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.
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.
Then work at a large firm which will let you do these things, and fund you should it not work out. Our industry is still young, and problems to solve are myriad. If you can tell what the good ones and bad ones are then you are much to valuable to work on someone else's idea.
"Then just get your dream job; god, it's not that hard!"
I invite you to search developer jobs in a large (3 million+) metro area that is not San Francisco, Seattle, or New York. Developer jobs you will find:
- Shitty ad-tech company
- Knockoff ad-tech
- Shitty, knockoff ad-tech
- Fintech, but shitty
- Fintech, but even shittier
- Fintech, but actually a scam
- Fin-ad-tech
- Fintech for dogs
- Adtech for dogs
- Giant telecom where you will be put in a prison of a narrowly defined role where shitty developers go to slowly die
- Remote office of a FAANG where you can be put in a prison of a narrowly defined role doing shitty ad-tech to help an evil psychopathic hundred-billionaire get even more of a death grip on all aspects of our lives, but at least you're paid well
- (Rarely) Internal developer for a company that is actually doing something useful and interesting, but where you'll end up maintaining a shitty out-of-support enterprise system built on a base platform that does nothing where the real business logic is all embedded in their inner-platform key-value tables by engineering interns.
Hehe, I really like this answer. I feel a bit cursed and also lucky at the same time in my current role... I was given ownership of a project that is solving a $100M problem at a big company, but now that it is working well... random people from other teams are showing up to take control of it and kill it with their idiotic ideas.
And I suppose the alternative is to start your own company, take VC money, and thus become one of those shitty ad-tech, knockoff ad-tech, fintech but shitty, fintech but actually a scam, etc. companies? But at least you'll probably end up owning >1% of the company!
I guess I'd say if your idea revolves around shitty ad-tech or fin-tech, then no, that's not a good answer. But if you have a genuinely new niche ... maybe? It's a little like "burn this codebase and start all over". It's a gut reaction we all have, and 90% of the time it's a bad idea. But that 10% of the time ...
You’re still rolling the dice if you go work in a startup, you might as well not bother and go to a FAAG (excluding Netflix) for that. Or is it MAGAF (Microsoft apple google amazon Facebook)? Lol.
In india the acronym is WITCH which is apt given the track record of these consulting shops.
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.
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.
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.
There is a ton more risk to be founder than an early startup employee. A ton more benefits too, but the costs real. For one thing, if you are pre-funding, then you need to go acquire that funding without being paid in the interim. If you can afford that risk, then it might be good option.
I wouldn't come to that conclusion at all, they're completely different skillsets.
FWIW I'm quite prepared to join a startup that seems like it has some great ideas and good people but isn't quite sure yet how it's going to become profitable. You do so always knowing there's a moderate risk it might not work out and you'll be back out hunting for another job within 12 months or whatever.
You're received lots of responses pointing out why this is inaccurate, but one point I didn't see covered was that the degree of confidence required in "distinguishing a good answer from a bad one" as a prospective employer is _much_ lower than that required as a founder. Additionally, evaluating whether something is good is easier than coming up with something good.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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?
> 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.
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.
Can you expand on that? Every time I've looked for a new job I've had to use the "carpet bomb" approach with my resume to get anywhere. Any time I've been out of work historically, it's taken a minimum of 3 months to find a job.
Carpet bombing can get interviews, but it tends to waste a lot of time and be relatively ineffectual. Last time I looked at getting interviews, a number of the interesting job listings were behind absolutely horrific web sites that basically require mangling all the relevant content from a resume into a web form. Ask around between a few friends and former coworkers on Linkedin and it's pretty easy to get a resume into the hands of the hiring manager bypassing all the HR filtration garbage. From there it becomes an actual two way conversation to figure out if there's a good fit on both sides.
It's a 2 way street. If a job or contract that seems like a good fit for someone I know, then I pass it on to them. Over time it's mutually beneficial.
I think the difference is having a network. A soft introduction, even from an acquaintance, is much more likely to get you an interview. It doesn't get you the job, you need to do well on the interview and appeal more than the other candidates, but you get the classic "foot in the door." Without that, it is a crap shoot. Another approach to the same thing is a professional middle-man, such as a recruiting agency.
I guess it must also depend on location and level of experience. I haven't had to go out of my way to land a job in 20 years, but I get not everybody's circumstances are the same. FWIW I'm not at all specialized, pretty much a jack-of-all-trades type dev, and while I do have a good network of contacts, I didn't rely on them for finding the new role I'm moving into.
Location definitely matters. Certain types of work are more popular in some regions than others. The level of trust required for landing remote work jobs also strongly leans on having good references from one's network of mutual acquaintances.
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.
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
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.
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).
"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.
I would agree with that for dev positions. But when I was hiring PMs, these types of questions were actually a key part of the interview. The particulars of the answers mattered a lot less than the fact they did _some_ research, and formed a limited mental model of business from which we could discuss different scenarios, tradeoffs, pivots, features, etc ... Major bonus points for them basically turning the tables around and interviewing/grilling me on how we were going tackle "recent announcement from competitor" or "trend in market" and asking good followup questions to dig into how that could relate to what impact they could have.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?"
Exactly this. Good luck identifying the actual problem a startup addresses from their website. Most of the websites are deliberately diffuse for prospecting purposes.
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.)
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.
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"
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.
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.
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?".
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
"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.
I work in a large company, where we have very regular "re-orgs" and it makes no difference. It doesn't change the work I do, nor who I work with. It's busywork for middle management and power plays for executives, it doesn't affect me.
So I don't think that it's interesting to know to judge the position. It's irrelevant.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> - 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.
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.
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.
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..
(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.
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..
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.
Well, I'm not a doctor, and I don't even really know what the "standard timeframes" are for experiencing changes. But, I can share my experience. YMMV.
