
Questions I'm asking in technical interviews - jvns
http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/12/30/questions-im-asking-in-interviews/
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pamelafox
I wrote a blog post on a similar topic, after mentoring several would-be
engineers that were curious about finding a good fit after graduating:
[http://blog.pamelafox.org/2013/07/what-to-look-for-in-
softwa...](http://blog.pamelafox.org/2013/07/what-to-look-for-in-
software.html) That post also turned into a slide deck:
[https://speakerdeck.com/pamelafox/engineering-
culture](https://speakerdeck.com/pamelafox/engineering-culture)

I think we cover very similar areas. One of the big red flags for me,
personally, is code review (lack thereof). If a company doesn't believe in its
value, that reflects on its whole perception of coding as a collaborative
process, and I just can't get on board with them.

~~~
reledi
That's a valuable slide deck, thanks for sharing.

I'm about to join a small company that doesn't have many good engineering
processes in place yet (code review being one of them). It's a big red flag
for me too, but I also saw it as a challenge and an opportunity to improve how
things are done there.

I have experience with some of these processes because of the open source
development that I've done, and that's one reason why the lead dev wanted to
hire me. Hopefully I can make a positive difference in their engineering
culture! Would love to hear advice from anyone who's been in a similar
situation.

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ChristianMarks
Many of the companies I have interviewed with would have ended the interview
if I had asked them some of these questions. These are terrific questions
though. I was once asked by an interviewer where I saw myself in three years.
I said, "dead." Then I said that would depend on the career trajectory of
employees there. The gulp I heard in response was all that I needed to know.
Life is too chaotic to predict more than six months in advance.

~~~
pmiller2
Definitely. I noticed quite a few that would be totally unsuitable to ask in,
say, a first interview. For instance, asking about the vacation policy early
on is in bad taste and sends a signal you don't want to be sending.

~~~
EliRivers
What signal is that? That you're the kind of person who takes vacation? How is
that "in bad taste"? This is the opening stage of a negotiation leading to a
legally binding contract; to _not_ ask about vacation seems odd. It's a
significant part of the deal. I'm not here to beg them to please please grant
me the privilege of working for them.

I wouldn't want to work for an employer who wouldn't hire someone because they
like to take vacation, so if this question will act as a filter for me to weed
out the bad employers, I'll always ask it (and indeed, I do always ask, and
for the last few jobs I've also asked about their policy on additional unpaid
vacation; my current employer gave me an extra two weeks unpaid each year).

~~~
ScottWhigham
So much of this is subjective - there's no right/wrong. I would agree that
it's in poor taste to ask during the first interview but that's my opinion and
it's totally biased based on my life experience. Why? Because that's third or
fourth-level information.

I'm choosing the job based on whether I want to do this specific work with
this specific group of people who are aligned towards these specific goals -
that's first level. Second level would be whether the salary is inline with
what I need/want. After that, let's consider PTO/policies/drive time/etc. A
"correct" candidate IMO is most concerned with solving the first-level problem
during the first interview. It's a massively complex problem - lots of moving
parts. 1-5 questions won't answer that completely - I'd need hours to figure
that out. The last question of the interview might be, "And by the way, what
is the salary range for this position?" We all know that 2nd and 3rd-level
stuff is so negotiable that it doesn't really do much point to ask pointed
questions about it during a first interview. So for someone to think that the
first interview is the time to dig down to 3rd/4th level information - that's
just showing me that their priorities are skewed.

That said, I can think of two situations in which it would be appropriate:

1) when, during the first interview, it becomes clear that the employer is
ready to hire you right now ("Can you start today?"). Obviously the long game
goes out the window here!

2) During an interview that has cost either party something significant. For
example, if the candidate flew you out and you spent the entire day, I think
it's a fair question for the HR person at the very end of the day.

~~~
mgkimsal
Correct - there is no right/wrong exactly, and I learned a while back to not
work to those 'rules' too closely. There's an etiquette that always seemed
'common sense' to me, and _now_ , it's generally easier to learn a lot more
about a company, even a small one, before even getting to an interview stage.

I've asked about vacation and such during a 'first interview' a couple of
times, mostly because in my view I was already satisfied about some of the
other more 'important' stuff. Some of that came from the interview time
itself, other info came from doing research on the company, staff, work, etc
before the first interview.

And by the same token, I've had to shut down a couple of interview dances
short because the company would _not_ disclose salary range at all until I'd
flown out to their HQ and met the team. "We don't discuss that this early in
the process" was the standard response. Well... I wasn't about to reshuffle
multiple days (affecting 2-3 weeks of existing stuff) without _any_ idea if
this would be worth my time 4 weeks later.

------
greenyoda
These would also be excellent questions to ask yourself about your current job
to decide whether it's a place where you really want to be.

~~~
awjr
Yes. I'm in two minds about bringing these along to the next team meeting.

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robomartin
> What’s your process for making sure you have diversity in other ways?

This can be a delicate subject. I don't like forced diversity for diversity's
sake. I think it's demeaning. It says "I would not normally hire you because
you are not really qualified for the job but I will because I need to show I
have at least 2.25 people in the company with neck tattoo's".

