I'm a contractor so long term questions are irrelevant to me, but my standard questions are the following:
Will i have the freedom to use whatever OS and software i want?
If the answer to this is anything other than Yes, i dont take the gig. Give me the tools to do my job and trust me to do it, i'll even bring my own tools, i like a mac and sublime. I once had a potential employer tell me that i was only allowed to use windows, only allowed to use eclipse and i'd be issued an MSDN license even though they admitted it wasnt relevant to me, because that was standard IT policy. Sorry, no thanks.
Is the office a relaxed environment?
I can usually answer this myself if i'm doing a face to face just by looking at how people are dressed and such, but a lot of the time i have a phone interview first, and then i ask this. I absolutely will not work anywhere where i cant wear jeans and a t-shirt and if i walk in at 9.08am and you're going to moan at me for it, no thanks. I've also seen places where they dont allow employees to leave the building except at pre-defined lunch and break times, again, no deal.
While these might seem petty to some people, to me they're indicative of an overall culture of not trusting employees and excessive micromanagement and i have the luxury of totally avoiding places like that, so i'm going to.
"i walk in at 9.08am and you're going to moan at me for it"
If they have a formal written policy that on paper you're fired after being documented as arriving late 3 times, and traffic / weather / commute / home life means you'll be late about once a quarter that means you'll only get to work there 9 months before the sword of Damocles is permanently hanging over you. This can be kind of a hint about what the workplace environment is really like.
Another hilarious one is "can I work from home" "no" "oh cool no pager duty or on call" "well wait a second, I just meant you can't work from home 9-5". If your boss does trust you to work at 2am but not at 2pm when at home, its just kinda weird.
I did 4 years of contracting and by the time I was tired to chasing cheques I had accumulate more pairs of pajamas than I had jeans let alone business casual (and one suit for when I went to meetings.) First place I applied the Director of Tech was wearing a baby blue hoodie with gold gilding and the VP was in a t-shirt, shorts and flip flops, I knew I could get along here. Summers in Canada are terribly short and I don't want to waste them wearing slacks and dress shirt.
and some of "us" don't think how you dress has anything at all to do with being a "grownup". I wear what's comfortable for me: jeans, T-shirt, sneakers. My employer couldn't care less.
Like it or not, personal appearance (including dress, grooming, etc.) speaks volumes about you. Just ask a potential employer (or mate!).
It's about signaling. Sure, some people are able to overcome those filters through outstanding performance elsewhere, but why not give yourself every advantage possible? Why not strive to be the best version of yourself?
In my case, I design things for a living. What does it say about me if I didn't care about my personal appearance? "I care deeply about how things work and look. Yeah, but I couldn't be bothered to put on pants or a clean shirt today"
But to your point, I do agree with you. Do what's comfortable for you. In my case, dressing better (something I've tried to do for the past year or so, after several years of hoodies and ill-fitting jeans) has made me a better, more confident person.
There's a reason I work for an employer where the actual dress code is "yes, you must wear clothes." If my boss has an important meeting, he might put on his really good hoodie that day.
I realize that in many workplace situations it's naive to think "I should be judged on my performance and not my appearance." I just choose to work somewhere that isn't the case.
The psychological factors (e.g. dressing sharp makes you feel better) are certainly valid. If you like wearing nice clothes, by all means. If you work somewhere where your boss dresses up or wears Prada or whatever, and everyone else wears business casual, then you might want to conform a bit if you want to get ahead (or else be deliberately different, but understand the effect it will have).
But let's not pretend it has anything to do with being a "grownup".
There's an immense difference between looking well put-together and wearing a business suit. In fact, wearing a business suit in an unnecessary situation will almost definitely get you on my mental list of Assholes Who Take Themselves (Too) Seriously, and indeed, the real-world correlation has been very strong. Hence why I don't dress like that!
I wear jeans, a hoodie, nice shoes, and a T-shirt to work every day. Admittedly, I'm a grad-student, but I've also done this with real employers. They're a nice pair of jeans, a nice hoodie, and a nice T-shirt. Choosing a casual style doesn't mean looking like some frumpy idiot who pulled clothes out of his bottom drawer.
"In fact, wearing a business suit in an unnecessary situation will almost definitely get you on my mental list of Assholes Who Take Themselves (Too) Seriously, and indeed, the real-world correlation has been very strong."