After a lifetime of consuming caffeine, early in the pandemic when I started staying home fulltime, I saw my opportunity. I'd been trying to quit both coffee and caffeinated sodas for years. I immediately noticed the withdrawal symptoms, but then I'd had them for so long: irritable and dehydrated in the mornings until I had my fix. It took me 6 months to finally ween myself off coffee in the mornings. Sodas had fallen by the wayside earlier. So I finally was caffeine-free on Oct 26, 2020.
It took a solid 4-6 weeks, likely toward the longer end for the morning cravings to really stop. After that it took me another 2-3 weeks for my restless leg stopped moving. It took about 4 months after that for my body to readjust to not constantly shaking my right leg. Parts of the musculature of my hip had over-developed in the decades I'd had that problem. I continue to work on stretching out that part of my body on an ongoing basis.
The real gains started after about 3 months. That's when I noticed I slept much more soundly. Falling asleep remains significantly easier, as does waking. I'm never irritable in the mornings unless I read some awful news first thing -- point being that the caffeine withdrawal symptoms have abated.
I think more clearly. I'm not as easily irritated. I feel like caffeine left me on an emotional raw edge, and I was always snapping at people, or much worse. It ruined my emotional state for the majority of my life, since I started drinking colas heavily around age ten, and I'm 46 at present.
It has really been a very eye-opening experience. I feel like a fog on my mind cleared after a lifetime. I'm not sure I can really relate that feeling with mere words.
TL;DR: ~3 months from cessation I started to notice real benefits
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is my favorite question to ask if I feel the company is a fit and I want to work there:
- Now you've had a chance to get to know me, is there any reason you think I wouldn't be a suitable candidate for this role.
Surprisingly people are super honest when I ask this and it let's you clear up an miscommunication or simply acknowledge that there reason is probably true and pitch how you would overcome it.
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
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.
"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)....
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.
"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.
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.
Agree. I would simply ask about team growth and turnover (also ask about engineering department in general). That's a totally legitimate question and it might even get you the answer you want without bluntly asking when they last fired someone. That's like being asked if you took a shit that morning. Like, yeah... and everybody does it, but it's not ok to ask someone about it.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
"What are some notable duties is the employee expected to perform, outside of software development?"
I worked at one place that expected software developers to stock orders in the warehouse, and to take phone calls in the call center.
"Tell me about a recent time the team was allocated time to resolve some technical debt. Tell me about a recent time the team was NOT allocated time to resolve some technical debt."
I worked at once place which shifted from outsource to in-house software development, discovered that some of the primary html views of the website were built using a jumble of string concatenation, and to add a new feature using the existing string concatenation.
"What percentage of my time will I spend coding in this role?"
Worked at one place which assigned excessive non-coding bureaucratic duties to developers.
"How often do you release software?"
Worked at once place which did not release anything for the 1.5 years that I was there.
"How do you incorporate the lessons learned partway through a project into the remainder of the project work?"
Worked at one place that could not pivot due to inability to admit that they didn't have a perfect plan from Day 1.
"Tell me about some advanced design patterns that you don't use."
Worked on a team that used every advanced design pattern that mankind had ever given name to, each in 200 places without an iota of consideration to the costs that go along with the potential benefits.
"Do you plan on shifting your entire tech stack into something else that can scarcely be considered software development?"
Self-explanatory, but has happened to me 2x now, so be on the lookout.
Fifteen+ years into my career, I've discovered that every job will give you one or more damn good reasons to move on, and each of these lessons above took 1-2 years to learn, so my latest strategy is just optimizing for pay rate. :-)
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.
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.
>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.
There were other indicators as well. The office was in an old warehouse building on the waterfront of the city, with massive windows and high ceilings. I walked in to amazing water views from the lobby. When I descended one floor to the dev area, every single window was covered by a blackout curtain. It was a cave with no natural light, and barely any artificial light.
When I declined the offer, the recruiter was totally offended that I would pass up on such an opportunity.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
> 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.
If you're being offered a cash paycut for stock options, you might as well ask for the paycut in lottery tickets because you're too far diluted to make anything off of the options.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Recently I've added some rather stupid ones, for reasons that should be obvious:
1. Describe your git branching strategy
2. Who releases software, how (is it packaged / deployed), and how often?
3. Do you have dev/test environments?
4. Do you keep configuration out of your code? How? Example: IaC.
5. Describe a typical incident. How do you find out about it, who gets the first alert, how does it get resolved and how (do?) you follow up afterwards?
6. What does the oncall rota look like? Follow the sun or (immediate end of discussion) 24h?
7. Do you have superheroes (people who have been around since forever, that everybody says "well I hope <superhero> doesn't get hit by a bus, because then we'd be really effed")?
8. What is the engineering staff turnover for the last 12 months? What about for the team I'm interviewing for?
9. What are the top challenges facing this team (and wider engineering team) right now? (Not only within their problem domain, but outside it, eg communication, coordination, outages, observability, direction)
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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).
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?
I started a job with a new company back in January. I understood what their product did and how things work need to work technically, but I have to say, it wasn't apparent from my initial research just how good a _business_ it was to be in. And yeah, getting the CEO to run through the business case for it went a long way towards selling me on the company (reasonable tech and nice people didn't hurt, either.)
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".
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
I agree with asking hard questions, but I think there's a limit to how much one can really expect an individual job applicant to determine the financial state of the company.
For one, the people that are answering their questions are by pre-condition already drinking the company kool-aid.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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).
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.
I almost always evaluate the company / team / product from an investor standpoint prior to joining any role (engineering or management). Most people find it funny, odd or refreshing to see conversations turn into an investment of time and resources etc.
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)
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
"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."
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)
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.