" and avoid them. Meaning, they don't want the job to become a constant battle with anxiety, users, other stakeholders' pressure, things like that. They just want a job, or worstcase scenario they want to coast and do less time. That said, the right tradeoffs can make it totally worth it. I think I joined one by accident, personally, but I feel that I have the best people, career growth and tech here (always wanted to do some networking work), so it still feels right to me.
  - awesomeMilou 2y ago
    > They just want a job, or worstcase scenario they want to coast and do less time. I'm not seeing how this is a bad thing? If companies are looking for signals to hire me, I can look for signals that indicate mismanagement, incompetence or toxicity in the workplace (or all of the previous).
janalsncm 2y ago
A while back I interviewed with Meta. They have an “onsite” which is really just 5 hours of interviews over zoom. I split it up over several days. After the first day (which I didn’t feel great about) I asked the recruiter if I had passed the interviews I had given, since there was presumably no point in prioritizing further Meta interviews if I already failed. But they refused to give me any useful information. Maybe that’s just part of their “process” but let me tell you, that process sucks. If I have other interviews to prepare for, I need to know how much time to allocate to each role. Thats not the only thing that turned me off about meta but it stuck out to me as unnecessarily bureaucratic and inflexible.
- nar001 2y ago
  Did you end up passing them?
  - janalsncm 2y ago
    I told the interviewer I didn’t have time to prioritize their interview.
- monster_group 2y ago
  This process is quite normal. The reason is two fold - first they want multiple people to interview the candidate before making a decision, one bad interview doesn't necessarily rule out a candidate. The second reason is the candidate experience. Some candidates feel humiliated if their interview is cut short and will harbor bad impression of the company for a long time. The company doesn't want that.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    > Some candidates feel humiliated if their interview is cut short As someone over 50, that interviewed at several places, before giving up, and accepting that I'm retired, I can say that there seem to be a number of companies that actively seek to humiliate prospective employees. It's entirely possible that it was not the usual experience, but I have found that modern HR philosophy seems to be "Always keep the employee/candidate on their back foot." Always make sure the corporation is Alpha Dog. A humiliating interview is a great way to filter out candidates that won't roll over for the Alpha.
neilv 2y ago
It's interesting that most of these are bog-standard questions asked of candidates, simply turned around. If ChatGPT can do that, the similarity won't be lost on anyone. Larger companies will start prepping interviewers what to answer, for any questions that aren't already covered in training. It'll be a new ritual by companies that don't know how to interview, in the designated 5 minutes remaining after the interviewer clicks the stopwatch on the Leetcode hazing. The candidate can ask the standard questions to which no one should expect genuine answers, and the interviewer can recite the corporate-approved useless responses. And then the interviewer will literally check the boxes for which standard questions the candidate asked, and whether they asked that STAR format be used. (And someone who ruins an entire field, by defining psychotic interview rituals, and then turning around and selling candidate prep for those rituals, will then incorporate these checkboxes into the latest edition of the prep, guaranteeing that the ritual will be complete.) I sometimes get meaningful, genuine answers to some questions about the company, I think partly because I tend to be candid, and maybe some people recognize and respect that. However, I think most people won't answer very candidly, if the candidate is reinforcing the mode by only doing what interview prep says. (For example, most people will realize that honestly answering what a company should improve upon, to any random person who walks in off the street, could get the interviewer fired. Why would they risk that.)
- majikandy 2y ago
  I can imagine that if we ever reach a point where the interviewers are prepped with the useless corporate answers to these reversed interview questions, it means we’ve done a great job in pushing to get the right information and gets right to the crux of their issues and possible red flags, one of which might even be a “corporate culture cover up stock answer”. Then surely just a follow up question asking “is that also you personal experience here?” And if you still get a corporate answer then you know for certain it is a red flag. Ultimately it sounds like these sort of questions could work well.
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Log_out_ 2y ago
Why did my predecessor leave? Helps to avoid DevHops companies were the tech debt rolled out to customers is sending the core team fleeing..
- nullorempty 2y ago
  Reminds me of one big company I worked for, where I took a job despite all the indicators screaming "don't" because the pay was relatively good. Left it 18 months later with on-call PTSD.
mgaunard 2y ago
The main things I'm interested in are: - what is the scope/mandate of the team; i.e. would I be powerless in fixing things because ownership lies elsewhere. - how close is the team to the business; i.e. do they have a good understanding of what matters and can they have impact on revenue.
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Abouteo 2y ago
Do these "uncover employer's culture" articles have any relevance in today's job market, where qualified candidates send 100s of CVs and don't even get an interview? Then if they somehow get that interview, it lasts 10+ rounds? After being jobless for months and basically going through a full blown proctology exam without lube to get hired, who's finicky to turn that offer down "nah, I don't think we are culturally compatible"?
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- galdosdi 2y ago
  Are you focusing on remote or are you able and willing to go on site at least part of the time in a major metro market?
  - anonymoushn 2y ago
    "at least part of the time" tends to mean every week so you still have to relocate your family or only visit them infrequently
    - galdosdi 2y ago
      Exactly, which is why it gives you a leg up on everyone who isn't willing to live in a major metro. If you're raising kids, you probably want this anyway. What kind of schools and jobs are they going to be able to pursue without moving far away otherwise? What kind of hospital systems will you and your elder parents be able to access as you grow old otherwise? I've come to peace with the fact that major metros have significant economic gravity for anyone with a long term time horizon and a focus on family.
      - anonymoushn 2y ago
        Well, currently I'm in a major metro with good schools and hospitals, big houses for cheap next to modern transit, where my wife does not get regularly assaulted whenever she goes outside. The pay is several times higher in major metros with bad schools and hospitals, tiny shoebox apartments where the only ISP is the local cable monopoly, where my wife has been regularly assaulted whenever she went outside, and where I will probably get to have a favorite window glass shop again.
spot5010 2y ago
As an interviewer, I tend to be very candid when the interviewee asks questions about the company, culture, role and fit. After all, if the candidate joins, I would be their colleague and wouldn’t want to start the relationship on a dishonest note. When interviewing, I would expect the interviewers to be the same. If they are not, then that already tells me a great deal about the culture.
theusus 2y ago
I have seen company say utter bullshit in similar questions. I got smart replies from HR when asked tough and later fired me in an event with opposite experience compared to what they promised.
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steveBK123 2y ago
One thing I've asked, which is kind of funny because as an interviewer you cannot ask me for HR reasons.. was "so what do you like to do outside of work". In particular I only did this at 2nd/3rd round for jobs I was pretty sure I didn't want because the managers just seemed like hardos. Seeing a hiring managers corporate robot brain go into "this does not compute" mode was confirmation I did not want the job. If you are unable to even contemplate relating to me at a human level at that step of the process, and/or genuinely have zero interests outside of work - no thanks. I am not an automaton which consumers Jiras and outputs PRs.
pts_ 2y ago
These are all trash questions. Find a way to ask them about deadlines. Deadlines should be estimates defined by the engineer. Estimates mean estimates.
datavirtue 2y ago
All of this is ridiculous and difficult to pin down. If they are not ware of the problems themselves all they can do is report symptoms, then you have to work backwards and start guessing. If they don't want you to know about some details they are going to lie to the candidate, either on purpose or subconsciously. Often, the first few moments of silence contain the real answer. The whole dynamic of employment is deeply flawed. Employees should have contracts. Without them people can say and do whatever they want after the honeymoon. Everything else in business requires a contract, except for employment so they can do whatever they please with the employee. An abusive relationship from the start.
BurningFrog 2y ago
I don't know what to ask, but I know who to ask. A common SWE interview setup is that you talk to the manager and then a few of the engineers. The manager will keep up a professional company facade. But the individual engineers will usually answer pretty much any question honestly. Both because we're bad at lying, and because you don't want to end up working with someone when they discover that you lied to them.
- malwrar 2y ago
  Definitely this. Candidates have asked me some pretty hard questions and I rarely ever feel much internal resistance in giving an honest answer, for this exact reason as well as personal guilt that someone might make a major life decision in part because of a deceptive answer. A manager might not hire you if you ask a question they dislike, but unless your question to my humble engineer self is something like “how few hours a week do you manage to get away with working?” or “I hate computers, do you frequently work with computers?”, I don’t even know how I’d give you a thumbs-down without sounding disingenuous in the post-interview feedback meeting. So much interviewing advice is bullshit, but it’s 100% true that asking good questions at the end is the ideal point to get the most accurate picture of what your job experience is going to be like. Just like my interview questions are in-part trying to gauge what it’s going to be like working with you.
