[HN Gopher] Job interview questions engineers should ask, but don't
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Job interview questions engineers should ask, but don't
Author : james_impliu
Score : 443 points
Date : 2022-06-28 12:45 UTC (10 hours ago)
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| docflabby wrote:
| My favorite question is:
|
| "Describe what a typical day would look like?"
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Ask to have a coffee-chat / demo session with an engineer on
| the target team. You have decent odds you'll get someone senior
| who doesn't do all the interviews, so it will be much closer to
| the true day-to-day. You'll also get far more honest answers to
| things like on-call, support, performance reviews and other
| less-enjoyable aspects (even if it's by lack of omission, like
| they can only spare 15 minutes before their next meeting)
| donatj wrote:
| The most important to me, no joke, "Is there free coffee?"
|
| It's such a simple, easy and cheap morale and productivity
| booster to give your employees. If there isn't free coffee, it's
| not a place you want to work because they're skimping on _their
| employees_.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| As someone who struggled to give up caffeine, as well as a
| handful of other highly addictive substances, I eye the coffee
| pot with a much more critical eye. Its been my experience that
| caffeine makes most people jittery, impulsive, sometimes
| frantic in their never-ending frenetic movements in the pursuit
| of "getting things done".
|
| I've watched as promising young kids took up the addiction to
| make their deadlines and end up wired, tired, and burnt out.
| I've watched fights erupt recently at the drive-through line at
| Starbucks near my home. It reminds me of my time as a cocaine
| user, and the way people would fight to get their fix.
|
| I've read that coffee was the fuel that sparked the
| colonization of the western hemisphere. I've read that when the
| industrial revolution kicked off, the coffee break was invented
| to keep workers working.
|
| So these days, when I hear free coffee, I also hear the
| metaphorical cracking of the 1%'s whip at the back of the
| workforce. I prioritize my health over my work output. I
| prioritize rest over frantic action.
|
| Hyperbolic? Absolutely. Stimulant addiction is a real thing. I
| wonder what human society would look like without it. But I
| know for certain that removing caffeine from my life has made
| me happier, healthier, and more able over-all.
|
| Try it -- you might like it!
| CoffeeOnWrite wrote:
| Love this but let's go deeper here. "Tell me about the coffee
| situation.. what coffee do the team members that drink coffee
| drink day to day, and where does it come from?"
|
| As a consultant once on a due diligence gig at a medium-sized
| quasi-tech company in the Midwest, on the day I arrived, one
| smart and charming QA engineer took me aside and shared "the
| free coffee in the micro kitchens is crap, here's our
| [employee-provided] coffee pot on a filing cabinet in the
| corner, please drink as much as you want". That told me, among
| other things, this was a decent team in a mediocre company..
| woodrowbarlow wrote:
| this is reminiscent of a recent post on Raymond Chen's blog.
|
| https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220426-00/?p=10.
| ..
|
| (spoilers:) during a collab between Microsoft and IBM,
| Microsoft engineers were frustrated with the coffee at IBM's
| offices. IBM refused to let them set up their own coffee pot,
| but IBM was not allowed to look at anything marked
| "confidential". so they put a cardboard box over the coffee
| pot and wrote "confidential" on the side.
| CoffeeOnWrite wrote:
| Heh, we brewed desktop kombucha under a cardboard box at my
| big tech co. Facilities staff were very kind to us when it
| exploded during the Covid lockdowns..
| donatj wrote:
| It didn't happen to be a midwestern book company with a
| digital department? Because that sounds a lot like a place I
| used to work.
| Swizec wrote:
| What about remote first companies? Would you expect those to
| provide free coffee too?
| donatj wrote:
| Nah, I wish though.
| matwood wrote:
| No, but things like internet and/or cell phone stipends are
| in the same vain. Same with small yearly stipends to buy
| office equipment like a chair or desk. Relatively cheap ways
| for a company to show they care about an employee.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| I wish my remote job would give me $1000 to spend on an at-home
| coffee station. Even though I earn very well, I can't justify
| spending that much on coffee out of pocket. But it would be an
| even better morale and productivity boost than a raise.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| During college, I interned and then contracted with a research
| division of an automotive company in Ann Arbor. To be clear, it
| was a great opportunity and I had a ton of fun. During the
| automotive downturn in 2008 or so, the company stopped stocking
| up free coffee and tea, and put in pay-per-cup machines. My
| small lab happened to be in an otherwise abandoned floor, and
| there was enough stock in our nearest micro kitchen for us to
| continue to drink free tea for years.
|
| Also during college, I travelled to Australia multiple times to
| race solar cars. We went as a "race crew", and while I was
| there to do embedded electronics, there were team members
| responsible for providing meals to the rest of the crew. They
| would unnecessarily pinch pennies, and buy the absolute lowest
| quality bulk anything. It was so bad that I would try to go
| shopping with them, and offer to pay the $1-2 out of my own
| pocket to get the lunch meat that wasn't gray, or cheese that
| wasn't plastic. During the race, someone brought a seasoning
| salt shaker in my support vehicle to pass around, and it was a
| massive morale boost! I also started a "beverage club," where
| folk could contribute to a pool to buy liter bottles of soda
| when they got sick of warm tap water.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| One company I worked for had an employee's only "coffee shop"
| because they claimed that they wanted only _good_ coffee. They
| charged Starbucks style prices, but if you brought a company
| mug (and when you were hired you were given exactly one, but
| you could buy more at retail costs) you could get black coffee
| for "only" $1.
|
| It doesn't matter how good your beans are or how far they are
| driven in if you are still just making industrial sized carafes
| of black coffee. The "mandatory" company mug becomes a symbol
| of control (among others; the company had some strict rules
| about desk adornments). The "coffee shop" mentality creates the
| cashier flow and long lines of an actual coffee shop, with the
| even more awkwardness that any conversations are in full view
| of your bosses (all the way up the chain) because they chose to
| subject themselves to this too "for good beans" every morning.
|
| I learned a lot from that job, including how often what people
| say they want ("quality") is a mask for what they really want
| ("control"). I'm not sure I'd ever again choose to work for a
| company where making coffee at home and bringing it in the
| travel mug of your choosing was a small daily act of rebellion.
| TimPC wrote:
| Of course a start-up is asking you to ask the questions that lead
| you to a rose-coloured view of their equity. Most start-ups fail
| and most that do exit make small gains after investment capital.
| It's possible to get rich by betting on the right unicorn but for
| the most part you should assume you will get minimal value from
| your equity and only accept a job offer if it's attractive enough
| if the equity goes to zero.
|
| Publicly traded companies on the other hand general have equity
| that somewhat reliably converts to cash. Don't take roles where
| so much of your compensation is equity that you have substantial
| market risk but do expect to get some actual cash from this type
| of compensation. This disparity makes publicly traded companies
| more attractive as the chances of you getting $400k when you want
| it from $200k of salary and $200k of equity is far higher.
|
| Start-ups are attractive if they give you additional
| responsibilities at an early stage of your career or otherwise
| improve your career trajectory. They are usually bad choices for
| senior people interested in optimizing earnings.
| mibzman wrote:
| I don't ask challenging questions in interviews because I know I
| won't get hired if I ask them.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Can you elaborate on this belief? It hasn't been my experience
| at all. I love to ask difficult questions in interviews.
|
| Anecdotally, I once confronted a director about negative
| Glassdoor reviews which claimed the company's CEO was a serial
| abuser of employees. I did so in a friendly/appropriately
| phrased way, so it didn't come across like confrontation, but
| that's what it was. Not only did I still get an offer, but they
| tried to hire me _again_ several months later.