Interestingly enough, this validates the parent's assertion that people judge others based on what they wear :)
I love suits, and looking sharp. I have been told that I'm the best dressed man in my IT department, and I dress down for work. Then again, best dressed man in IT is almost certainly damning with faint praise.
Then again, I don't like the idea of having to wear a particular set of clothes for a job. I like suits, but I'd get sick of them if I wore them every day. So, to me the fact that a company has a relaxed enough culture to allow employees to wear what they like is a very positive signal, even though I will tend to dress formally on most occasions.
Spot on. Luckily, most of us browsing HN probably don't have to deal with particularly draconian dress codes (and if you do, that sucks, but I hope you're sufficiently well compensated for it).
I just find the "I can't be happy happy hacker unless I'm wearing a hoodie a flip flops" and "you're not a real geek unless you've got the most lustrous scraggly neckbeard" attitude kind of odd.
I think some of that might be a backlash to working in a dress-code enforced environment for a period of time. I know when I left a job years ago to go independent/freelance, I spent a significant amount of time in sweatpants (on a good day) & hoodies. A few years later, I'm happy to put on an ironed shirt, dark jeans, and nice shoes to work at the office or to go meet a client.
For me, there is something to the ritual of grooming & dress that gets me ready to take on the day like nothing else. I just wish it weren't so vilified amongst the hacker set.
[Fun side-effects: people take you more seriously, women (and men) will smile at you, you'll be in a more powerful position when negotiating, service industry workers will (generally) be more accommodating, and you'll always be ready to meet people for dinner or drinks at the drop of a hat. Try it!]
You're right that personal appearance speaks volumes, and that works both ways, which is why many of us here would rather work at a place where people wear jeans and a hoodie instead of suits.
"and some of "us" don't think how you dress has anything at all to do with being a "grownup". "
Are those people autistic, or just idiots? How you dress has nothing to do with being a "grownup"? Sure it doesn't. I see people come into work wearing spiderman pyjamas every day.
Sure I love adult dress up from time to time as well, I get dressed up to go to the orchestra, a wedding, or occasionally formal Fridays. I don't need my neck feeling like its being choked by a tiny midget to produce my best code and I tend to enjoy working places that recognize that. People take me seriously because I have proven that I am worthy of being taken seriously through my work and not because I have a suit.
As a guy who previously wore three piece suits at clients offices, I have to disagree - Only Google Hangout webcam actually drives me to wear clothes - that and the 20 minute walk to work.
No ones saying you have to dress in casual clothes. What were saying is that everyone should get the choice to wear casual or formal. Some organisations don't hold to that and think everyone should have to wear formal.
I used to ask what a company's email quota was. Not a big deal at my last two employers, but previous jobs (banking and state government) had very low quotas, something like 20-50MB. At levels that low you can't just archive your email, you've got to decide what stays and what goes and carefully file away any attachments you might want to retrieve in the future. Not only a waste of time, but it adds unnecessary cognitive overhead to the simple act of checking your email.
A 4TB hard drive now lists for $150. This means that 50MB costs a fraction of a penny, and the price is dropping.
Every second that a minimum-wage employee spends deleting emails to get down to that low a quota is a flagrant waste of money. The higher-paid the employee, the more flagrant the waste.
This is seriously like paying your employees to collect individual pieces of pine straw so you can save money on landscaping.
Not to mention the fact that those emails probably contain data that's worth more than their storage cost, especially if they're searchable.
Indeed. Hence the question is a useful filter, to identify and avoid companies who have incredibly outdated email systems and technology policies. They won't be leading-edge in anything else either.
Similar: "What does your company use for email? Lotus Notes?" (Unless you're applying to IBM itself.)
Generally quotas are only implemented on the server. So the easy way to work with that is to set up a rule to automatically move all your incoming mail to a local folder. Of course this does break the ability to access your email form multiple clients, or use web mail, unless you have the rule set to replicate locally and let mail sit on the server for 7 - 14 days.
You can't do that if you're in a job where everything has to be accessible by either lawyers (discovery) or security -- well, there are probably ways to handle that, but it's just easier to not allow local folders for email.
> if i walk in at 9.08am and you're going to moan at me for it, no thanks
I'm all for relaxed starting times, but at my current company that seems to have led to other, bad things: relaxed deadlines or other accountability.