- knallfrosch 2y ago
  Also because there's no incentive to lie.
  - xpe 2y ago
    People will indeed sometimes lie or spin for various reasons. There doesn’t necessarily have to be an external incentive. Sometimes internal factors are enough; e.g. to reduce cognitive dissonance. They will sometimes lie to themselves and they will sometimes lie to other people. The world is complicated.
emrah 2y ago
You are talking to humans. If there is dysfunction at the company, they are not going to let you discover it directly by asking questions. I'm thinking back to all the places I worked at, unless the interviewers were being completely honest, there was no way to figure out the actual culture by asking questions.
frugal10 2y ago
In many organizations, I've observed disparities between different business units (BUs), where some maintain high hiring standards and strong cultural values, while others may struggle with talent gaps or cultural misalignment, often due to factors like poor acquisitions or leadership gaps. What specific questions should I ask about the company, the role, or the team to ensure I avoid landing in a BU with such disparities?
at_a_remove 2y ago
I despair thinking about this. I long for a world where I could be upfront about my strengths and weaknesses, then receive honest answers in turn, such that a great fit could at least be on the horizon. Instead, everything is saturated with game theory, HR weirdness, and the pettiest of politics. I'd like to be somewhere that I work I can best do is what is actually needed, and that need is recognized.
dzonga 2y ago
being opinionated is now a dangerous game. but those questions in the article don't make sense. your interviewers, go through interview training and are coached into giving politically correct answers. just like you BS some answers in your interview, companies do the same as well. no interviewer, is going to be like - this place sucks - we're slow moving, we're led by leaders without vision, there's a lot of internal politics. everyone will tell you - this is the best place they have worked etc. the reasonable answer to work life balance is to ask how long they have worked there - usually places with better work life balance for people that have families - not solos like us - tend to have good work life balance - and people have long tenures. YMMV. best place I worked - before the usual tech grilling - I had an hour lunch with the team and the rest of the company. they got to know me, made me comfortable and I got to know them as well.
- toast0 2y ago
  > just like you BS some answers in your interview, companies do the same as well. Yeah, and just like they sniff out your BS, you need to sniff out theirs. Ask for details and see if they check out. You usually don't have a lot of time for detailed questioning with each interviewer though. You should get a lot of time with the manager or lead, but use your other time well; don't ask everyone the same questions unless you expect different answers. It also helps to figure out what you actually want from an employer. A lot of these articles are written from a perspective that there are specific things everyone should want and must verify, but terrible environments for some can be great for others. Of course, late and missing paychecks is terrible for all.
- BeetleB 2y ago
  > your interviewers, go through interview training and are coached into giving politically correct answers. Very few companies have a standardized interview process where interviewers get training. Less than 10% easily. My Fortune 500 company doesn't have it. Perhaps the managers get such training but the majority of interview sessions are not with managers.
- astrobe_ 2y ago
  > being opinionated is now a dangerous game. Where were you during the Inquisition, I wonder.
erikerikson 2y ago
This seems to encourage conflation of the interviewer and their personality with the company culture. I have been an open, collaborative person in a cagey, secretive company. Thinking that place was similar would be an error.
teeray 2y ago
The trouble with “interview the interviewer” is that you typically have, best case, 10 minutes left over to ask your perfunctory “any questions for me?” Just enough time for you to scratch the surface. If you throw hardballs, the interview will run out of time before you can throw many of them.
- RangerScience 2y ago
  I've asked for and received more time during the interview process to ask these kinds of questions, so you can just do that. If they say "no", that's a pretty strong signal itself.
- twoodfin 2y ago
  As someone who’s been an interviewer approximately 50X more often than I’ve been interviewed, I have come to love the “any questions for me?” part of the interview. I have progressively reserved more and more time for it, particularly for candidates who are already making a strong impression. And for candidates who are otherwise hard to read or on the boundary, it’s been a great opportunity for clarifying discussion. Would strongly recommend leaving 30-50% of the interview for candidate-driven topics.
  - athenot 2y ago
    Same. I want candidates to ask me questions. If they don't, I prompt them. If they still don't have any questions, that usually counts against them. Of course, that's because I cultivate teams where I want people to think for themselves, even if that means dissent or arguing with me. I'm not trying to hire a bunch of "yes people" who just make me feel good. And I'm aware that it takes a lot of courage to ask questions or challenge an interviewer, but that's a similar trait that I'm after in the roles I'm usually filling.
    - pdimitar 2y ago
      At 44 years old and with 22.5 years of experience I will now go to the corner weeping that I have met maximum 3 people like you in my entire life. You people apparently don't dwell in Eastern Europe or even most of Europe (I have been around). It's a meat grinder here.
viraptor 2y ago
I actually collect those types of questions here if you want more ideas (with translations) https://github.com/viraptor/reverse-interview https://github.com/viraptor/reverse-interview
- pdimitar 2y ago
  Thank you, I have made use of parts of your questionnaires two times in the last few years. Bravo for collecting the questions and curating them. They do help.
rubayeet 2y ago
The author of the article assumes too much on the interviewers’ ability to deeply reflect on open ended questions, and clearly articulate the response (in a short period of time, because tables are turned when there is only few minutes left on the clock). As a tangent, when I am interviewing someone, I try to find additional signals about the candidates communication skills / behavioural traits as well as their motivation in seeking the role. Candidate: “how is this role going to change in X years?” Me (internally): This person is likely growth oriented, and their growth may have stalled at their current role. Candidate: “How is the on-call load?” Me: This person may be burning out and looking for a place with some stability. Of course, these are only assumptions and I try to be self-aware not to be biased in my decision by them.
- btilly 2y ago
  The author also assumes too much of the interviewer's honesty. A vague question can easily get a misleading response. Tell me about the last 3 people to leave the company. That will reveal volumes about the company culture. And often they are volumes that the interviewer didn't want to reveal.
  - soared 2y ago
    I can’t imagine anyone would actually answer that question, seems inappropriate to even ask
    - joezydeco 2y ago
      If I'm interviewing someone and I call their old HR for a reference, they will never say anything other than employment dates to avoid lawsuits. This tracks along the same lines. I can't imagine actually getting a response to this.
  - hiatus 2y ago
    Has this worked for you? Employee separation is a personnel issue so I would be surprised if any company would elaborate on that.
Cupertino95014 2y ago
The thing to always remember is: the way they treat you at the interview is the best they will EVER treat you. Do they ask if you need water, coffee, etc.? Do they give you time to use the bathroom? Do they keep you waiting excessively? Do they listen to your answers and look you in the eye, or do they keep staring at the resume as if they've never seen it before? What they say is certainly interesting, but what they do is more so.
- joezydeco 2y ago
  I always ask to use the bathroom. I was in one office where the CEO had pictures all over his office of his collection of race cars, but the bathroom hadn't seen a coat of paint in 20 years. Massive red flag.
  - Cupertino95014 2y ago
    I went to one little company where they had a unisex bathroom. This was not for gender equality -- it was because they had so few women that they didn't think it worthwhile to build a bathroom for them.
- romanows 2y ago
  Probably more telling for smaller companies. In bigger companies, there may be separate roles and organizations managing the interview process, and you might not interview with the exact people you work with.
  - Cupertino95014 2y ago
    True, although in my experience a long time ago, IBM was so extraordinarily considerate that I almost went to work there! They even gave me cash at the end of the interview, so I didn't have to file an expense report (unlike every other place).
azangru 2y ago
> “How is your experience working at the company? Can you tell me about the company culture?” ... If the interviewer gives a vague answer, dig deeper: “Can you give me an example of how the company culture manifests in day-to-day work?” This can help you move past generalities and get a better sense of what life is really like at the company. If you are interested in what life is really like at a company, why use vague abstract concepts such as "culture"? Especially if the company has multiple engineering teams, and you are interviewing for one of them, it is quite possible that the "culture" differs from one team to the other. Why not ask something like "how does the team communicate on a daily basis?", "do you use practices x, y, or z?", "what do you expect from a new hire on this position?", "what are your most important values in the area of tech for which you are hiring?"
la64710 2y ago
This whole model of interview is biased towards communication skills and that gets reflected in the culture of every damn company where no matter what you do it is important to be able to “talk”. Talk not in the sense of being objective but talk in the sense of being subjective , being able to influence , be liked etc etc.. it’s all understanble after all we are human too but it’s difficult for kids who grew up in the 80s and were fed with more neutral merit based and objective outlook of life.