|
| A company that got mad at me for asking reasonable questions
| about it in an interview isn't one I'd want to work for.
| snapetom wrote:
| I always ask about the sales team - How many are there, how many
| years experience does the manager have in this sector, what's the
| experience of account execs, do they use BDRs, are they meeting
| sales goals.
|
| Then, further, how does the sales team interact with engineering.
| How does customer feedback come back to engineering features, who
| demos, etc.
|
| It doesn't matter if the engineering is top notch and there's no
| one to sell it. To me, if a company is past series A and the
| number of engineers is more than the number of sales employees,
| that's a warning sign.
| hpcjoe wrote:
| These are good questions. And they can elicit some surprising
| signals from the company. One place that expressed significant
| interest in me for a senior leadership position, changed their
| mind rapidly when I asked about a number of these (early stage
| startup, so I was more focused on runway, buy in, etc.)
|
| The strong signal is that a company not willing to share this
| information, is probably not going to behave well under stress.
| You can evaluate your risk factors on your own, and decide
| whether or not you can tolerate that level. But this signal is a
| strong caveat to taking an offer from them.
| mateo411 wrote:
| My default question is to ask the interview "If there is one
| thing you could change about the company, what would it be?"
|
| It gives you an idea about the pain points that person's role and
| gives you insight into what the company needs to improve.
| Barrera wrote:
| A lot of this can be simplified to three questions:
|
| 1. What problem is your company solving?
|
| If you don't get an answer, beware. If the answer sounds vague,
| beware. If the answer makes no sense, beware. If the answer is
| multifaceted, beware. This suggests that the company will not
| even begin the process of becoming profitable.
|
| 2. Who has this problem?
|
| You should get a clear picture of an actual person. If not,
| beware. If that person has no money, beware. If that person has
| no pull within an organization, beware. If that person is high
| maintenance or fickle, beware. This suggests that the company
| will never find the revenue they seek.
|
| 3. What's your solution?
|
| If the solution doesn't actually address the problem, beware. If
| the solution is too expensive for the customer, beware. If the
| solution can't be differentiated from its competitors, beware. If
| the solution has no competitors, beware. If there are a dozen
| solutions, beware. This suggests that no matter how amazing the
| technology or technical team, the company will not be able to
| execute on its business plan.
| sjtgraham wrote:
| As a founder I can tell you that candidates who enter the
| interview process with their own good ideas for answers to
| these questions are lot more attractive, i.e. anyone that has
| done even a modicum of their own research stands head and
| shoulders above their peers.
|
| At the end of the day, if you don't know these basic things
| about a company, why have you applied for a job there?
| the_arun wrote:
| Unfortunately LeetCode problems stop those creative engineers
| early in the process.
| switchbak wrote:
| You're asking candidates to answer questions like "What
| problem is your company solving?". Maybe I'm misreading your
| comment, but if the founder is looking to hires to answer
| these questions, that sounds very concerning, and probably a
| place I'd avoid.
|
| Enthusiasm is great, but the founders/current employees
| should have an understanding that far outstrips anything an
| outsider can provide (unless you're dealing with someone who
| already has deep knowledge of a well known domain, which is a
| bit of a different angle).
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I may be mistaken, but I think you misunderstood the
| comment.
|
| The questions are meant to be asked by the job candidate,
| not by the employer.
| switchbak wrote:
| "candidates who enter the interview process with their
| own good ideas for answers to these questions".
| "Candidates ... their own good ideas for answers". Yes:
| the candidate asks these questions, but the commenter
| seemed to suggest that they also want candidates who have
| good answers ready for those questions.
|
| That seems like a bit of a funny thing to expect from a
| candidate who doesn't necessarily know the domain, and
| certainly wouldn't be an authority on the company.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Ah, got it. I interpreted that as meaning that a
| candidate who _did_ have such answers would really stand
| out.
|
| I.e., those aren't considered basic qualifications for
| the job, but are awesome if a candidate is actually like
| that.
| avereveard wrote:
| In today market chances are that the candidate was cold
| called
| zdragnar wrote:
| To be fair, these answers aren't always obvious when looking
| into a startup company, especially in the early stages. I'm
| not even sure many companies actually have firm answers to
| all of these. The founders may have lofty ideas, but often
| they aren't very public about them to avoid tipping their
| hand.
|
| My two most recent jobs I was reached out to by a recruiter
| who could describe the general market the company is in but
| actually getting into detail and nuance required speaking
| with someone at the company.
|
| OTOH well establish startups and businesses almost always
| have the answers to these questions front and center on their
| website. Some basic due diligence on a candidate's part is
| always welcome.
| projectazorian wrote:
| These days it's usually the case that the company came to me,
| rather than me applying to them. I'll do full research before
| the final round but for an initial intro? I'll glance at your
| website, otherwise I'm there to hear your story and decide if
| I want to take the time to learn more. Lately early stage
| companies seem to expect you to have a fully formed
| motivation to work there before the first conversation which
| is just not the way this works, sorry.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I feel like most startups I've talked to in the past couple
| years realize this. They are surprised if I know anything
| about them at all during the initial convo
| charlie0 wrote:
| It's for the same reason your recruiters or engineering
| managers only take a 10 second glance at a resume and never
| look at the side projects in Github profiles for their
| potential candidates; ain't nobody got time for that.
| Shugarl wrote:
| > At the end of the day, if you don't know these basic things
| about a company, why have you applied for a job there?
|
| Because I need money, and you might be the 3XXth company I've
| applied to. Job hunting when there's something unappealing
| about yourself can be quite a pain, but rent is still due at
| the end of the month.
| bcrl wrote:
| If you're applying to 300+ companies, something is wrong.
| When I've gone looking for work I've talked to maybe 5-10
| companies at most. Specialization and a good network of
| contacts makes all the difference.
| mpweiher wrote:
| > why have you applied for a job there
|
| Because the company head-hunted me?
| [deleted]
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I guess all fine questions if you apply for unknown startup
| position. In any serious company, first would give you a big
| fat warning for ignorance of not preparing for interview at all
| and checking company. Normally that's 5 mins effort max.
|
| Second would mark you as clueless about whole business segment
| company operates is, and then why hire clearly inexperienced
| you, unless asking for intern/junior position.
|
| Third is fine in any environment I guess, but can be weird in
| say banking.
|
| What happened about asking about team, job, workflow,
| methodologies and tools, management structure, office
| structure, WFH and so on?
| xwdv wrote:
| By the time you get to the interview the answers to these
| questions should be obvious if not then you're probably just
| shopping around for jobs at whatever company comes your way.
| foobiekr wrote:
| I like these questions a lot. Nicely done.
|
| The set I use is below, with explanations. Note that this is
| entirely a b2b list. I don't think there is a meaningful list
| one can ask for consumer startups, since in my view the
| consumer space is purely the domain of the ycombinator "throw
| it at the wall and then double down on what sitcks" - there is
| no engineering, marketing, etc. that you can apply to a b2c
| startup that isn't working and I don't think you can ask
| anything other than "how fast are you growing?" for consumer
| stuff.
|
| For everything else, though ...
|
| 1. What is the critical problem on the customer side? How
| intense is the problem?