It also sucks when something is broken at 8:00am and the guy that wrote that module (or made changes to it on Friday evening) isn't there for another hour.
It does suck, but it also sucks when the guy that broke it is an 8am starter and left at 4.30, when I discover his fault at 5pm and my last hour and a half is wasted. It works both ways.
Also 8am is unreasonably early :)
I prefer a nice leisurely start at around 10.
In our case, it's an app that's really only used from 8am-5am EST. If there's a problem at 4:00AM it's not a big deal. It's a different story when there are live customers.
Although, (ideally) any problem like that would be cost by a testing suite.
If you have developers making changes to production systems with live customers, the real problems at your company have little to do with when people show up for work.
I rarely roll in to work earlier than 10 am, and that is down from about 11 am at my last job since this one has a regular 10 am scrum meeting. Yet, I wouldn't consider leaving a broken build active on Friday evening, and I'm just talking about the tip build in source code control, not a broken production system. I wouldn't even consider working for a place where developers just pushed new code willy nilly to live production systems, because that's just stupid.
"Will i have the freedom to use whatever OS and software i want?"
Indeed; I learned EMACS at an impressionable age, so that made it simple (one program, which I could supply my own licensed copy back when that was necessary). Otherwise, no deal, that level of inflexibility is beyond the pale.
Another aspect of "relaxed" is can you choose your own username and email address (I've used the same one since 1978 (sic))? I can think of only one company I worked at where that was both an issue and it was really good to work for.
The username/email thing is going to rule out large employers almost universally. They have IT departments with existing processes. Now, maybe that's your goal, in which case it's a reasonable decision (though a much easier way to get that info is just to look at the size of the building you are standing in instead of wasting time in the interview!).
Some of the responsibility of finding a "good" work environment lies on the employee too. If you go into the process expecting to find a "perfect" employer you're going to be disappointed. This is true in professional software environments just like it is in life: everyone has different values, and if you want to be happy you need to be willing to compromise a little.
I'm not saying that there aren't objectively "bad" professional cultures out there, but if you put your requirements on a big bullet list like this you're going to be ruling out a bunch of objectively "good" ones too.
Ah, I was of course referring to small companies that shouldn't have that set in stone. But, then again, if I go to work for a large company I know it's unlikely to be a "really great place to work for" ^_^.
That one exception was a very small startup ... and that inflexibility was a sign of internal issues that helped kill it, just not ones that got in the way of if being good for the programmers, until it went under of course.
Asking about tools is kosher in non-contracting gigs, too. If you can't have your box like you like it then just walk away. There are too many open positions everywhere now to even bother moving forward in an interview unless you know you're going to be productive.
If during an interview the question gets asked "What's your greatest weakness?" I try to answer as best I can and then I make a mental note to ask this later:
"Since you asked me what my greatest weakness was, I think it's fair to ask: What's the worst thing about working here?"
I've only been able to ask it once, and didn't really get a good answer, but I think it has the potential to elicit some thoughtful (or telling) responses.
My attitude about the "greatest weakness" question is to treat it as a softball for whatever I would like to most be accommodated on in the workplace. Here are some random example answers to demonstrate. (For each one, I have known someone who that example fits.)
"I live a ways away, and to avoid rush hour won't ever be at the office before 11 AM."
"I can come in to work early, but I always have to leave by 4 PM to be home in time to pick up my children."
"I am an observant Jew and have to leave early on Fridays."
"I have life threatening condition X (asthma, diabetes, whatever) and will need accommodation Y."
And so on.
I originally got this idea from a secretary whose issue was that she was very talkative, she needs to have people she can talk to throughout the day. So she started answering the weakness question that way, and found that her bosses wouldn't complain about her talkativeness because she had already told them that up front.
I'm not sure any of those things would qualify as someone's "greatest weakness"; they're incidental matters. Turning it around, would you say that the ability to be at work at 9:00am every day could be considered to be someone's greatest strength?
Here's a somewhat amusing (not quite verbatim) transcript from an interview I once had:
Interviewer: "So, why're you looking to leave your current employer?"
Me: "Well, we were acquired a couple of years ago, and the change in culture has frustrated me a bit. I'd like to work somewhere more dynamic where there's not so much red tape and so many stakeholders to talk to about everything."