- rmbyrro 2y ago
  Aren't you pointing out how the average human is? I mean, we are a heavily communicative species. The most of all species by a very, very large margin...
  - la64710 2y ago
    True and that is why the Tower of Babel was built and remove objectivity.
- dasil003 2y ago
  I grew up in the 80s too, and I hope by this age one would not be tethered to naive interpretations of whatever values were pitched to them as a child. I’m not the greatest natural communicator, and I didn’t get into software to work with people, but I have come to the conclusion that there just aren’t very many roles for senior software engineers that don’t require solid communication efforts to be successful. It’s not about subjective vs objective, it’s just that most paid software positions are about solving a problem for other humans, and it’s hard to get it right if you aren’t well practiced in both listening and discussing their needs interactively. The user will never understand the reasoning for the technical choices, so the empathy must flow the other way.
  - la64710 2y ago
    Listening I understand , but enjoying the privilege of talking freely (which only a certain type of people have) and thereby becoming the thought leaders of an organization and determining what everyone should like and what they should not - I think is what does a disservice to the organization in the long run but the interviews and internal mechanisms are biased towards such people.
aflukasz 2y ago
I will share one data point that just popped to my mind, maybe it will be useful to someone. About 10 years ago, my colleague and I were interviewing a guy for SWE role. He wanted to learn about presence of pressure, difficult deadlines and overtime. But for that he didn't ask about company culture, values, how our day to day looked like etc. He just clearly stated, that he does not want to work long hours, just 9-5, that it would make him unhappy otherwise and asked can we give him that. While also emphasizing that he understands this may not be possible and he does not feel entitled, it's just that he knows himself well and it's very important to him. We confirmed that he could get what he wished for (we were in a position to do it), and thanked him for being open about it. He landed the job, and when I've seen him some time later, he looked satisfied, so I believe that the organization delivered on its promise. I wish all of us such fruitful interviews.
- andoando 2y ago
  This is what Ive been doing with comp as well. I am making x, I wouldn't be happy with less than x, or I like my role and I wouldnt move unless I get y. Recruiters will usually be pretty open back and it saves a lot of time on both sides.
  - abid786 2y ago
    Except that if you’re an exceptional candidate you might get uplevelled or they might find money in the budget for you that didn’t previously exist for the role (more so if it’s a small company) By asking these questions up front you might weed yourself out even though the role might have been a good match.
    - oblio 2y ago
      In my experience those are unlikely events and you save a ton of time by asking directly. Especially if you make X and they reply with X - 20% (or worse).
    - pdimitar 2y ago
      Meh, that happens super rarely. Most people are never the perfect match, and the people who land on their supposed perfect role and not care about money are way too young to be that valuable for the company anyway. Plus we don't work for glory and smiles. A while ago I always made it clear during interviews that I don't enjoy the money negotiations -- of course, that has been used against me so I learned to keep my wits about myself, and nowadays I am like "sure we like each other but I still would not work if I had my needs covered so what are you paying?" (obviously not asked in that form, of course).
Ahmed_rza 2y ago
Love this
JoeCianflone 2y ago
Something I’ve asked in the past: “what is the one thing that the person hired into this role, if they did that, at the end of the year you’d say that was a great hire” seems to always catch people off guard and I’ve gotten answers that were almost wildly out of scope for the job responsibilities. When that happens it’s interesting to see their response when you point that out. Also huge red flag means the person interviewing you had no idea what they’re interviewing you for or everyone has a different idea what this role does. I ask this to everyone at every round.
- hinkley 2y ago
  What are you hoping the person you hire will be able to help you with? What are your expectations for this role?
- pdimitar 2y ago
  Definitely my new favorite comment, thank you. I have asked several more indirect variations of that same questions but you boiled it down to an exact phrase and I am memorizing it.
spacecadet 2y ago
Specific questions aside. I have for many years approached interviews in the mindset that, I am interviewing them, and this has worked out much better for me. Of course this is amplified by doing research and preparing specific questions to produce a more truthful image of the business and culture. However, people are generally trained to weed out "non-culture fits" and close on "unicorns", so nothing said in an interview should be taken as reality.
massung 2y ago
Assuming a multi-person interview process, where who you are interviewing with slowly goes up the ladder, one question I always ask (of each person) is: - If you could snap your fingers and change/improve one thing at the company, what would it be. The responses could be technical, cultural, about management, communication, etc. But this question has never let me down. If I a random distribution of different things, I know that - like any company - there's always going to be different things that people don't like (and that I won't like either). And I'm just asking myself if any of these are not a good fit for my personality. However, if I notice multiple people all identifying the same one or two items, then the higher I get in the food-chain of interviews, I might pivot the question, calling it out: - I've heard multiple times now $PROBLEM, what would it take to address it? The best answers come from mid-level management. They'll usually be very frank about any cultural issues that prevent the problem be solved, but are aware of it. Regardless, the higher up I get, this one question usually has me knowing whether or not this is a place (culturally) that I want to be at.
codazoda 2y ago
abhas9, I’d love to chat. I’m interested in your experience with the Neat CSS framework (this is the first time I’ve come across it organically). I’m also curious about the testing you’re doing. My email address is in my profile if you see this.
electrondood 2y ago
I just ask each person I interview with: * "how's your work life balance?" * "how often do you work outside hours? Is there an always-on culture?" * "when is crunch time and what does that look like?" * "what's your least favorite thing about working here?" And then I watch their microexpressions. If multiple interviewers have the same reaction, there's your answer.
patrickmay 2y ago
When I'm in the hot seat I use a variant of a set of questions I ask SWEs when I'm the interviewer. Those are "What's your favorite programming language? What do you like best about it? What would you change about it if you could?" As an interviewee they become "What do you like best about working here?" and "What would you change if you could?"
melody_calling 2y ago
I don’t think I’ve ever had a single interview that left more than about 60 seconds for candidate questions. Maybe you can tease some of this stuff out with the “hiring manager chat” as that tends to be less formal, but in panels? What level/grade are folks generally talking about here? Or is this a difference between applying for a role vs. being hunted for it?
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  If you aren't being given time to ask questions during an interview (within reason of course, like 5-10 minutes) you need to go elsewhere. I've never had a job interview (on either side of it) where the candidate didn't have plenty of time to ask questions.
  - hinkley 2y ago
    I’ve had places where I pointed out we’d mostly solved the problem and do you want me to keep going or allow time for other questions, they’ve always picked keep going and I’ve always checked out at this point. I’m not going to work for you based on the negligible amount of information I’ve gotten out of you so far. I’m still workshopping more assertive ways to just say this. We are wasting our time here folks.
    - pdimitar 2y ago
      Not sure I get your comment. What does "we'd mostly solved the problem" mean during interview? And what does "keep going" refer to?
- ibash 2y ago
  That’s odd. Most interviews I’ve had, on both sides of the table, had basically an indefinite amount of time for questions.
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    Maybe they are mentioning the first interview which is almost always with a clueless HR.
mmooss 2y ago
The best advice IME is the old advice, 'when someone shows you who they are, believe them.' It applies to the organization. If the receptionist and the person you meet are cold and disdainful, that's the culture. If they are compassionate and creative, that's the culture - that's the CEO, even. Unless it's a special event, people are too busy, stressed, and weary to constantly conceal who they are, and they are usually not self-aware enough and too jaded to see themselves with any perspective. Even the professional con artists (which includes many business leaders these days) are obvious cons; even if you don't know the truth they hide, they are transparent about it - like someone playing Three Card Monte, you know they're a con and it's a trick, even if you can't figure out where the card is. Brazenness almost a point of pride for them, so believe them! And you are doing it too; don't forget that. :)
stevezsa8 2y ago
I once interviewed at the London office of a US based company. The best part was when they took me to lunch... I asked the young American what he was going to do on the long holiday weekend. He said they have to work. Lol. No thanks!
intelVISA 2y ago
Ratio of 'dev adjacent' to devs on the team is a good one.
roeles 2y ago
As a candidate, I was asked once "tell me something about yourself that I can't read on your cv". I could not help but tell what was on my mind outside work. I have used this question for candidates as well. I received responses about hobbies, families, quirky preferences... It's a great way to get to know someone personally. I imagine it works well for getting to know future team members and bosses too.
langsoul-com 2y ago
Unless desperate. It's always better to aim for a good fit company. Otherwise things will fall apart and so much work is required for resumes and interviews again.