|
| The company should be able to explain one or two very crisp,
| very clear customer-side issues. This goes beyond "what problem
| are you solving" because solving problems aren't enough to get
| a buyer to take action. Diffuse or "nice to have" problems
| means you never have a champion or buyer who will simply say
| "take my money" and most likely the reason for the
| diffuse/dull/etc. issues are behavioral or structural and that
| no one will actually pay to solve them.
|
| I cannot emphasize enough that PLANS TO ADDRESS STRUCTURAL
| ISSUES AT CUSTOMERS ARE ACTUALLY THE LINES IN A STARTUP SUICIDE
| NOTE.
|
| The other thing you see a lot is that people try and shore up
| crap businesses by throwing a lot of things in the solution to
| address a lot of problems at once with the idea that the sum is
| more valuable than its parts - that is a body shop mentality,
| not a good startup position. Startups should have something
| that they address that people want to buy, not be the business
| equivalent of a "52-in-1" Atari cartridge. A collection of
| dull, diffuse issues means the solution will usually not have
| buyer priority. Worse is purely hypothetical """problem"""
| where product is just a vitamin or insurance = no buyer outside
| of compliance, which is super low margin and low urgency (lots
| of security plays have this, or worse, fail to recognize it).
| Let garbage vendor-integrators like IBM or Cisco weakly
| assemble an array of crap, low-margin products into a
| "solution", that is not a good startup business.
|
| 2. What is the solution? What does the solution directly and
| completely solve in terms of the critical problem? Why now? Is
| the solution a necessary part of other changes or is it in and
| of itself sufficient to have day one+ value without big changes
| on the customer side?
|
| Another issue you see a lot is that the solution only works if
| the customers make other changes that would also partially
| alleviate the problem, and so the solution is actually part of
| a collection of important customer-side changes that are going
| to be impossible to get done in a repeatable way. The solution
| has to deliver value without large changes on the part of the
| customer, especially changes that would have helped alleviate
| pain _already_ since there's an obvious issue there that the
| solution startup is missing. Customer-side-changes also means
| sales repeatability will be very poor which is a death sentence
| for startups.
|
| 5. What is the customer type? Who is the buyer? What existing
| budget are you redirecting if any?
|
| This is another issue that shows up a lot: businesses are
| broken into groups of functions with independent owners. If the
| startup's business spans multiple business areas and multiple
| business owners are going to need to cooperate (not just agree,
| but they have different timing, different priorities, and so
| on) that is a big problem.
|
| If buying the solution has to come from multuple discrete
| budget line items, that is a big problem because that implies
| trying to coordinate what is effectively a sale to each of
| them, with different trade-offs and different priorities and
| timeframes, and then conclude the real sale after all of that.
| This is a serious momentum and timing problem because it's hard
| enough to rendevous with need-and-now customer side without
| having multiple gates.
|
| If _both_ are required, that's a death sentence.
|
| 3. What is the value of solving the problem?
|
| ... And the actual cash on the table value of solving the
| problem is critical. Even if you have a very real problem, and
| even if that problem has acute frustration/pain/etc. on the
| customer side, it doesn't matter to a startup. There are,
| unfortunately, lots of real problems, even critical ones, that
| customers view (and can perhaps justify with a pure $ argument)
| as not being high value. No value = no margin. You need to be
| reducing CAPEX, OPEX, increase efficiency, increase user
| experience (and be very, very careful of this one because a lot
| of people kid themselves), etc.
|
| 6. What megatrends are in favor of this solution?
|
| Also known as, "how much education are you going to have to
| do?"
|
| Also, you have to ask yourself, "are mega trends independently
| solving the problem in a different way? are megatrends sucking
| the oxygen out of the room in terms of buyer attention?" Lots
| of businesses have "transformation" plans dictated by
| executives that intend to solve (or not) some business problem
| for purposes of their brand, and most of the time these are
| actually just trends at the CIO level, and they may not even be
| aligned with real pain points. These can sink you if the trend
| is against you.
|
| 7. Who is the team? Why is this team the right one? Why are
| they the ones to deliver a technical solution?
|
| (self explanatory - they need experience)
|
| 8. What is the GTM/sales motion to get to the person in the
| customer most impacted by the critical problem?
|
| 9. What other business challenges are involved with the
| solution?
|
| 10. What is the demo? What is the sales talk track? Who is the
| buyer? What will be the objections of the operational team?
|
| 11. Who are the competitors? Which of them is good? How much
| traction are they seeing?
| coding123 wrote:
| I don't know WHAT problem my company is solving either but they
| are profitable.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| To some extent you have to help them answer one of these
| questions. One of these answers has to be flawed, and you fill
| it in, then they see you as a companion on their adventure.
| spikej wrote:
| Typically, the company expects you've done your homework before
| asking them these questions...
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| I expect recruiters and hiring managers to do their research
| too, but every time they reach out I'm still astounded how
| poorly they've done it. Then they still have the gall to
| expect you research them, which takes more than a light
| glance at their page written in a way to sell themselves.
|
| It's about time we push back on this. If they need employees
| so bad, how about they stop making demands which resemble
| being in a position of power?
| spookthesunset wrote:
| what is on the website and what is actually happening on the
| ground are two different things that may or may not match
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Many company websites and resources like to describe what
| they do with word salad bingo instead of getting to the
| point. At best you can know what market they are in.
|
| Even more so for startups who don't _really_ know what their
| solution is.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| If I was interviewing a candidate who asked me these questions
| it would be a pretty negative signal because it would tell me
| they had not even done cursory research before interviewing.
|
| I would prefer clarifying questions about the product or market
| showing they had done basic research but didn't grok
| everything, but there are no cookie-cutter questions for this.
|
| (startup role, but I'm not sure it matters)
| hawk_ wrote:
| Fair enough. How many startups/company websites clearly state
| what they are actually doing? The problem is particularly bad
| in B2B space where the descriptions are replete with
| buzzwords and don't convey anything more than "Lorem Ipsum"
| contravariant wrote:
| Eh that's easily parried by just asking how _you_ would
| answer those questions. It 's a pretty easy argument that the
| company seeking to hire someone should be able to answer
| these questions and that a direct answer will be more
| valuable than a statement on a webpage.
| Cheezewheel wrote:
| There is a huge difference between the sort of PR crap that
| companies post on websites and actually sitting down with a
| human being and have them explain it to you. "What problem is
| your company solving?" is pretty general, to be fair, but it
| would be a red flag for a startup that is selling a product
| but cannot articulate what _problem_ customers have that the
| product is solving. It is in fact a pretty central
| differentiator between startups that succeed and startups
| that fail.
|
| They are all good questions, but you would probably want to
| say more along the lines of "I understand that X is your
| companies product. Can you go into some more detail about
| what specific problems this product is solving for your
| customers?"
| foobiekr wrote:
| Exactly this. Good luck identifying the actual problem a
| startup addresses from their website. Most of the websites
| are deliberately diffuse for prospecting purposes.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| 1999: We are a distributed n-tier b2b and b2c e-commerce
| platform
|
| 2022: We use AI on the blockchain to change the world.
| jandrese wrote:
| It depends if you are hiring for HP or some startup that is
| still in stealth mode.
| roberthahn wrote:
| That would presume the cursory research turns up clear
| answers. Or that the answers the interviewers give will match
| the answers online.
|
| I have seen both presumptions invalidated enough not to think
| poorly of anyone asking and if the interviewer decides I'm
| wasting their time if I ask questions like this then it was
| never going to be a good fit.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| I'll do cursory research which makes me intrigued enough to
| apply and show up to the interview. I'll do my sales pitch of
| myself when you ask me questions about myself. Why is it a
| "negative signal" for me to expect a sales pitch about what
| you're selling here? I know some basic facts, I can read what
| your polished marketing blurb, but I want to hear you speak
| about your team and your product and your market like a
| human, from first principles. Too much to ask?
|
| (I'd probably have more specific clarifying questions as
| follow-ups to the open-ended ones. Judge me on those if you
| wish, though that's not why I'd be asking them.)