Interviewer: "OK, so do you have any questions for me?"
Me: "What's the worst thing about working here?"
Interviewer: "Well, sometimes it can feel like there's too much red tape, lots of stakeholders to consult. It would be nice to be more dynamic".
Ha! Had a similar one; said what I didn't like about it and the two guys interviewing me looked at each other, sighed, nodded their heads and asked me the next question.
That's a sign that you're dealing with someone who doesn't know how to interview. What did he/she intend to learn from that? Think about it. Try to put yourself in that person's shoes a little.
If you're interested in the job, please understand that you're being interviewed by someone who doesn't know how to do it at this point. Don't hold it against the person. The best thing you can do is be completely conversational (and honest) in return and start driving the interview yourself.
I don't want to put words in anyone's mouths\, but something like "Foo is probably my greatest weakness; bar is my strength.What do you find you often look for in prospective coworkers? Why is that? Have you been burned before or have you worked with someone who's a complete rock star?" Etc,
If you're not interested in the job by now, this is also a great place to politely explain that the interview loop is over and thank the interviewer for his/her time . . .
The best way to answer the What's your greatest weakness? question is by highly accentuating a positive trait and stating how you overcome the stated weakness:
- Sometimes, I am too nice to my customers during phone conversations, so I set mental time limits for how long a call should last
- I need to be caffeinated in order to code my best, so I always make sure to stop by the coffee shop on the way to work
Yes, it is cheesy to answer like this, but it is a cheesy question to begin with.
Interviewers know that one, although I think the right answer is pretty close to what you suggest. I recommend identifying a real weakness and then talking about how you're working to overcome it. Maybe divide the answer into two parts: what you've already done and what you're continuing to do.
Well, I guess it's just a difference in philosophy. The question is more of a trap than a constructive tool. When I was trained, it was taught to me as a way to weed out people who slip up and say something stupid .. or worse.
When I hire, I'm looking for people who think and communicate honestly. When I hear a BS response to this question, it tells me that either this person does not think they have any weaknesses, or that they are too scared to discuss them. Either way it's a red flag.
The "cultural fit" stuff is a sore spot with me. If you have any kind of life outside of work (or want one), this can be a real stumbling block. Maybe I want to take a walk during lunch, and relax, and not be forced to talk about work during communal lunches. I might want to go see non-work friends or family once the day's work is done, and not go to the bar and show everyone that I like the same microbrews that the office likes. And Friday evenings? Forget about me wanting to stick around the office.
Cultural fit is a huge deal to me, and I think it's pretty essential, at least for the small company that I work for. We don't force people to come out for drinks or for lunch or anything (although most people are happy to). You can still be a great cultural fit without spending any extra time outside of the office with your coworkers. It's how you work together on a day-to-day basis. We have an atmosphere that not everybody will like. Some of us tell really terrible and unfunny jokes. We typically leave the lights off first thing in the morning. We talk through a lot of our internal stumbling blocks and are open about them. The cultural fit is to make sure that you'll be able to work in the atmosphere that the company has established, not to make sure you'll come get drunk with us.
What you've described is what cultural fit should be, I suppose. It is just that I've seen it too often degenerate into how the company can control your non-work hours. But yes, it is certainly important that the work environment be compatible with the way you like to work. In that regard, cultural fit makes a lot of sense.
That being said, you cannot seriously say that not going out with the rest of the office doesn't affect their relationships with their coworkers, at least in the sense that everyone will know everyone else better than this person knows everyone else.
That's a fair point, but there are also many of us who want to be friends with our co-workers, and not just see them as little automatons that we interact with for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and never again.
Personally the kind of companies I prefer to work for are exactly the kind where lots of people are genuinely friends, where they do group activities (voluntary, of course) together outside of work, and where people actually like and enjoy each other.
Likewise with the company I've founded... when the day comes that we have employees and all that jazz, I do care about "cultural fit" and I would prefer to bring in people who want to be in that kind of environment. It has nothing to do with wanting to control anyone's "outside of work" life, or denying them "separation of work and personal", it's just that it's more fun to work in that kind of environment and also, IMO, more productive.
None of this implies that we would ever demand that someone sacrifice elements of their personal life in favour of doing things with co-workers, of course. And we would not be doing group events where participation is mandatory or where you would be "dinged" for choosing not to go. It's just that I like working in a very collegial, friendly, inviting culture where people genuinely enjoy each other.