455 points by abhas9 2y ago

> What’s something you think the company could improve on? Interviews are serious business and if I'm in one I want to be hired; so I won't ask that. But there is a certain temptation to ask that as a counter question the next time "Please describe your greatest weakness" comes up on the theory that it'd annoy the interviewer if they were expected to put up with the silliness they make candidates go through. The trials and tribulations of being disagreeable. In all seriousness though, this is a bad question for exactly the same reason as "Please describe your greatest weakness" is a bad question. You're only testing the verbal intelligence of the person your talking to and they are, without a shadow of a doubt, going to give a diplomatic say-nothing answer if they have any sense in them.

itronitron 2y ago
Also, it shouldn't be a necessary question, as the company should already be making that clear to the candidate and how the the candidate will be an essential aspect of that endeavor.
dejj 2y ago
> “Please describe your greatest weakness“ I memorized to reply with “I have a weakness for Italian pasta.” Even though you may be tempted to reply with “You fight like a cow.”
- itronitron 2y ago
  My greatest weakness? That would have to be interviewing.
rented_mule 2y ago
> Interviews are serious business and if I'm in one I want to be hired I absolutely get that sentiment, but I think it's far from unconditionally true for most people who aren't desperate for a job. Do you really want to be hired into a company where you'll be unhappy and likely to fail? I'd much rather wash out at the interview stage than be fired or leave in disgust two months later (the company doesn't want this either - hiring a candidate is typically not profitable until many months on the job). At its most productive, interviewing is about collaborating on the most accurate prediction of whether the candidate will be happy and productive in the situation being hired for. Many companies and candidates are bad at this, but I think it's the ideal we should be striving for on both sides. I rephrase the above question, just as I do when I'm the interviewer. For example, "Tell me about a change that's been made with the support of senior leadership to improve engineering culture. What were some of the things people were unhappy about that led to that change? What is and isn't working about the change?" If the answers I get are too diplomatic, then my suspicion is that changes aren't being made to improve culture, and therefore it's headed in a bad direction (without active curation in some form, culture goes downhill). If they give me an example that had flawless results, I say "Give me an example that didn't work so well." The more transparency and introspection I see, the more hope I have for where things are headed. Nothing is black and white here, but questions like this can separate companies if you're fortunate enough to get more than one offer. When asked well, questions like this suggest that the candidate thinks / cares about the health of the org and is willing to politely, but directly, ask tough questions to make a difference. That's leadership. It can directly increase the odds of a better offer. When I'm the interviewer and you're a candidate for a role in management or you're an IC with the word "leader" on your resume, it works against you if you don't ask probing questions like the above, because I'm expecting you to do so on the job.
- nj5rq 2y ago
  > "Tell me about a change that's been made with the support of senior leadership to improve engineering culture." [...] If the answers I get are too diplomatic, then my suspicion is that changes aren't being made to improve culture. There is no "engineering culture" in a company. I don't know why everyone loves that word so much.
  - sethammons 2y ago
    > There is no "engineering culture" in a company There is, with out doubt, engineering culture. Culture really means "what customs we use and how we work." Every single company has a set of customs for working. Sales customs, engineering customs, management customs, etc. Engineering customs, or culture, dictate how the org approaches software development. Code reviews? How deep? Quality checks or not? Is quality encouraged?Level of collaboration between teams and teammates? is there a partnership with Product or does product dictate? How much and what gets written down? How are new solutions brought forward? Does the company intentionally grow/weed-out these customs? That is engineering culture. You should work somewhere where their customs are things you can adopt. Else, you are not a culture fit.
    - danielPort9 2y ago
      But that changes from team to team, and sometimes even from individuals to individuals. It’s rare the company (not faang level) that invests that much in engineering culture.
      - sethammons 2y ago
        Of course it verifies from to team. Just like culture varies between any in-group. The culture of a larger group is kinda like the average of smaller inside-group customs. A company that does not consciously cultivate culture will still have a culture, but it may be like driving a car with no hands on the wheel. At 5 companies so far, someone or group is ay least attempting to steer.
    - 2y ago
nj5rq 2y ago
I was going to type something like this. I don't know how the interviews are in your country, but in mine the interviewer doesn't take this well.
- amonith 2y ago
  Outside of FAANGs, especially in lower cost of living countries (e.g. here in Poland) and high demand jobs (e.g. mid+ software engineers) employers compete for employees most of the time. The reason is simple: nobody's offering above market rates so you have dozens or hundreds of same-y softwarehouse-y companies to choose from. Most of my friends do not apply for jobs because they actually need them. They're looking around for something better while already working for someone.
ford 2y ago
It's a negative signal not to be able to critically assess how you're doing - both for an individual and a company. The best teams know that being embarrassed about problems, or, at minimum, acknowledging some of the downsides of an intentional decision, is not the best way to solve them.
azangru 2y ago
> In all seriousness though, this is a bad question for exactly the same reason as "Please describe your greatest weakness" is a bad question. You're only testing the verbal intelligence of the person your talking to and they are, without a shadow of a doubt, going to give a diplomatic say-nothing answer if they have any sense in them But why? Why would you not expect an answer like "our website is slow, and we are hoping you can help us with that"; or "we are thinking of improving collaboration between front-end and back-end engineers; and we were wondering what your experience has been in this area", etc?
- pdimitar 2y ago
  Firstly because an HR would never know such details (assuming we're talking about first interview which is almost always with an HR), and secondly most people never want to admit any fault, not only their own but the company's.
hinkley 2y ago
I used to have a way of asking it where it was part of us figuring out if or how much I can help this team by working here. I’ve lost the knack, and also what makes me quit is feeling like a janitor, so coming in day one already thinking like the cleanup crew is a bad plan. So maybe it’s just as well I don’t talk that way anymore.
- pdimitar 2y ago
  I have the same reflex because it was true for at least 80% of all my gigs (I am a contractor for good 8 years now, with a full-time career in several companies for 13-14 years before that). I get what you are saying though, if you are talking like that then people instinctively will want to allocate you where there are fires. Truthfully though, I gave up caring. Most companies are IMO a train wreck in progress anyway. Might as well score political / influence points by going in and measurably helping others.