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I guess it's fine if the company doesn't ask the candidate
| any questions either, right? After all they have the resume
| to look at.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > 1. What problem is your company solving?
|
| I kinda agree, but this question should be resolvable by
| looking at the source material. The reason why "does your
| product have good market fit?" is so effective is that it
| forces the people to justify why, or why they don't have market
| fit.
|
| This gives you lots of chances to ask followups and figure out
| if they are hand waving, misinformed, know what they are doing,
| or just plain naive.
|
| The other two questions are very good, and well worth asking.
|
| The essence of all these questions is to figure out if they
| have put any thought into the business side(if they are a
| startup) or how well the business is doing, if they are more
| established. The crucial thing that often gets lost is that
| tech is there to fulfil a business function, not the other way
| around. Figuring out the business model helps you predict what
| _should_ be built later on.
| avereveard wrote:
| It's not about the marketing cooy itself, it's about knowing
| if the team is aligned with that.
| UkrainianJew wrote:
| Well, if you can properly formulate these questions,
| distinguish a good answer from a bad one, AND know how to write
| code, you should be talking to investors (or prospective
| customers) rather than applying for coding jobs.
| anotheracctfo wrote:
| I disagreed at first read, but you're right. These questions
| are geared for tech interviews in a startup environment,
| which assumes the candidate can take on risk. So why not grab
| for the brass ring?
|
| If you want a regular no-risk paycheque then check out
| government jobs. Runway? Oh yeah we've been collecting taxes
| for centuries. Product-market fit? Yeah, we have these big
| guys with badges and guns who will come to your house if you
| "don't fit." We pay an absolute pittance compared to private,
| but your job will be there your entire working life.
| celim307 wrote:
| Just cause you wanna work in startups doesn't mean you
| don't want to any filtering lol
| wowokay wrote:
| I think the point they were making was it's risky to join
| a startup, and it doesn't seem like that much more of a
| risk to start a startup if you have the stomach for risk
| already.
| wowokay wrote:
| There are tons of engineering jobs that are not startup
| risky or government boring.
|
| You can be an engineer in retail, medical, insurance,
| finance, etc. there are tons of stable engineering jobs
| working for companies that don't deliver a digital service
| or physical product.
| mmmpop wrote:
| Couldn't agree with this more, sadly the other missing piece
| is the personality required to do that. When added to the
| other three traits that are already uncommon to find in one
| person, you're talking about a very unique individual.
| UkrainianJew wrote:
| Well, then as patronizing as it may sound, if you are
| looking for regular developer job, you should care more
| about the technology stack (as it affects your resell value
| for the next job), what big features the company recently
| delivered (to see whether you'll be stuck doing soulless
| maintenance) the cash part of your salary (since you don't
| really control the value of that equity), the amount of
| work hours per week, and how much of an asshole your boss
| is going to be.
| strangegecko wrote:
| I don't understand how that follows. It would seem that
| "having a good answer to these questions" is the key, not
| knowing how to ask the question?
| randmeerkat wrote:
| You also need to have a product idea... That's actually the
| hardest part.
| packetlost wrote:
| This makes me wish I lived in a tech hub so I could have some
| semblance of an idea of what the market wants. The Midwest
| _sucks_ for tech work. Maybe I should be reading TechCrunch
| more often lol
| dangerlibrary wrote:
| I see this sentiment all the time, and it is so backwards.
| Startups in tech hubs tend to solve problems that people in
| tech hubs have.
|
| "I'm rich and lazy, I want someone to deliver me food from
| my favorite restaurant and I don't care if it costs 2-3x as
| much and takes 90 minutes."
|
| "I need some place to put my piles of IPO money that might
| appreciate because returns are down elsewhere, and also I
| think securities laws are confusing and bad."
|
| These startups attract a lot of venture money because
| investors in tech hubs have similar problems and so they
| are attracted to them.
|
| But they are fundamentally not productive. They are market
| makers or middlemen or financial products. There is a much
| lower ceiling on what people will ever be willing to pay
| for these kind of things relative to, say, some novel
| industrial software that gets purchased by multi-billion
| dollar companies. Those industrial companies are tech
| companies, make no mistake, and they are almost universally
| not headquartered in SF or NYC. There's also a much higher
| ceiling on the potential market because your customers are
| actually making things.
| peppertree wrote:
| That's a pretty narrow definition of what's productive.
| Information is capital. Being able to link up a customer
| with an on-demand driver adds a lot of value into the
| system.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| You're right that middlemen are productive in the
| generality.
|
| But
|
| > Being able to link up a customer with an on-demand
| driver adds a lot of value into the system.
|
| This is only true if the driver's rates are something the
| customer is willing to pay. Finding _that_ match is the
| primary job of a middleman; a lot of American services
| matching this basic description gloss over that part of
| the match entirely.
| packetlost wrote:
| I think it depends on the problem space you're interested
| in solving. I'm interested in databases and data tooling,
| of which a very sizeable chunk of the users for that are
| in SV.
| j245 wrote:
| Disagree - for many people, rolling the dice is too risky.
|
| If you have something nice to fall back on (rich family, nest
| egg) or no dependents, then sure.
| bradstewart wrote:
| Assuming you _want_ to be talking to investors. Some people
| prefer coding, and may want to do it in a well-vetted
| startup.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Unless, of course, starting a company is not something you
| want to do.
| antman wrote:
| In experience it is not the content of the answers. Most
| cases you simply realise they have not answered those
| questions themselves/
| OmarIsmail wrote:
| Funny enough these are the exact questions that founders need
| to ask themselves before committing to an idea. YC has overly
| broadened this to "make something people want" which at first
| order needs to be true. The questions you've laid out here are
| the direct implications of "make something people want".
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Companies manufacture crap all of the time that people don't
| really need, and these companies spend significant sums
| convincing consumers that they do, in fact, need or want
| them. I don't think people need to want your product now. You
| can also make something that people _will_ want as well as
| what people _do_ want.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Not necessarily as a startup. Big companies with
| established products, existing revenue streams, and profits
| can afford the marketing budget to convince a wide swath of
| consumers they need this new thing that they really don't.
| But startups with just one product or service generally
| can't afford to be pushing on a string like that.
| edouard-harris wrote:
| Most startups don't have significant sums to spend to
| convince consumers that they want or need a product. Unless
| yours does, there's no way to succeed other than to make
| something people want _today_.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Yeah and "spend less than you make" is the other one.
| mandeepj wrote:
| Few things you don't need to ask and can find out on your own via
| visiting their website (if they have) and social media (if
| there's one), and earnings reports as well (if they are public)
| brainwipe wrote:
| If interviewing at SMEs, tread with care - the people
| interviewing you won't necessarily have good answers at their
| finger tips and that isn't necessarily a red flag.
| danenania wrote:
| A shorthand for this type of advice is to learn about investing
| and ask the same questions an investor would ask.
|
| Being a startup employee essentially makes you an angel investor
| with a single company in your portfolio.
| xrisk wrote:
| This is more on the banal side, but I just interned at a place
| with some weird restrictions -- Windows machines, you have to
| remote into them if you want to WFH... stuff that really hampers
| my productivity.