'when the day comes that we have employees and all that jazz, I do care about "cultural fit" and I would prefer to bring in people who want to be in that kind of environment.'
When the day came when I had to hire a few people, I didn't want to hurt my social relationship with friends in case the business turned south so I hired people a bit more removed from me socially. It's hard enough to think about firing one of them (what will they do afterwards? will they land on their feet elsewhere?), but it would be nearly impossible to fire a friend for poor performance or for anything that isn't a crime.
It's presumptuous to say so, but I think it should be said since it is good advice: you should work towards removing that separation as it will likely improve your life as a whole. I get where you're coming from - work is just how you support the enjoyable parts of your life - but it really is possible to make work also an enjoyable part of your life by working with a team you enjoy on a project that you're passionate about. It's not easy, but it's worth working towards!
"you should work towards removing that separation as it will likely improve your life as a whole"
... and possibly destroy your business. It's hard enough to fire a person, but now imagine having to fire someone you spend your off-hours with. Entangling work and personal life basically clouds your ability to view people objectively.
"work is just how you support the enjoyable parts of your life"
That's not what I'm saying. When you entangle work and personal life, you make it harder for yourself to make the hard decisions.
I know I'm nitpicking here, but there could be many reasons for someone not to laugh at quotes from that movie, and not all of them are necessarily negative to me when screening an employer. I tend to groan when I hear anything from that now 14 year old movie, because it was ok at the time, but just ok and its a signal that you see yourself as part of a hacker/dweeb culture that I personally see as having lived past its due date. There's plenty of other movies you can quote from.
On a more serious note, I feel that the Dilbertization of the workspace is a problem, on both sides (employer/employee). It's essentially the replacement of idealism with cynicism, and a bad sign overall.
I don't necessarily need to be friends with coworkers, but if (say) once a month everyone grabs a beer together, that's not a bad thing and it is something I've asked about at interview.
I've worked in places where the answer there would have been "no, never, and we don't eat lunch together either" and really didn't enjoy it.
I also ask/try to figure out in a very small startup "Can you fire people?" Because many people are bad at this and the only thing worse than a bad hire is not dealing with it in a timely fashion.
For that matter, your interview will implicitly tell you how good they might be at hiring good people.
> And please, please stop with the cultural fit! Some people do not want to have to go for beers every other night or play Xbox tournaments all Friday!
But that is cultural fit. If the culture is not doing those things.
The culture thing to me has never meant doing things outside work. Is that a startup thing I'm not aware of? Even in the OP, I don't think that's quite what was meant. It's more a matter of shared interests and compatible personalities.
Maybe you're not the type to hang out outside work, you don't have time, whatever. But how well are we going to get along for the 8 hours a day we spend together?
These are great questions to ask! Especially, the second one. Understanding how and where the company is going is important because it says a lot about how your role might change over time.
However, I disagree about "cultural fit". I feel like being on board with the values and practices of a company are important. Beers and ping-pong aren't all there is to company culture.
Indeed, but I've never found that necessary. The reactions to the question, including non-verbal, tell you a whole lot, as does the specificity of the reply.
You might be able to look at your country's company registration office and look at the annual reports they file. They might claim to have been profitable and cash flow positive for years, but their annual reports might show something different.
Why and when did the last 3 people who left your group, leave?
The answer tells you volumes of useful information. It gets at what organizational turnover is, what people are unhappy about, and something about how much blame there is. Furthermore the question is so specific and unexpected that you sometimes get startlingly honest answers.
Just so people understand where these questions come from, since some of the replies are suggesting I was asking the wrong questions:
-I worked at a place for 4.5 years without a single raise.
-I worked at a place that blocked every port other than 80, and that blocked most websites that used post operations, all email websites, and all personal file transfer apps (like dropbox).
-I worked at a place that literally did not allow working remotely, even though it was the kind of place where that actually would have been useful and productive, especially for emergencies.
-I worked at a place that only gave you three sick days per year. After that you were expected to either use your vacation days or accept unpaid days.
-I worked at a place that required 60 hours per week as a bare minimum, but in reality, expected more like 80+
I don't think you are asking the wrong questions, but I also don't think you will get the answers you want.
