
Ask HN: What should I ask a startup CEO in an interview? - careersuicide
First some context: I&#x27;m currently happily employed as a programmer working primarily with Rails but I touch lots of other stuff in a typical week. I really like my job. It&#x27;s at a stable company with around 700 people. The pay is adequate but not fantastic. The environment, while frantic at times, is awesome. I also get lots of smaller but very pleasant perks like a free gym and an amazing view of my city&#x27;s downtown.<p>I got contacted by a recruiter last week regarding a job as a senior programmer at a local startup. 99% of the time I ignore recruiter spam, but several things jumped out at me: I&#x27;m almost perfectly qualified (on paper anyways), the listed pay is slightly more than 1.7 times my currently salary, and the job is located in a suburb that&#x27;s closer to my house than my current job.<p>I did a phone interview and that went very well. They gave me a small take home project to do and apparently they were &quot;very impressed&quot; with what I turned in according to the CEO.<p>I&#x27;ve got an in person interview tomorrow with their CEO. Given the way things are going so far I&#x27;m not at all worried about what they&#x27;ll ask me. What I am worried about however is: what should I ask them?<p>The company has been around for 5ish years, has 18 people, and has raised greater than 5 and less than 10 million in series B funding. Supposedly the job would have me doing more or less what I do now. The only difference is that I would be managing other programmers and instead of working on a wide variety of different projects I would be working on a small handful.<p>I&#x27;ve never worked at a company like that before. Normally I wouldn&#x27;t be so worried about what to ask them, just about getting the job. But, I really do like where I&#x27;m at and I don&#x27;t need a new job. If I&#x27;m going to switch companies I want to make sure I know they&#x27;re the right fit for me.<p>tl;dr - What can I ask them that will help me determine if they&#x27;re stable, have a long term plan, and are a good place to work?
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calcsam
(1) How much runway do you have (in months?) (2) If I read an article in
TechCrunch in (answer to #1) months that you went out of business, why would
that be? (3) How many members of the company (the engineering team) have left
over the last five years? Why did they leave?

(Listen for reasons as well as whether it was voluntary or involuntary)

(4) What are the greatest strengths and weaknesses of the product in your
opinion? Who sets the product direction?

(Listen for whether the CEO seems to have a product background and how
involved he is. Red flag is a CEO w/ a non-great grasp of product who is
highly involved.)

(5) Other things you should do: grab coffee with the person you'd be reporting
to, if not the CEO, and a couple of the people who would be reporting to you.

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tetraodonpuffer
besides more economic questions already touched by the other poster I would
personally ask what "managing" means in this case, technical lead? lead AND
manage (hiring/firing/1-on-1s/...)? mostly manage? background on the team
would be nice as well.

What career track would this position put you on if the company expanded?
management or still technical? this might impact your decision to move
depending on your career goals.

What is the plan regarding outsourcing? yes/no? if yes, are you going to have
to be involved in its planning?

It being a small company, what are policies regarding vacation etc.? is it a
case where it's going to be unlikely you'll have any time off until it grows a
bit more?