|
| I'm going to get this stuff sorted out beforehand before working
| anywhere in the future.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Those don't seem like unusual restrictions to me? It's a little
| odd to not provide a laptop for WFH, but my previous employer
| had to do that at the start of COVID because most employees had
| desktops at the time.
|
| Why would you expect to do the company's work on your personal
| machine?
| xrisk wrote:
| No. I need to _remote_ into a desktop from my laptop to
| WFH... which seems unusual to me?
| easton wrote:
| Not unusual in environments with security requirements, as
| many places don't want code leaving the office/datacenter
| if they can help it. Some places do it for performance
| reasons too, as they can just pay $X per hour/month to get
| devs an instance that's 10x faster than the corporate
| laptops, and if they break it, they can just generate a new
| one.
|
| I interned at a bank once where everyone was on Citrix,
| which was pretty good (they were paying a lot for it to be
| really good, though).
| xrisk wrote:
| We use Citrix too. Your choice to call it pretty good is
| interesting...
| easton wrote:
| It's entirely dependent on hardware. Most installations
| are either not GPU-accelerated or extremely over-
| provisioned. A good VDI instance usually costs at least
| as much as per user as the equivalent desktop PC, if
| someone started the project because it would be cheaper
| per user it's a recipe for disaster.
|
| The install at the bank was a bunch of racks filled to
| the gills with NVIDIA Grid cards and high-end Xeons, and
| they had a setup in every region they did business in
| (you could get your instance migrated to another cluster
| if you had to be in another office to reduce latency,
| IIRC). It was super interesting to me because it was one
| of the few times I've seen VDI work right, leaving the
| only blocker to dev work being the crazy security
| policies.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| This is your perogative, but think about it beyond your own
| setup for a minute: if it's anything other than a new startup
| where you're managing this all yourself, it's just not worth
| accomodating everyone's special desires and personal
| requirements. I wouldn't call those "weird restrictions"
| outside of the current abnormal hiring market and majority of
| IT.
| wiseowise wrote:
| What's with the influx of interview related topics?
| pojzon wrote:
| I love this question:
|
| > How strong is the team?
|
| I've actually asked it always on every interview. The generic
| answer I get is that "You will be working with experts in the
| field" yada yada.
|
| When you actually join the team:
|
| - Two juniors
|
| - Few 20 years experience dudes that finished their growth at
| "Cobol is the best" with "Mainframe" T-Shirt on them
|
| - And the same manager that hired you! (Avoiding eye contact)
|
| So yea, one salary later you are on the new hunt for new job. I
| don't understand why ppl lie so much during interviews. It's a
| employee market, if I don't want to waste my time with teams like
| that -> it's a 100hunder I'll jump the ship ASAP.
| ms4720 wrote:
| Because the truth combined with the offered salary does not
| work, lies are seen as much cheaper than honesty and more money
| TrackerFF wrote:
| > - Few 20 years experience dudes that finished their growth at
| "Cobol is the best" with "Mainframe" T-Shirt on them
|
| Probably joking, but a reminder that people with 20 years of
| experience started their careers _after_ the dotcom bubble
| burst, and might not even have turned 40 yet.
| rideontime wrote:
| Oh lord. I know this is off-topic and will probably get killed,
| but somebody really should have googled "post hog" before
| settling on a name for this company.
|
| e: If you do change the name please keep "hog" in there, that
| mascot is adorable
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| I found that the domain was blocked by my pihole, using the
| following list:
|
| https://v.firebog.net/hosts/AdguardDNS.txt, which is available
| from https://firebog.net/
|
| I don't see any particular reason for it, so I've since
| whitelisted it. It is indeed an odd choice, but its a long-used
| namespace which sees a dwindling number of available and useful
| domain names over time, IMO.
| Izkata wrote:
| I assume you're referring to this:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/9zr3h3/commen...
|
| It's pretty low on google without the "your" and doesn't even
| have a knowyourmeme page, so I don't think it's a big deal.
| pm90 wrote:
| "What does your OC rotation look like? If you get paged after
| hours, what actions do you take to ensure it doesn't happen
| again?"
|
| This is my favorite question since it isn't something you can
| generally lie about.
| muttled wrote:
| Asking to see the pager log can be quite revealing as well. I
| worked at an MSP where you could expect 1-5 pages _per night_
| while on-call. It was definitely hidden during the interview
| process and I bet they never would have been able to hire
| anyone if that information was revealed.
| usrme wrote:
| I was actually recently discouraged from applying to GitLab
| after seeing their public on-call weekly reliability
| newsletter[1]. I've been on-call in all of my positions, but
| the level of incidents they seem to go through in a week
| seems like it would be very stressful. This isn't to throw
| shade on GitLab though, I absolutely adore what they do and
| use it on a daily basis <3
|
| ---
|
| [1]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/gl-
| infra/reliability/-/issues/...
| bigwavedave wrote:
| There've been a lot of additional great questions proposed in
| these comments! The one I like to ask the most has 2-parts:
|
| 1. "Why is this position open?"
|
| and if the answer is anything other than "we're doubling the size
| of our company", I like to follow up with:
|
| 2. "Tell me about the last person who had this role."
|
| The way #2 gets answered can usually tell me a lot about the
| culture.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Another one I'd ask, unless it's in a country that mandates this
| by law: how many days of annual leave do people get as a minimum?
| If you get some vague answer like "as much or as little as they
| need" that doesn't include a number, then assume that number is
| zero in practice. You might or might not still want to work
| there, but you should take this into account.
| wdb wrote:
| Nice list of questions :)) Always good to ask questions about the
| working culture and how your role looks like as it can heavily
| differ between companies
| gigatexal wrote:
| I wish I had asked this to the few startups I've joined. Thank
| you for this list.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I remember an interview with a startup where I couldn't figure
| out what their product was and they got more and more annoyed
| with my questions.
|
| I ended up with something with the cloud.
| donretag wrote:
| Surprised there are no questions regarding attrition or why
| people have quit.
|
| I also ask of the current managers (in the immediate department),
| how many were promoted and how many were hired. What is the
| shortest/longest someone in the company has gone with/without a
| promotion.
|
| If unlimited PTO, what is the average/mean of days taken off. We
| do not have data is an immediate "I'll pass, thank you".
| edouard-harris wrote:
| These are great questions to ask any early-stage startup you're
| considering working for. The reason they're great is that they're
| almost exactly what an investor would ask. And that makes sense:
| a startup's earliest employees are also its most committed
| investors.
| cardosof wrote:
| > If the solution can't be differentiated from its competitors,
| beware.
|
| This is critical and not straightforward to evaluate. Complexity
| is a (if somewhat bad) proxy for differentiation, in the sense
| that if you can build it in a weekend, so does your competitor -
| and maybe he's got the mythical 10x engineer who'll ship it
| faster.
| closingcoffee wrote:
| More than anything, experienced business and marketing folks
| were always the differentiator in my experience.
|
| The ability to make new and or leverage existing connections to
| open doors for the business mattered far more to success than
| "how complex" or "is this different." I've seen literal
| $BigName clones with lesser quality systems make millions
| because the owner had another business and went to work on his
| Rolodex to get us in the door and start making money.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| One question I _always_ ask, that seems to _always_ get good
| results:
|
| "Are you happy here?"