"-I worked at a place for 4.5 years without a single raise."
Did this place have solid revenues? They very well may not have earned a penny, in which case the backers wouldn't necessarily OK a raise.
"-I worked at a place that blocked every port other than 80, and that blocked most websites that used post operations, all email websites, and all personal file transfer apps (like dropbox)."
Were you in a regulated company? (I know you said high-tech but even within that area there are companies bound by various regulations like HIPAA)
"-I worked at a place that literally did not allow working remotely"
See above
"-I worked at a place that only gave you three sick days per year. After that you were expected to either use your vacation days or accept unpaid days."
How many vacation days did they give you? I've seen some companies give more vacation days but force you to take vacation days when you are sick. All in all, I think I would prefer 4 weeks vacation and no sick days versus 2 weeks vacation and 2 weeks sick days.
"-I worked at a place that required 60 hours per week as a bare minimum, but in reality, expected more like 80+"
I'm reminded of the office space scene with the flair. Especially when you are joining an early-stage company, you should expect to work long hours initially (which should taper off as the business settles.
1. Yes, a solid revenue stream from previously released projects. The company had no problem spending money on frivolous shit.
2. No, it was a videogame company.
3. See above.
4. Two weeks, though in my case I was able to argue them to three because I had previously received three weeks at a different job.
5. It was not an early stage company, also it was a company with no proper goals or direction, and massive amounts of mismanagement. You weren't at work for 60-80 hours because you had a lot to do; you were there because they expected you to be there, whether you had work to do or not. Leaving 'early' was cause for shaming because of "letting down all the other hard workers".
edit: I am now working for a company that had answers to all the questions, and did not lie about them, and it is effectively a dream job. Part of asking questions is making sure you get answers, and if you don't, then bail.
I've found that the small companies I've worked for ignore the HR related policy issues for as long as possible with a mostly negative impact on employee morale.
Owners/management say things like "we're small so we don't have a set vacation policy." Which sounds cool and works out fine until Willy starts coming in at 11 am and leaving at 3 pm and you wonder why you're stuck at the office on a holiday.
IMO It's much better to have set policies so everyone knows where they stand. Another option is to find a company that doesn't hire/tolerate those types of Willys, but that's difficult to know beforehand.
I agree -- I've turned down a job before I received a formal offer (was told one was in the works) partly because no one could tell me what the vacation policy was. Not that I'm only interested in time off work, but I do live a few states away from the rest of my family (and many friends) and I'd like to visit them once in a while and not feel guilty.
- Can I talk to a future coworker (aka what is the "real" job and what is the "real" culture like)
- Bro-grammer culture or professional culture? (will I be required to slam shots after hours, play xbox each lunch hour, and whistle at chicks with my coworkers or can I act civilized?). Probably best to ask the "future coworker"
- (assuming I'm replacing someone) What happened to the guy I would replace? (my brand new future boss, fired for cause, died, transfer, prison, quit, or what exactly am I stepping into at least in the rather short term?)
- When would you expect me to start work (tomorrow is a no-go, gimme about 3 weeks?)
LOL good point you got me. I meant treating others professionally, aka with at least a surface layer of respect, ethnic/sex/age/orientation blindness, at least an attempt at avoiding stereotypes, rather than brogramming. There's a time and place for fraternity bro antics, from memory it is a lot of fun, but the office probably isn't the time and place for it.
I will concede that a brogramming environment could theoretically be, for the sake of brevity, civilized. Unlikely, but possible. Hearing phrases at the interview about behavior like "boys will be boys" and discovering at the interview its a hard drinking all straight single white male existing staff might be a bad sign. I can't believe I'm actually advocating for diversity after a lifetime of making fun of it, but...
Better versions of questions that may not help you to be hired :)
>> -Do you do performance evaluations / raises?
What's the average percentage of base salary raise your non-management employees received last year?
(cut the crap and just give the real numbers)
>> -Do you allow working remotely?
Do you believe that employee's productivity and ability to contribute to company's success is impossible without him occupying the same office chair every day?
(answering yes would make employer look really stupid)
These are all very good questions and underscore the need to come to an interview prepared to do no less.
As a manager who frequently interviews developers nothing is more deflating than an applicant who, when asked if they have any questions, fumbles an awkward "no, not really" and the interview comes to an abrupt end.