CharlieDigital 2y ago

I ask these indirectly. "What types of people tend to succeed and do well with your team? What types of people tend to struggle in your team?" (Am I going to be a culture and work/life balance fit?) "What are your main objectives in the next 6 to 12 months? What's your plan to meet those objectives?" (Do these guys have their act together and an actual plan? Is the work going to be interesting?) "How do you see the candidate in this role contributing to that objective?" (Are their expectations for this role realistic? Do I fit those expectations? Do I want to be on that ride?) "Tell me about how the team collaborates and coordinates work" (Am I going to be stuck in 1 hour all-hands daily "stand-ups" every day?)

the_real_cher 2y ago
Brilliant
dpb001 2y ago
I have always asked the first part of your first question, but it never occurred to me to ask the second part as a follow-up. It reveals a lot about a manager - if there isn’t a thoughtful answer that’s a red flag for me.
cj 2y ago
One question candidates like to ask me: "What's your biggest challenge over the next year? Next 5 years?" and then.. "How is this role contributing toward solving that challenge?" (Sometimes people replace "challenges" with "vision" or "goal") These question catches me off guard sometimes. But if I were the candidate, they are great questions to expose whether a company is hiring this role to fix a problem (if so there are probably very specific expectations) or are they hiring the role to make a good thing better. Dirty secret about interviews: there are very few questions a candidate can ask that would leave a negative impression. You can literally ask "Are you profitable?" or "What is the turnover rate of your team?" or "If you had to improve our team culture, what's one thing you would change?" or even "I've worked at a lot of companies that don't know what they're doing. What's your plan?" On the interviewer side, there's also very few questions candidates won't answer. I always ask what their salary expectations are, where they are in the process with other companies, how they like to be managed, etc --- occasionally there's someone who's dodgy with these questions, but 95% of candidates are extremely transparent. I return the favor by happily answering any questions a candidate asks. It's a big decision on both sides to hire someone or accept an offer, so no point in putting on a facade.

switch007 2y ago

Much better to ask current or past employees if possible. An interview is PR and the hiring managers know it. You won't get honest answers And you just risk not getting the job

pigeonhole123 2y ago
How can I find these people? Especially people who were fired or pushed out for example?
- switch007 2y ago
  I didn't say it was easy hah. Meetups, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.
- sensanaty 2y ago
  I usually just find former employees on LinkedIn. I feel like most people are pretty honest once they're no longer part of the company (unless they're manager/execs or slightly adjacent, those types are in PR mode 25/8), and people tend to want to help others out if it's a truly shitty company they didn't enjoy. Of course, take what they say, praise or otherwise, with a grain of salt. It's more about looking at the general theme between a few people, rather than what an individual or two says.

KingOfCoders 2y ago

I think you can see the culture of a company already in how they deal with you. How they answer mails, how long you have to wait for answers, how bureaucratic they are, how they negotiate the contract etc. If nothing is possible to change in the contract, then there is nothing to change inside the company either. There are not two companies, the recruiting-company and the working-company. The way they deal with you as a candidate, they deal with you as an employee.

neilv 2y ago
There's a lot of truth to that. However, I think a significant number of pragmatically good situations can happen when some corporate processes are poor, but the team you'll be working on is great, and your superior shields you to a large degree from corporate. One of the ways this happens is just that you have, say, a mixed engineering department, but your manager happens to be great. Another way is that a company got good engineering talent and culture in its formative years, and carries on, but the business or corporate side evolved distinctly. Note that in some companies this might mean that you're only one great manager quitting away from being exposed to a ruthless corporate culture grown by stack-ranking Hunger Games and deadly-sharp elbows. Or it could mean that your team's brilliant product design and solid engineering end up having the market opportunity ball dropped by the dysfunction of others just going through the motions. And maybe you should've suspected that, based on hints during the hiring process.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  Ok...but managers last about as long in a position as a head of lettuce.
  - neilv 2y ago
    So store your manager with paper towels, changed frequently, to help them last longer.
    - datavirtue 2y ago

_the_inflator 2y ago

Senior Manager here who build up a career from being dev at agencies to overseeing 500 devs at a global large company. All is speculation. Culture is a term that has no meaning. There are niches for everything everywhere. We are all on a spectrum. If AI and ML reminded us of anything, than it is that there is always a spectrum. The only question is, whether you are willing to take risks or not. If you have a boss, you live by his mercy. Bosses change, circumstances do as well, team members do, workspace and subjects to work on. All not in your control. I think of my pay check in terms of punitive damage to a certain extent. High enough to stay? High enough to find out? If you have a somewhat plan b worrying about culture becomes meaningless. I saw it many times, there are no predictors. Slow processes? Fantastic people bound to decisions. Friendly encouraging folks wanting you? Crazy sociopath who forget about you, once lured in. Fantastic tech stack? Yeah, at the beginning. So what do you do? Professional attitude that honeymoon means nothing. Money and options do. There might be one exception that I used and that was bluntness. I told people that I look for people who care about professionalism. I told them, about what we are really doing, how our tech stack came to be and is managed over time. What our career model really is. Nothing shiny 24/7/365, but great devs with challenging technical objectives looking for similar people or others who want to have a more relaxed supportive function. Nothing wrong here. I quite talked them out of the job so to say. Addressing mistakes and how you cope with them might be the only helpful predictor I am looking for.

oneepic 2y ago
Also, candos are trying to flag potential "warzones" and avoid them. Meaning, they don't want the job to become a constant battle with anxiety, users, other stakeholders' pressure, things like that. They just want a job, or worstcase scenario they want to coast and do less time. That said, the right tradeoffs can make it totally worth it. I think I joined one by accident, personally, but I feel that I have the best people, career growth and tech here (always wanted to do some networking work), so it still feels right to me.
- awesomeMilou 2y ago
  > They just want a job, or worstcase scenario they want to coast and do less time. I'm not seeing how this is a bad thing? If companies are looking for signals to hire me, I can look for signals that indicate mismanagement, incompetence or toxicity in the workplace (or all of the previous).

janalsncm 2y ago

A while back I interviewed with Meta. They have an “onsite” which is really just 5 hours of interviews over zoom. I split it up over several days. After the first day (which I didn’t feel great about) I asked the recruiter if I had passed the interviews I had given, since there was presumably no point in prioritizing further Meta interviews if I already failed. But they refused to give me any useful information. Maybe that’s just part of their “process” but let me tell you, that process sucks. If I have other interviews to prepare for, I need to know how much time to allocate to each role. Thats not the only thing that turned me off about meta but it stuck out to me as unnecessarily bureaucratic and inflexible.

nar001 2y ago
Did you end up passing them?
- janalsncm 2y ago
  I told the interviewer I didn’t have time to prioritize their interview.
monster_group 2y ago
This process is quite normal. The reason is two fold - first they want multiple people to interview the candidate before making a decision, one bad interview doesn't necessarily rule out a candidate. The second reason is the candidate experience. Some candidates feel humiliated if their interview is cut short and will harbor bad impression of the company for a long time. The company doesn't want that.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  > Some candidates feel humiliated if their interview is cut short As someone over 50, that interviewed at several places, before giving up, and accepting that I'm retired, I can say that there seem to be a number of companies that actively seek to humiliate prospective employees. It's entirely possible that it was not the usual experience, but I have found that modern HR philosophy seems to be "Always keep the employee/candidate on their back foot." Always make sure the corporation is Alpha Dog. A humiliating interview is a great way to filter out candidates that won't roll over for the Alpha.