|
| Have you ever watched an interviewer change from upbeat to
| depressed in moments? Have you ever seen a person turn a shade of
| grey? Have you ever watched your interviewers start to argue
| about what the meaning of true happiness might be, before
| conceding that neither of them were happy?
|
| My all time favorite, from a gentleman at TD Waterhouse, nearly
| 20 years ago:
|
| "Is anyone really ever happy at work?"
|
| They made an offer, I didn't accept. Nearly everyone in Corporate
| America looks visibly depressed. Doubly so in our new COVID
| world.
|
| Someone remind me what the point of all this is again? Because
| I'm not really sure I get it anymore.
| viraptor wrote:
| For a large list of not-startup-oriented questions, I maintain a
| collection here: https://github.com/viraptor/reverse-interview/
| Tade0 wrote:
| Good work.
|
| I've been keeping a similar list for private use, only mine is
| much smaller - less than 30 questions now that I removed the
| more risky ones which I never asked like "Is any of the board
| members actively addicted to anything?".
| viraptor wrote:
| Thanks. Feel free to submit anything I may be missing from
| mine :-) always appreciate a new one.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Would a typical hiring manager actually know the answer to
| that?
| pc86 wrote:
| There is no scenario in which they would a) know the answer
| confidently enough they'd tell an interviewing prospective
| employee about it; b) be willing to do so; and, c) be
| stupid enough to do so.
| alistairSH wrote:
| I wouldn't have a clue. Short or knowing them socially, how
| would I know? Given they're 4 levels above me in the org
| (me->VP->SVP->CTO->BOD), I have zero reason to interact
| with them on any basis, let alone a social one.
| Tade0 wrote:
| If it's a public secret and it affects the company - then
| yes.
|
| Of course they would rather not disclose such a thing to
| prospective candidates and it's rude to ask, so I dropped
| this question.
| akhmatova wrote:
| "I see your job title says Program Manager / Product Owner / Tech
| Lead, but tell me please -- what is your _real_ job? Remember,
| response time is a factor. "
|
| Hoped for (but seldom received) answer: "Why of course - to be
| your 24x7 shit umbrella."
|
| Or some honestly inspired variant thereof.
| lgleason wrote:
| One I alway like to ask is if they press charges ;). (For those
| who never saw it, this is from Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy)
| Sevii wrote:
| My list gets longer with every new job.
|
| Do you have project managers?
|
| Do you have product owners?
|
| Do you fill out timesheets with your working hours?
|
| Do you use an RPC framework GRPC/etc
|
| What languages do you use? Are you polyglot?
|
| What is the promotion process?
|
| What would you like to see change?
|
| How big is the company and how big is your organization?
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Missed one question:
|
| "How much time are we going to spend dealing with unprofessional
| antics?"
|
| I'll give you a hint, the question was rhetorical... and the
| answer should be 0 minutes regardless of the applicant. ;-)
| corrral wrote:
| Why... might the answer to that depend on the applicant at all?
| I don't know what you're getting at. Is this to find out how
| much time is spent on Mandatory Fun and other such garbage?
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Some people are talented, but can't function well in a team.
|
| Think what "antics" would mean from a kindergarten teachers
| perspective.
|
| Sure most adults rarely eat glue, but the number is not 0.
| The real insane ones will feign ignorance, and assume people
| will mistake it for wit. ;-)
| treis wrote:
| #1 can your site handle the HN hug of death?
|
| Archive link:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220628135027/https://posthog.c...
| Iv wrote:
| I am not sure if I am cynical or humble here, but my question is
| "Why would anyone care?".
|
| First, the company is hiring an engineer, not a CTO or a head of
| marketing. Why would they consider my input valid? Even in my
| field of expertise I have no idea of the size of markets or of
| the big players strategy there. Trying to keep afloat of the tech
| is hard enough.
|
| Second, if interviewing as an employee and not a business
| associate, you don't really care if the company becomes the next
| Facebook or, as is likely, goes into oblivion in 5 years. Know
| your incentives: if you don't have stock, you don't care about
| the company's success. Want employees that care? Give them
| incentives.
|
| Third, half of the founders I have met have inflated egos,
| delusions and/or personality issues. Never trust one who says
| they welcome honest feedback, especially during interviews. There
| is nothing in for you to gain and everything to lose.
|
| "These questions are direct, but a company that reacts badly to
| them may not be a good place to work." Disagree. A company with a
| non workable business plan can be a fantastic place to work in as
| the investor money burns through the various vanity project of
| middle managers. There are a lot much more relevant red flags to
| look out to anticipate a toxic workplace.
|
| In general, only give feedback when explicitly asked for it or
| once you understand the inner power dynamics of the place.
| froggertoaster wrote:
| Clickbait title - the first two questions are clearly questions
| to ask startups only.
|
| Not every engineering role is for a startup.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Yes, you're not going to be asking about runway or product-
| market fit when you apply to a bank.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Actually I think those are great questions for a bank:
| liquidity crises still happen to banks and it's worse when
| other people's/user's money is also involved/entangled. Plus
| we are in an "exciting" era of "innovation" in banking where
| a bank's products aren't always as stable as you think or
| exactly what you think they are. If they are chasing
| "products" that aren't traditional accounts, that's important
| and useful to know. If they are chasing those and haven't any
| idea if they've made product-market fit, that's a good sign
| to run.
|
| (I've had at least one interview with a bank that I didn't
| bother with any next steps for exactly these sorts of
| reasons.)
| wepple wrote:
| It's wild to me that there are people out there who think
| engineers only go to work at startups
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Some of this advice seems like it's geared towards people who
| think they want to work at a startup, but don't. For example:
|
| > Avoid: Companies that are fundraising as they'll otherwise run
| out of money, but haven't closed the round
|
| That excludes a _whole_ category of pre-seed orgs where you could
| make a huge positive impact.
| corrral wrote:
| Ask to join a standup, ideally with the team you'd be on, if they
| do them. If there are five teams working on unrelated projects
| all in the same standup and everyone's checked out and they're
| all clearly _only_ talking to their manager and listing every
| little thing they did and trouble they overcame yesterday, to
| justify why they should keep their job... run away.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| Nit, but our weekly standups are very similar and i'd argue
| they're not at all justification. Rather, they exist mostly to
| expand as needed on any tasks - but often expansion isn't
| needed.
|
| You're probably not wrong in general, but as is often the case,
| i imagine reality is a bit more complex.
| kevin_nisbet wrote:
| When talking to startups, a question I love to ask is what are
| you not working on.
|
| The basic premise is Startups have limited resources, so in many
| ways what are you consciously not working on is as important as
| what you are working on. While not indicative on it's own, if a
| early stage startup tells me they're working on say AWS, and
| Google, and Azure, and on-premises, it creates an area to probe
| further that they might not be careful about selecting the right
| thing to work on next which does become a red flag.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Two questions I like to ask in job interviews:
|
| 1. What kind of person would _not_ work out well in this role?
|
| 2. Think back to your previous job/career/life before this
| company. What's one thing you'd like this company to have or do
| that you had or did before?
|
| I ask these because I want to know where pain points are for the
| team/company I am considering, but I can't just out and out say
| "what are your problems?" because nobody will answer honestly.
| I've learned some interesting things.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| No company is going to answer "do you have product-market fit"
| with a "no". First, it's not like you hit some sort of binary
| inflection point where you don't have it then do. Second, even if
| indicators appear to point to some traction, it's a set of
| plateaus, some that may be permanent. If you don't know the
| internal details about expectations, funding, commitments, etc.
| you have no way if knowing that a 3-month upward trend is PMF.