>> "Does Potential Co. value the professional development of its employees?"
This is a good question, but I'd avoid yes/no questions and ask for examples instead. "What are some things you do to encourage employee learning and growth?"
It's easy to say "yes", even if they're not doing much.
It doesn't matter. What does matter is how strong a commitment is shown to principle. Giving up a million-dollar contract because it supported something shady is impressive. By contrast, someone who ums and ahs and comes out with something lame may well be someone who always puts themself first.
Or possibly someone who's never been handed responsibility for an ethical decision at work. I mean, otherwise, what are you going to say? "I went and helped that homeless guy even though he could have stuck me up"?
I learned to take asking questions of the interviewer really serious since the few times I was so enamored by the company, I didn't ask the right questions. A few months later, I was miserable.
The three main questions I ask are:
What do you do that separates yourself from your competition?
Who do you see as your biggest competitors?
How much have you been working with (insert some cutting edge technology - lately for me, it's been stuff like Backbone.Js or Parallax Scrolling)?
In terms of barometer, it gives me a solid idea of where the company is going, and how they view possible new technologies. These also tend to get, "Wow, that's a great question" from whomever is interviewing me.
"Do you have any questions for me?" is usually asked by the potential employer in order to politely signal the end the interview and not because he's interested in your questions.
I don't have data on "usually" but I always find it a good way to determine whether the candidate is: (1) prepared; (2) interested; and (3) thoughtful.
I have a friend who failed an interview (there was only one puzzle question and he couldn't answer it). He got the job because he asked lots of questions at the end that really showed he was interested in the position and that he was in fact smart. In the end he turned their opinions around and got a job offer.
Every single interview I've had has had about 10-20% of the time for questions baked into the schedule. I've known people who didn't get a job because they didn't ask any questions in the interview.
Otherwise it's probably not a good hire. I agree. Huzzah!
I tend to go for "curious" people. They have to ask a lot of quesstions of me (or at least previous people in the interview loop) to show they want to be there. Asking questions about the company/team is a sign that the candidate wants to buy.
>> "What's the most interesting thing you've worked on since you started at Potential Co.?"
This is my new go-to question. Plus, it works both ways, great to ask interviewees and interviewers. It really opens up the conversation and immediately gets to the core of the company/applicant.
I really liked this article for two reasons; one as an interviewer I feel better about a candidate when they ask me questions, and second because knowing that a place isn't right for you really helps with deciding if you want the job or not.
As an employer and an employee what I want is engagement not "headcount" that shows up to the milking barn on schedule, gets drained, and kicked back out into the field.
Oh I like that word. I get that a lot. But In this case I think it is more of a management speak thing. Engagement as the act of 'active participation' as opposed to "passivity" or having things happen around you without either encouraging or challenging them.
I like to ask "What's the worst thing about working here at Potential Co?" In addition to (potentially) learning what the group's pain points are, it also allows the interviewer to blow off steam a bit (being on the other side of the table can be stressful too!) And if they dissemble or try to say that there are no downsides, well that's useful knowledge too.
Sorry, but to be honest I find all the comments in here a lot more useful than your pretentious questions. Just be natural at job interviews, that is much more convincing than feigning interest in how well the team is doing, bla bla bla. Any interviewer who is worth anything will introduce the company's history to you anyway.
I just mention my blog. Not on my CV because of HR walls, but in interviews, I mention its existence. If they still want to talk to me, then they're probably forward-thinking people.
If they don't look it up and are surprised that a certain level of talent inevitably comes with a certain level of anti-authoritarianism, it's not my fault. They were warned.
Another article about the tech-industry entitlement culture.
[edit] It's quite fascinating that I get heavily down-voted every time I mention the entitlement-culture phenomenon. It really makes me cringe to read things like this, when less fortunate (but equally skillful) professionals have a hard time just getting an interview. The pendulum will swing back sooner or later, and we'll look back on this as the golden era of being a Software Engineer.
It has nothing to do with entitlement. It has to do with the fact that there's apparently a shortage of developers in the world which means that one can be more "picky" about what they expect from an employer. Also, I want a job where my responsibility is to get work done, not be required to follow unnecessary policies or accomplish things that have nothing to do with the task at hand. A lot of companies implement policies "just because" even if they hinder getting actual work done.