neilv 2y ago

It's interesting that most of these are bog-standard questions asked of candidates, simply turned around. If ChatGPT can do that, the similarity won't be lost on anyone. Larger companies will start prepping interviewers what to answer, for any questions that aren't already covered in training. It'll be a new ritual by companies that don't know how to interview, in the designated 5 minutes remaining after the interviewer clicks the stopwatch on the Leetcode hazing. The candidate can ask the standard questions to which no one should expect genuine answers, and the interviewer can recite the corporate-approved useless responses. And then the interviewer will literally check the boxes for which standard questions the candidate asked, and whether they asked that STAR format be used. (And someone who ruins an entire field, by defining psychotic interview rituals, and then turning around and selling candidate prep for those rituals, will then incorporate these checkboxes into the latest edition of the prep, guaranteeing that the ritual will be complete.) I sometimes get meaningful, genuine answers to some questions about the company, I think partly because I tend to be candid, and maybe some people recognize and respect that. However, I think most people won't answer very candidly, if the candidate is reinforcing the mode by only doing what interview prep says. (For example, most people will realize that honestly answering what a company should improve upon, to any random person who walks in off the street, could get the interviewer fired. Why would they risk that.)

majikandy 2y ago
I can imagine that if we ever reach a point where the interviewers are prepped with the useless corporate answers to these reversed interview questions, it means we’ve done a great job in pushing to get the right information and gets right to the crux of their issues and possible red flags, one of which might even be a “corporate culture cover up stock answer”. Then surely just a follow up question asking “is that also you personal experience here?” And if you still get a corporate answer then you know for certain it is a red flag. Ultimately it sounds like these sort of questions could work well.
- deleted 2y ago
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2y ago

Log_out_ 2y ago

Why did my predecessor leave? Helps to avoid DevHops companies were the tech debt rolled out to customers is sending the core team fleeing..

nullorempty 2y ago
Reminds me of one big company I worked for, where I took a job despite all the indicators screaming "don't" because the pay was relatively good. Left it 18 months later with on-call PTSD.

mgaunard 2y ago

The main things I'm interested in are: - what is the scope/mandate of the team; i.e. would I be powerless in fixing things because ownership lies elsewhere. - how close is the team to the business; i.e. do they have a good understanding of what matters and can they have impact on revenue.

deleted 2y ago

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Abouteo 2y ago

Do these "uncover employer's culture" articles have any relevance in today's job market, where qualified candidates send 100s of CVs and don't even get an interview? Then if they somehow get that interview, it lasts 10+ rounds? After being jobless for months and basically going through a full blown proctology exam without lube to get hired, who's finicky to turn that offer down "nah, I don't think we are culturally compatible"?

deleted 2y ago
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galdosdi 2y ago
Are you focusing on remote or are you able and willing to go on site at least part of the time in a major metro market?
- anonymoushn 2y ago
  "at least part of the time" tends to mean every week so you still have to relocate your family or only visit them infrequently
  - galdosdi 2y ago
    Exactly, which is why it gives you a leg up on everyone who isn't willing to live in a major metro. If you're raising kids, you probably want this anyway. What kind of schools and jobs are they going to be able to pursue without moving far away otherwise? What kind of hospital systems will you and your elder parents be able to access as you grow old otherwise? I've come to peace with the fact that major metros have significant economic gravity for anyone with a long term time horizon and a focus on family.
    - anonymoushn 2y ago
      Well, currently I'm in a major metro with good schools and hospitals, big houses for cheap next to modern transit, where my wife does not get regularly assaulted whenever she goes outside. The pay is several times higher in major metros with bad schools and hospitals, tiny shoebox apartments where the only ISP is the local cable monopoly, where my wife has been regularly assaulted whenever she went outside, and where I will probably get to have a favorite window glass shop again.

spot5010 2y ago

As an interviewer, I tend to be very candid when the interviewee asks questions about the company, culture, role and fit. After all, if the candidate joins, I would be their colleague and wouldn’t want to start the relationship on a dishonest note. When interviewing, I would expect the interviewers to be the same. If they are not, then that already tells me a great deal about the culture.

theusus 2y ago

I have seen company say utter bullshit in similar questions. I got smart replies from HR when asked tough and later fired me in an event with opposite experience compared to what they promised.

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steveBK123 2y ago

One thing I've asked, which is kind of funny because as an interviewer you cannot ask me for HR reasons.. was "so what do you like to do outside of work". In particular I only did this at 2nd/3rd round for jobs I was pretty sure I didn't want because the managers just seemed like hardos. Seeing a hiring managers corporate robot brain go into "this does not compute" mode was confirmation I did not want the job. If you are unable to even contemplate relating to me at a human level at that step of the process, and/or genuinely have zero interests outside of work - no thanks. I am not an automaton which consumers Jiras and outputs PRs.

pts_ 2y ago

These are all trash questions. Find a way to ask them about deadlines. Deadlines should be estimates defined by the engineer. Estimates mean estimates.

datavirtue 2y ago

All of this is ridiculous and difficult to pin down. If they are not ware of the problems themselves all they can do is report symptoms, then you have to work backwards and start guessing. If they don't want you to know about some details they are going to lie to the candidate, either on purpose or subconsciously. Often, the first few moments of silence contain the real answer. The whole dynamic of employment is deeply flawed. Employees should have contracts. Without them people can say and do whatever they want after the honeymoon. Everything else in business requires a contract, except for employment so they can do whatever they please with the employee. An abusive relationship from the start.

BurningFrog 2y ago

I don't know what to ask, but I know who to ask. A common SWE interview setup is that you talk to the manager and then a few of the engineers. The manager will keep up a professional company facade. But the individual engineers will usually answer pretty much any question honestly. Both because we're bad at lying, and because you don't want to end up working with someone when they discover that you lied to them.

malwrar 2y ago
Definitely this. Candidates have asked me some pretty hard questions and I rarely ever feel much internal resistance in giving an honest answer, for this exact reason as well as personal guilt that someone might make a major life decision in part because of a deceptive answer. A manager might not hire you if you ask a question they dislike, but unless your question to my humble engineer self is something like “how few hours a week do you manage to get away with working?” or “I hate computers, do you frequently work with computers?”, I don’t even know how I’d give you a thumbs-down without sounding disingenuous in the post-interview feedback meeting. So much interviewing advice is bullshit, but it’s 100% true that asking good questions at the end is the ideal point to get the most accurate picture of what your job experience is going to be like. Just like my interview questions are in-part trying to gauge what it’s going to be like working with you.
knallfrosch 2y ago
Also because there's no incentive to lie.
- xpe 2y ago
  People will indeed sometimes lie or spin for various reasons. There doesn’t necessarily have to be an external incentive. Sometimes internal factors are enough; e.g. to reduce cognitive dissonance. They will sometimes lie to themselves and they will sometimes lie to other people. The world is complicated.

emrah 2y ago

You are talking to humans. If there is dysfunction at the company, they are not going to let you discover it directly by asking questions. I'm thinking back to all the places I worked at, unless the interviewers were being completely honest, there was no way to figure out the actual culture by asking questions.

frugal10 2y ago

In many organizations, I've observed disparities between different business units (BUs), where some maintain high hiring standards and strong cultural values, while others may struggle with talent gaps or cultural misalignment, often due to factors like poor acquisitions or leadership gaps. What specific questions should I ask about the company, the role, or the team to ensure I avoid landing in a BU with such disparities?

at_a_remove 2y ago

I despair thinking about this. I long for a world where I could be upfront about my strengths and weaknesses, then receive honest answers in turn, such that a great fit could at least be on the horizon. Instead, everything is saturated with game theory, HR weirdness, and the pettiest of politics. I'd like to be somewhere that I work I can best do is what is actually needed, and that need is recognized.