This, I think, is truer in technical fields where it is vitally important that
the candidate have the requisite knowledge, skills, cultural fit and other
criteria for the job. Would you rather have the airbag in your car designed by
a fully qualified engineer hired purely on merit, experience and capabilities
or by a lesser qualified engineer with neck tattoo's who got in because of a
need (legal or not) to ensure diversity? I'll take option number one please.

This is not anti-women or anti-minority at all, this is anti-non-qualified
candidate. Now, all qualifications being equal, what do you do? Well, that's a
good one. Do you favor a woman over a man? Do you favor an attractive woman
over another, less attractive woman? Do you favor one race or culture over
another? What's your moral or ethical compass tell you? Do you need laws to
force the right decision? As I said, it's a delicate subject.

I have worked with people of all ages, races, cultures, gender, gay, straight
and even trans-sexual. I couldn't point out a pattern if my life depended on
it. For example, I worked with this brilliant engineer who would literally
throw desktop phones across the room when angry. Another was quiet and
somewhat socially inept yet exhibited incredible dedication to the job. And
then there were some who just floated by. Notice I never mentioned age,
gender, race or any other differentiator of that kind. If you think of them as
people and don't favor or disqualify anyone based on some artificially imposed
metric I think you are on the right track.

~~~
djur
There's a long distance the average software company can go toward encouraging
diversity before it becomes forced, luckily.

------
mrfusion
This kind of sounds like the Joel test [1]. At least the technical parts.

[1]
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html)

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mrlyc
The questions I ask are:

1\. Do you have coding and documentation standards?

2\. Do you conduct regular peer reviews?

3\. Do you use a bug tracking system?

4\. I feel more comfortable working as part of a team, not just a bunch of
people working together. Do you conduct regular team building exercises, such
as weekly lunches or meetups at the pub after work on Friday?

It's surprising how many companies don't have even these fundamental quality
and people management procedures in place.

------
chromejs10
There are a number of good questions in here. It's too bad that companies
don't send out these types of questions with the answers to them to people
coming in for an interview. It would be hard to choose just a few to ask,
especially since you as the interviewee doesn't have a lot of time to ask
questions themselves.

~~~
jvns
One way to deal with this is to ask at the beginning of an interview how much
time there is for questions. Once you have an offer, you can also schedule
extra interviews just for you to ask questions.

~~~
h2s
Hell yes. It's a shame that this isn't just conventional wisdom. Having had a
colleague recently join and then leave shortly afterwards because of factors
that he could have uncovered by asking some of the questions in this list,
this is close to home for me.

I'm sure it sucks for people with hire/fire authority to have to let somebody
go early on when the decision to hire turns out to have been a bad one. But
when it's the other way around, and an otherwise excellent new colleague
regrets _their_ end of the decision, the effect on morale is a lot more
profound and widespread.

It takes some careful introspection and forethought to figure out what those
crucial questions are. If they only come to you after the interview, send an
email if you have to! But for Pete's sake, ask!

~~~
chromejs10
Yeah I think most people just see the offer and get too excited, especially if
it's their only offer. It's a real shame because culture plays such a huge
part in how happy you will be at a place. It wastes both the company's time
and the new hire's time to join, hate the environment, and then quit a few
months later

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rahimnathwani
Why 'Are you profitable?' rather than 'Do you have positive cash flow?'

Profit is an accounting term that most people conflate with one or more of:

\- cash flow

\- gross margin

\- operating margin

~~~
pmiller2
Because "profitable" is a better proxy for "successful" than "positive cash
flow."

~~~
rahimnathwani
You are right, and that's the whole reason the word profit exists.

What troubles me is that it's hard to interpret an answer to 'are you
profitable?' because it's:

\- Somewhat subjective: Internal accounting policies (e.g. amortisation of
R&D) affect the answer, and you are unlikely to know much about these
accounting policies (unless the company has published audited accounts). \-
Poorly understood: The person who answers the question may unwittingly answer
a different questions from the one asked. They may do this unintentionally, of
course, because they don't understand that EBITDA != profit.

Of course, one question on the financial state of the business is not enough.

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Paul_S
Those are fair questions - what are you going to do if the answers turn out to
be a little bit less than truthful?

~~~
perlgeek
Once you know the truth, you re-evaluate your decision to join the company,
taking the lying into account.

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cupcake-unicorn
The women/minority questions are great!

~~~
antoinec
Agree, never accept a job in a company that favors minorities during a
recrutement process. You'll never know if you have been accepted only for your
skills or because they think that you will make them look better with you on
the company picture.

~~~
stephencanon
The actual questions are:

"How many women work for you? What’s your process for making sure you have
diversity in other ways?"

"What’s your retention rate of women over 1.5 years? Do you think you could’ve
done anything differently to keep people who left?"

Neither one of these necessarily has anything to do with "favoring" minorities
(or women, who are a slight majority outside of southeast asia and the middle
east). Rather, they can include doing things that encourage women to apply,
ensuring that the office environment doesn't have major issues causing
minorities to leave, etc. No favoritism required. Companies want to do these
things because they help them find and retain good employees who their
competitors may miss. I want my employer to do them (as a straight ivy-
educated white male) because I want my co-workers to be the best possible, not
just the best of the set of people who are able to ignore some awful
brogrammer office culture (for example).

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lazyant
these questions are good too to ask job applicants, esp. in management roles