I think it's the same thing, isn't it? My wife is an Architect -- a real Architect, not a BillG wannabe -- and is gobsmacked at the arrogance of people in the tech industry towards hiring.
"I'm not here to be interviewed, I'm going to interview you"
"These tremendous company benefits totally suck"
"It is my divine right to work from home"
"Co-workers are to be seen and not heard"
etc etc
I do think it's important to be grateful and humble.
However, you could similarly mock most decisions we make in the marketplace. If you live in the first world and you are shopping for houses or apartments, you might decide against one because of the decor. That would seem ridiculously privileged from the perspective of someone who lives in a mud hut. But the fact is that you have options, and you have to choose somehow.
A developer with 10 good job choices has to choose somehow. Whatever differentiates those jobs will be a small matter. But it will be a difference. If the market for developers tanks, we'll lower our standards.
My point was presented as a question, you have the right to clarify your thoughts if you disagree. People make interpretations out of what other people have said. That's how language works, actually.
It just seems that you say it's wrong for the employees to have the edge, but not for the employer to have it. In another industry there's a lot more job seekers than available positions (e.g. the supply of jobs is lower than the demand). In those industries the company has the edge, it's entitled to hold all power in an interview situation, and can filter applications that try to make certain demands.
In the tech industry, there's big demand for experienced developers. Software engineers can choose a job from several good options. Therefore the applicants are entitled to make certain demands, like asking questions from the employer.
Besides, many employers except this, and say in the beginning of the interview that it's a "two-way interview".
Your comment made it seem that it's okay for only one side to be entitled, that is the company instead of the individual.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but your issue with entitlement is in the presentation and phrasing of the questions, and not having them at all, correct? I have never been to an interview where I wasn't asked if I had questions for them, and with the exception of the last one (which I believe is gleaned from the interview itself), these all seem reasonable when phrased in a mild, non-aggressive way.
I think it's more the case that this sort of blog-post always rises to the top of HN. It's a topic that always comes up when developers get together. It goes together with a lot of other non-complaints: "I constantly get contacted by recruiters, ain't it awful?" / "these enormous benefits are substandard" / "they expect me work in an office with other human beings"
I don't necessarily think that it's WRONG to capitalize on the situation. Everyone is entitled to the best they can get in the job market. But programmers love to go on and on about their first-world problems and it's frankly embarrassing.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to be happy at your workplace. It is, after all, where we spend a huge chunk of our time. You could ask these types of questions for many other jobs in many other industries and I feel like they wouldn't be seen as "first-world problems".
I guess I can see where you're coming from. Since demand is high for experienced developers, we have a little more leverage when it comes to negotiating in the job market. I don't think it's entitlement, it's how supply and demand works.
Well, remember the audience. The hackers here don't really /need/ anything that a company provides (outside, maybe benefits): they can get the same equipment and infrastructure for very little. This is also a start-up site. I think there's a (justified) bias here of looking at employment as an option against founding.
Also, look at the financials of the situation. A software company can (easily) make $1 million/year/engineer, yet the engineer won't see more than a small fraction of that. The other parts of the business: marketing, sales, support, are primary topics on HN.
On this site, a job is just a lower-risk alternative to doing a startup. For all the potential benefits of founding a successful startup, and even the small reputation bonus from founding a failing one, there's a lot that an employer has to offer to compensate.
Will i have the freedom to use whatever OS and software i want?
If the answer to this is anything other than Yes, i dont take the gig. Give me the tools to do my job and trust me to do it, i'll even bring my own tools, i like a mac and sublime. I once had a potential employer tell me that i was only allowed to use windows, only allowed to use eclipse and i'd be issued an MSDN license even though they admitted it wasnt relevant to me, because that was standard IT policy. Sorry, no thanks.
Is the office a relaxed environment?
I can usually answer this myself if i'm doing a face to face just by looking at how people are dressed and such, but a lot of the time i have a phone interview first, and then i ask this. I absolutely will not work anywhere where i cant wear jeans and a t-shirt and if i walk in at 9.08am and you're going to moan at me for it, no thanks. I've also seen places where they dont allow employees to leave the building except at pre-defined lunch and break times, again, no deal.
While these might seem petty to some people, to me they're indicative of an overall culture of not trusting employees and excessive micromanagement and i have the luxury of totally avoiding places like that, so i'm going to.