dzonga 2y ago

being opinionated is now a dangerous game. but those questions in the article don't make sense. your interviewers, go through interview training and are coached into giving politically correct answers. just like you BS some answers in your interview, companies do the same as well. no interviewer, is going to be like - this place sucks - we're slow moving, we're led by leaders without vision, there's a lot of internal politics. everyone will tell you - this is the best place they have worked etc. the reasonable answer to work life balance is to ask how long they have worked there - usually places with better work life balance for people that have families - not solos like us - tend to have good work life balance - and people have long tenures. YMMV. best place I worked - before the usual tech grilling - I had an hour lunch with the team and the rest of the company. they got to know me, made me comfortable and I got to know them as well.

toast0 2y ago
> just like you BS some answers in your interview, companies do the same as well. Yeah, and just like they sniff out your BS, you need to sniff out theirs. Ask for details and see if they check out. You usually don't have a lot of time for detailed questioning with each interviewer though. You should get a lot of time with the manager or lead, but use your other time well; don't ask everyone the same questions unless you expect different answers. It also helps to figure out what you actually want from an employer. A lot of these articles are written from a perspective that there are specific things everyone should want and must verify, but terrible environments for some can be great for others. Of course, late and missing paychecks is terrible for all.
BeetleB 2y ago
> your interviewers, go through interview training and are coached into giving politically correct answers. Very few companies have a standardized interview process where interviewers get training. Less than 10% easily. My Fortune 500 company doesn't have it. Perhaps the managers get such training but the majority of interview sessions are not with managers.
astrobe_ 2y ago
> being opinionated is now a dangerous game. Where were you during the Inquisition, I wonder.

erikerikson 2y ago

This seems to encourage conflation of the interviewer and their personality with the company culture. I have been an open, collaborative person in a cagey, secretive company. Thinking that place was similar would be an error.

teeray 2y ago

The trouble with “interview the interviewer” is that you typically have, best case, 10 minutes left over to ask your perfunctory “any questions for me?” Just enough time for you to scratch the surface. If you throw hardballs, the interview will run out of time before you can throw many of them.

RangerScience 2y ago
I've asked for and received more time during the interview process to ask these kinds of questions, so you can just do that. If they say "no", that's a pretty strong signal itself.
twoodfin 2y ago
As someone who’s been an interviewer approximately 50X more often than I’ve been interviewed, I have come to love the “any questions for me?” part of the interview. I have progressively reserved more and more time for it, particularly for candidates who are already making a strong impression. And for candidates who are otherwise hard to read or on the boundary, it’s been a great opportunity for clarifying discussion. Would strongly recommend leaving 30-50% of the interview for candidate-driven topics.
- athenot 2y ago
  Same. I want candidates to ask me questions. If they don't, I prompt them. If they still don't have any questions, that usually counts against them. Of course, that's because I cultivate teams where I want people to think for themselves, even if that means dissent or arguing with me. I'm not trying to hire a bunch of "yes people" who just make me feel good. And I'm aware that it takes a lot of courage to ask questions or challenge an interviewer, but that's a similar trait that I'm after in the roles I'm usually filling.
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    At 44 years old and with 22.5 years of experience I will now go to the corner weeping that I have met maximum 3 people like you in my entire life. You people apparently don't dwell in Eastern Europe or even most of Europe (I have been around). It's a meat grinder here.

viraptor 2y ago

I actually collect those types of questions here if you want more ideas (with translations) https://github.com/viraptor/reverse-interview https://github.com/viraptor/reverse-interview

pdimitar 2y ago
Thank you, I have made use of parts of your questionnaires two times in the last few years. Bravo for collecting the questions and curating them. They do help.

rubayeet 2y ago

The author of the article assumes too much on the interviewers’ ability to deeply reflect on open ended questions, and clearly articulate the response (in a short period of time, because tables are turned when there is only few minutes left on the clock). As a tangent, when I am interviewing someone, I try to find additional signals about the candidates communication skills / behavioural traits as well as their motivation in seeking the role. Candidate: “how is this role going to change in X years?” Me (internally): This person is likely growth oriented, and their growth may have stalled at their current role. Candidate: “How is the on-call load?” Me: This person may be burning out and looking for a place with some stability. Of course, these are only assumptions and I try to be self-aware not to be biased in my decision by them.

btilly 2y ago
The author also assumes too much of the interviewer's honesty. A vague question can easily get a misleading response. Tell me about the last 3 people to leave the company. That will reveal volumes about the company culture. And often they are volumes that the interviewer didn't want to reveal.
- soared 2y ago
  I can’t imagine anyone would actually answer that question, seems inappropriate to even ask
  - joezydeco 2y ago
    If I'm interviewing someone and I call their old HR for a reference, they will never say anything other than employment dates to avoid lawsuits. This tracks along the same lines. I can't imagine actually getting a response to this.
- hiatus 2y ago
  Has this worked for you? Employee separation is a personnel issue so I would be surprised if any company would elaborate on that.

Cupertino95014 2y ago

The thing to always remember is: the way they treat you at the interview is the best they will EVER treat you. Do they ask if you need water, coffee, etc.? Do they give you time to use the bathroom? Do they keep you waiting excessively? Do they listen to your answers and look you in the eye, or do they keep staring at the resume as if they've never seen it before? What they say is certainly interesting, but what they do is more so.

joezydeco 2y ago
I always ask to use the bathroom. I was in one office where the CEO had pictures all over his office of his collection of race cars, but the bathroom hadn't seen a coat of paint in 20 years. Massive red flag.
- Cupertino95014 2y ago
  I went to one little company where they had a unisex bathroom. This was not for gender equality -- it was because they had so few women that they didn't think it worthwhile to build a bathroom for them.
romanows 2y ago
Probably more telling for smaller companies. In bigger companies, there may be separate roles and organizations managing the interview process, and you might not interview with the exact people you work with.
- Cupertino95014 2y ago
  True, although in my experience a long time ago, IBM was so extraordinarily considerate that I almost went to work there! They even gave me cash at the end of the interview, so I didn't have to file an expense report (unlike every other place).

azangru 2y ago

> “How is your experience working at the company? Can you tell me about the company culture?” ... If the interviewer gives a vague answer, dig deeper: “Can you give me an example of how the company culture manifests in day-to-day work?” This can help you move past generalities and get a better sense of what life is really like at the company. If you are interested in what life is really like at a company, why use vague abstract concepts such as "culture"? Especially if the company has multiple engineering teams, and you are interviewing for one of them, it is quite possible that the "culture" differs from one team to the other. Why not ask something like "how does the team communicate on a daily basis?", "do you use practices x, y, or z?", "what do you expect from a new hire on this position?", "what are your most important values in the area of tech for which you are hiring?"

la64710 2y ago

This whole model of interview is biased towards communication skills and that gets reflected in the culture of every damn company where no matter what you do it is important to be able to “talk”. Talk not in the sense of being objective but talk in the sense of being subjective , being able to influence , be liked etc etc.. it’s all understanble after all we are human too but it’s difficult for kids who grew up in the 80s and were fed with more neutral merit based and objective outlook of life.

rmbyrro 2y ago
Aren't you pointing out how the average human is? I mean, we are a heavily communicative species. The most of all species by a very, very large margin...
- la64710 2y ago
  True and that is why the Tower of Babel was built and remove objectivity.
dasil003 2y ago
I grew up in the 80s too, and I hope by this age one would not be tethered to naive interpretations of whatever values were pitched to them as a child. I’m not the greatest natural communicator, and I didn’t get into software to work with people, but I have come to the conclusion that there just aren’t very many roles for senior software engineers that don’t require solid communication efforts to be successful. It’s not about subjective vs objective, it’s just that most paid software positions are about solving a problem for other humans, and it’s hard to get it right if you aren’t well practiced in both listening and discussing their needs interactively. The user will never understand the reasoning for the technical choices, so the empathy must flow the other way.
- la64710 2y ago
  Listening I understand , but enjoying the privilege of talking freely (which only a certain type of people have) and thereby becoming the thought leaders of an organization and determining what everyone should like and what they should not - I think is what does a disservice to the organization in the long run but the interviews and internal mechanisms are biased towards such people.