| Finally, every company will frame their progress in the best
| light, even if that means subconscious outright lies.
|
| I personally think you're better asking what are you trying to
| do, coming to your own conclusion as to if it's a real problem
| that you personally believe in, asking what they've accomplished
| and why THIS COMPANY is better positioned to succeed.
| EnderWT wrote:
| I always recommend https://www.keyvalues.com/culture-queries for
| ideas on what to ask because you can narrow down the questions to
| the aspects of the job that are important to you.
| kabdib wrote:
| I interviewed at a startup decades ago and talked with the CEO
| for about an hour. I asked questions about their customers, their
| competitors, their investors, and the technical challenges he
| thought his company had. I didn't ask for hard numbers ("How much
| money do you have in the bank?")
|
| Feedback from my hiring manager was that the CEO was very
| impressed.
|
| (This is the same place that later "extinguished" my paid-for
| stock options after I left, and is now a multi-billion dollar
| company. To hell with them).
| rockostrich wrote:
| > Does the company have product-market fit?
|
| At a start-up, sure. At any company past Series C, you should
| know this before talking to anyone. The other questions here are
| fine, especially the revenue and DAU one. Even better questions
| are "what's your payback period?" and "what's the company's path
| to profitability?" Revenue doesn't matter if the company is
| burning 2x the money to get it.
|
| > How much runway does the company have? Does their spending look
| within reason?
|
| Kinda the same as asking about the path to profitability except
| also takes into account if the company can live to get there.
|
| > What's the culture like?
|
| I get asked this question and similar questions to the ones
| listed by almost every engineering candidate I've interviewed in
| the past 5 years...
|
| > How strong is the team?
|
| I think it's a good question but if you're just looking for
| someone to tell you how great the team is then you're better off
| not asking it. I think almost all interview questions should be
| asked with some level of doubt and in hopes of getting an honest
| answer. Also, the level of honesty matters. If you ask the
| engineering manager this question and they throw certain folks
| under the bus then you should run.
|
| > What's in store in the future?
|
| This (and more frequently the first 2 questions under it) gets
| asked in plenty of interviews. People want to know what they'll
| be working on and what kind of impact they'll have.
|
| The "Do you plan to sell the company?" question under this one
| makes it seem like these were all supposed to be directed at a
| CEO/founder. I wouldn't ask this question because even if the
| answer is honest it'll be ambiguous. No one is going to say
| they're dead set on selling the company if there's still funding
| rounds on the horizon but they also won't rule it out because
| they need to give the compensation package some hope for
| liquidity.
| cloverich wrote:
| > "Do you plan to sell the company?"
|
| I joined a start up with a great amount of equity. They got
| offered 100 million buyout offer after I'd been there a year. I
| would have been extremely happy with that outcome. But they had
| no interest -- they weren't interested in a 100 million dollar
| company. Been there, done that, that wasn't their goal. Now I
| ask that question. Or more generally, same line as the
| profitability one. What are your exit strategies (with many
| follow ups). You want to know if this is a multi billion dollar
| boom or bust play because it has serious impact on your risk
| and payout.
| joezydeco wrote:
| Just out of curiosity: how many startups are willing to talk so
| openly about their finances to a candidate? I don't see how
| this is such a viable thing. How do you know the candidate
| isn't sent by the competition to sniff you out?
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > Just out of curiosity: how many startups are willing to
| talk so openly about their finances to a candidate?
|
| If you are gonna take a cash paycut in exchange for stock
| options you better damn well know this stuff. I think these
| questions are perfectly okay to ask.
|
| You should also ask about preferred stock and when it
| converts to common stock. Since you are common stock, you
| won't get shit until the valuation of the company goes above
| whatever threshold is set for the preferred stock to convert.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| Ask about work life balance. One of my coworkers mentioned work
| life balance in front of the owner. The owner immediately said
| work life balance was for lazy people who didn't want to work.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I would not have asked that question simply because I'd
| assume everyone was smart enough to give the right answer,
| even if they don't believe it. I would never have expected
| your boss's answer.
| amyjess wrote:
| From my experience, there's a strong overlap between
| companies that don't respect work-life balance and companies
| where interviewees (for anything below the C-suite) talk
| directly to the owner.
| pyb wrote:
| > At any company past Series C, you should know this before
| talking to anyone.
|
| In a logical world, this would be the case. But currently, I am
| looking at a Series B company and having serious doubts that
| they have PMF.
| fatnoah wrote:
| >If you ask the engineering manager this question and they
| throw certain folks under the bus then you should run.
|
| I one declined an offer for this very reason. I had the option
| to join one of two teams, and each team's manager took the
| opportunity to crap on the other team.
| rockostrich wrote:
| Holy moly, you don't even have to ask the culture question in
| that kind of interview since they answered it for you: toxic.
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| > Does the company have product-market fit?
|
| Interviewee: "Does the company have product-market fit?"
|
| Interviewer: "Yes, we own Wholefoods, Ring, the entire internet
| cloud ecosystem"
|
| Interviewee: "How much runway does the company have?"
|
| Interviewer: "We have 86.2 billion. Should last us a while"
|
| Interviewee: "What's in store in the future?"
|
| Interviewer: "Take over every market segment" ... Interviewee:
| "Great, where do I sign?"
| dagw wrote:
| _Interviewee: "How much runway does the company have?"
|
| Interviewer: "We have 86.2 billion. Should last us a while"_
|
| In these situations you should be focusing on how much support
| and "runway" the product or department you'll be working on
| has. The company at large might not go bankrupt, but I've both
| seen and been involved in situations where a
| product/project/department went 'bankrupt' and most people
| involved got fired.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Would an interviewing manager even know the answer to that? A
| VP+ might, but I'm guessing they would be unable/unwilling to
| share.
|
| You could ask questions about how the position and product
| are related to the core business - should get the same result
| (it's mission critical vs it's VP's folly) without asking
| about financial info that nobody can/will share.
| nottorp wrote:
| "When will the product I'll be working on be canceled?" is the
| question then...
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| Surely this was meant for Google right? :)
| nottorp wrote:
| Oh... Amazon owns Ring, not Google. Then it's "how long
| till stack ranking fires me?" :)
| paywallasinbeer wrote:
| Now do Netflix!
| olliej wrote:
| These all seem like the basic questions I'd be asking during any
| interview - with the exception of runway, because I don't like
| startup culture (though if I were applying I sure as hell would
| be checking this) - and I don't think I'm significantly different
| from people I've interviewed.
|
| I'm not sure why this guy's experience is so different from mine?
| I assume it's related to hiring/recruitment orientation (more
| junior/inexperienced folk?). The big one I could imagine is
| people failing to ask the "will the company still exist in 6
| months?" question due to a default assumption that companies
| don't die?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| A lot of these questions seem to be ones aimed at startups. I
| think they are good ones, but won't necessarily map to more
| established companies.
|
| In the "How strong is the team?" section:
|
| _> "Can you tell me about the team I'd be working with most
| closely?"_
|
| _> "How do you compensate the team?"_
|
| _> "How do you attract and retain really strong hires?"_
|
| _> "Do you share board slides with the team?"_
|
| I'd add:
|
| _> "Who's been here the longest?"_
|
| and:
|
| _> "What's the median tenure of the engineering team?"_
|
| I'd apply these directly to the team I'd be working on. These can
| tell you a bit about the management culture.