aflukasz 2y ago

I will share one data point that just popped to my mind, maybe it will be useful to someone. About 10 years ago, my colleague and I were interviewing a guy for SWE role. He wanted to learn about presence of pressure, difficult deadlines and overtime. But for that he didn't ask about company culture, values, how our day to day looked like etc. He just clearly stated, that he does not want to work long hours, just 9-5, that it would make him unhappy otherwise and asked can we give him that. While also emphasizing that he understands this may not be possible and he does not feel entitled, it's just that he knows himself well and it's very important to him. We confirmed that he could get what he wished for (we were in a position to do it), and thanked him for being open about it. He landed the job, and when I've seen him some time later, he looked satisfied, so I believe that the organization delivered on its promise. I wish all of us such fruitful interviews.

andoando 2y ago
This is what Ive been doing with comp as well. I am making x, I wouldn't be happy with less than x, or I like my role and I wouldnt move unless I get y. Recruiters will usually be pretty open back and it saves a lot of time on both sides.
- abid786 2y ago
  Except that if you’re an exceptional candidate you might get uplevelled or they might find money in the budget for you that didn’t previously exist for the role (more so if it’s a small company) By asking these questions up front you might weed yourself out even though the role might have been a good match.
  - oblio 2y ago
    In my experience those are unlikely events and you save a ton of time by asking directly. Especially if you make X and they reply with X - 20% (or worse).
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    Meh, that happens super rarely. Most people are never the perfect match, and the people who land on their supposed perfect role and not care about money are way too young to be that valuable for the company anyway. Plus we don't work for glory and smiles. A while ago I always made it clear during interviews that I don't enjoy the money negotiations -- of course, that has been used against me so I learned to keep my wits about myself, and nowadays I am like "sure we like each other but I still would not work if I had my needs covered so what are you paying?" (obviously not asked in that form, of course).

Ahmed_rza 2y ago

Love this

JoeCianflone 2y ago

Something I’ve asked in the past: “what is the one thing that the person hired into this role, if they did that, at the end of the year you’d say that was a great hire” seems to always catch people off guard and I’ve gotten answers that were almost wildly out of scope for the job responsibilities. When that happens it’s interesting to see their response when you point that out. Also huge red flag means the person interviewing you had no idea what they’re interviewing you for or everyone has a different idea what this role does. I ask this to everyone at every round.

hinkley 2y ago
What are you hoping the person you hire will be able to help you with? What are your expectations for this role?
pdimitar 2y ago
Definitely my new favorite comment, thank you. I have asked several more indirect variations of that same questions but you boiled it down to an exact phrase and I am memorizing it.

spacecadet 2y ago

Specific questions aside. I have for many years approached interviews in the mindset that, I am interviewing them, and this has worked out much better for me. Of course this is amplified by doing research and preparing specific questions to produce a more truthful image of the business and culture. However, people are generally trained to weed out "non-culture fits" and close on "unicorns", so nothing said in an interview should be taken as reality.

massung 2y ago

Assuming a multi-person interview process, where who you are interviewing with slowly goes up the ladder, one question I always ask (of each person) is: - If you could snap your fingers and change/improve one thing at the company, what would it be. The responses could be technical, cultural, about management, communication, etc. But this question has never let me down. If I a random distribution of different things, I know that - like any company - there's always going to be different things that people don't like (and that I won't like either). And I'm just asking myself if any of these are not a good fit for my personality. However, if I notice multiple people all identifying the same one or two items, then the higher I get in the food-chain of interviews, I might pivot the question, calling it out: - I've heard multiple times now $PROBLEM, what would it take to address it? The best answers come from mid-level management. They'll usually be very frank about any cultural issues that prevent the problem be solved, but are aware of it. Regardless, the higher up I get, this one question usually has me knowing whether or not this is a place (culturally) that I want to be at.

codazoda 2y ago

abhas9, I’d love to chat. I’m interested in your experience with the Neat CSS framework (this is the first time I’ve come across it organically). I’m also curious about the testing you’re doing. My email address is in my profile if you see this.

electrondood 2y ago

I just ask each person I interview with: * "how's your work life balance?" * "how often do you work outside hours? Is there an always-on culture?" * "when is crunch time and what does that look like?" * "what's your least favorite thing about working here?" And then I watch their microexpressions. If multiple interviewers have the same reaction, there's your answer.

patrickmay 2y ago

When I'm in the hot seat I use a variant of a set of questions I ask SWEs when I'm the interviewer. Those are "What's your favorite programming language? What do you like best about it? What would you change about it if you could?" As an interviewee they become "What do you like best about working here?" and "What would you change if you could?"

melody_calling 2y ago

I don’t think I’ve ever had a single interview that left more than about 60 seconds for candidate questions. Maybe you can tease some of this stuff out with the “hiring manager chat” as that tends to be less formal, but in panels? What level/grade are folks generally talking about here? Or is this a difference between applying for a role vs. being hunted for it?

bigstrat2003 2y ago
If you aren't being given time to ask questions during an interview (within reason of course, like 5-10 minutes) you need to go elsewhere. I've never had a job interview (on either side of it) where the candidate didn't have plenty of time to ask questions.
- hinkley 2y ago
  I’ve had places where I pointed out we’d mostly solved the problem and do you want me to keep going or allow time for other questions, they’ve always picked keep going and I’ve always checked out at this point. I’m not going to work for you based on the negligible amount of information I’ve gotten out of you so far. I’m still workshopping more assertive ways to just say this. We are wasting our time here folks.
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    Not sure I get your comment. What does "we'd mostly solved the problem" mean during interview? And what does "keep going" refer to?
ibash 2y ago
That’s odd. Most interviews I’ve had, on both sides of the table, had basically an indefinite amount of time for questions.
- pdimitar 2y ago
  Maybe they are mentioning the first interview which is almost always with a clueless HR.

mmooss 2y ago

The best advice IME is the old advice, 'when someone shows you who they are, believe them.' It applies to the organization. If the receptionist and the person you meet are cold and disdainful, that's the culture. If they are compassionate and creative, that's the culture - that's the CEO, even. Unless it's a special event, people are too busy, stressed, and weary to constantly conceal who they are, and they are usually not self-aware enough and too jaded to see themselves with any perspective. Even the professional con artists (which includes many business leaders these days) are obvious cons; even if you don't know the truth they hide, they are transparent about it - like someone playing Three Card Monte, you know they're a con and it's a trick, even if you can't figure out where the card is. Brazenness almost a point of pride for them, so believe them! And you are doing it too; don't forget that. :)

stevezsa8 2y ago

I once interviewed at the London office of a US based company. The best part was when they took me to lunch... I asked the young American what he was going to do on the long holiday weekend. He said they have to work. Lol. No thanks!

intelVISA 2y ago

Ratio of 'dev adjacent' to devs on the team is a good one.

roeles 2y ago

As a candidate, I was asked once "tell me something about yourself that I can't read on your cv". I could not help but tell what was on my mind outside work. I have used this question for candidates as well. I received responses about hobbies, families, quirky preferences... It's a great way to get to know someone personally. I imagine it works well for getting to know future team members and bosses too.

langsoul-com 2y ago

Unless desperate. It's always better to aim for a good fit company. Otherwise things will fall apart and so much work is required for resumes and interviews again.