|
| And that depends almost entirely on the personality, experience,
| and style of individual managers. I know of what I speak. I was a
| very good manager, and kept senior-level engineers for many
| years, despite the corporation, itself, having a rather employee-
| hostile culture.
|
| IMNSHO, Management culture is even more important than team
| culture.
| rockostrich wrote:
| To add to these, if it's an established team:
|
| > _when was the last re-org this team went through and what was
| the reason for it?_
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I worked for a _major_ (Fortune 5) corporation, for about a
| year and a half (back in the 1980s).
|
| In that 18 months, they had three major reorgs.
|
| After one one of them, the new VP (a lawyer), brought the
| team into his (very nice, very large) office, and started the
| intro talk with "I hate computers."
|
| That was when I decided it was time to move on...
| codingdave wrote:
| On the flip side, that is the kind of boss to which you
| might be able to say, "Great, I'll keep things running,
| just leave me do my work.", and end up with a fully
| autonomous position with a boss who never bugs you.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Yeah, but the gist of his message was:
|
| _" You're all a bunch of weird dorks. I don't understand
| you, and I don't understand what you do; but you'd better
| not screw up, and, for Pete's sake, stay out of my
| office. This is the last time you'll be seeing the inside
| of it, unless I'm gonna ream you a new one."_
|
| Nice guy. Think Lumberg, from _Office Space_ , but
| nastier.
| akhmatova wrote:
| And we can be sure he was thought of as genuine rain-
| maker, by his own superiors.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Tenure on the eng team you are joining is so good to know. I've
| become the second most senior and tenured person on my current
| team after joining 3 months ago. I still love the company but
| its very different than when I joined and there was a tech lead
| on the team.
| rapjr9 wrote:
| Also, is there a growth path for the position you are applying
| for? When I first tried software QA a few decades ago it was a
| dead end job, there were no opportunities for advancement. The
| software development and QA departments were kept totally
| separate.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Don't ask a question that you could search for and easily find.
| It will not reflect well on you.
|
| Think of those questions in advance, do your due-diligence, and
| ask questions based on what you couldn't find, or follow ups from
| your research on the company. It will set you apart from other
| candidates.
| omarhaneef wrote:
| okay, I expected to read another list of 7 questions to ask but
| this list is really excellent: each question made me think "yes,
| of course that should be asked and probably is not!"
|
| And this is not just for engineers. I think anyone joining a
| startup, or new division of a company, would benefit from
| thinking through these questions.
| daveslash wrote:
| _or new division of a company_ - yes. From a budgetary
| standpoint, new divisions within an established blue-chip
| company can somewhat be thought of as kin to startups. They 're
| young and have to prove themselves.
| cduzz wrote:
| Also:
|
| "how do you manage employee performance evaluations? What is the
| career advancement process like?" (if someone's got a better way
| to determine if a place does stack ranking without directly
| asking I'd love to hear it)....
| jen20 wrote:
| Why not ask directly?
| blowski wrote:
| Because a company says "we don't do stock ranking, we do le
| rank du staq" or some fabulous name they've given to the same
| crap.
| jen20 wrote:
| Right, but that's a great indicator of a company that is
| going to have plenty of other bullshit, and can lead to
| follow up questions to see how they disguise it?
| matwood wrote:
| Yep. It's like when a company says the max bonus you can
| give a team member is 15%, but the pool is 5% of total
| salaries on the team.
| paulcole wrote:
| "Tell me what led to the most recent time you fired someone in
| a role like this."
|
| A big red flag is anyone who's never fired someone or never had
| a bad fit. The key to me is the follow-ups you ask:
|
| * If you've never fired someone, what was the closest you've
| come? What was the outcome of that situation? Did they quit or
| did they improve? Why'd you wait for them to quit instead of
| addressing the issue directly? What made them improve?
|
| * If it was a performance issue, how did you know they were
| underperforming? What steps did you take to help them improve?
|
| * If it was a culture problem, why did it get missed in the
| hiring process? If they were initially a good culture fit, what
| changed?
|
| * How do you identify low performers? Objectively?
| Subjectively? A mix of the 2.
|
| The caveats are if a) you really really want this job or b) you
| really really need this job. In those cases, you should only be
| asking questions that you think make you look good to the
| hiring team.
| moonchrome wrote:
| I mean I dislike bullshit rankings and metrics as much as the
| next guy - but if someone asked me these questions I would
| just pass on the candidate - a person covering his ass about
| being a bottom performer, from the interview, is not really
| someone I would be thrilled hiring.
|
| At least OP phrased it as career progression question.
| [deleted]
| paulcole wrote:
| If you think these are questions a low performer would ask
| to see what they can get away with, just ask them if that's
| the case.
| bradlys wrote:
| You can be a top performer and still be fired for various
| reasons. The cultural questions and things related to
| firings are very important.
|
| I've seen quite a few eng fired for non-performance reasons
| and entirely due to culture. Firings for performance are
| something I've rarely seen.
| rockostrich wrote:
| I don't know. I think they're useful questions for a top
| tier performer to ask to make sure they're not joining a
| shitshow where they have to clean up after people who have
| been underperforming for a year and haven't been given any
| feedback.
| paulcole wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not a top performer but I use those types of
| questions for a similar reason. Also any interviewer
| who's put off by those questions signals to me a company
| culture that I'm not particularly interested in.
| Additionally, I really enjoy flipping the script and
| interviewing the interviewer whenever possible.
|
| Of course, if I was desperate for any job, I'd do what it
| took to get hired, not to satisfy my curiosity and find
| the right job.
| F_J_H wrote:
| I've hired a lot of people over the course of my career, and
| questions like this would be a major red flag. I'd pass on
| the candidate.
|
| Completely fine to ask how performance is measured and/or how
| performance reviews are handled, but the nature of these
| questions is off-putting. Is a candidate trying to figure out
| how they can get away with being a low performer? How would
| their poor judgment in asking questions like this show up
| elsewhere? Likely a high-maintenance individual.
|
| And, the caveats at the end of the comment indicate the
| author knows these questions would not make you look good to
| the hiring team. If the company hired you anyway, probably
| wouldn't be a good place to work.
| paulcole wrote:
| Different strokes I guess. I've hired a lot of people and
| would love it if somebody asked me these questions. Would
| make me excited to work with them.
|
| > Is a candidate trying to figure out how they can get away
| with being a low performer?
|
| If you're wondering this, just ask them.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Well, in a startup, honestly, if you don't get fired you're
| doing good. I have seen zero early-stage startups that did
| evaluations or a career path. Many said they did but they
| really didn't.
| sambeau wrote:
| An interview is a two-way process. Ask as many questions as you
| can as you can make a terrible mistake that will badly affect
| your life.
|
| The more questions you ask, even ones about company culture and
| how things are managed will make you look super-interested and
| that you are already imagining yourself in the role.
|
| When I interview people I always remind them of this before we
| start: "Don't forget to interview us back. We might not be what
| you are looking for". It's surprising how many candidates ignore
| my advice (which, sadly, makes them look unenthusiastic).
| twawaaay wrote:
| For me the eye opener is working with actual owners of the
| company that is profitable, is constantly growing, offers an
| honest product that is designed to provide maximum value to
| clients. We literally have no marketing and have to turn down
| clients because we can't grow fast enough.
|
| No politics, just pure honesty and problem solving.
|
| I will probably never again want to work for the company where
| the management has to please a lot of other people, make
| suboptimal (read: "stupid") decisions just for the optics of it
| and where there are no people you can talk to that have absolute
| decision power and the only goal being the good of the company.
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