/InterviewQuestions-FlipTheScript

A list of questions to ask your interviewer/potential employer/teammate/manager/company

Flip the Script (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

A List of Random Questions To Ask Your Potential Manager/Teammate/Company

This is a personal extension of this list by ChiperSoft with questions of my own.

Personal

  • What will be my day to day responsibilities?
  • What programming languages will I be expected to work in?
  • Do you have any goals? What is your plan for achieving your biggest goal?
  • How do you deal with failure/rejection?
  • Besides the paycheck, what keeps you coming into the office every day?
  • What do you do outside of work?
  • What kinds of questions did you ask when you were on my side of the table?
  • What's the latest song you've been listening to?
  • What's the latest book you've enjoyed reading?
  • What are 3 qualities that have made you a success here?
  • What is the most boring part of working here?
  • What can't you know enough about?
  • What was the one thing that made you say "Yes, I want to work here!"
  • Is it okay to fail?
  • What gets you agitated or angry?
  • What do you enjoy the most about working here?
  • If I get the job, how do I earn a "gold star" on my performance review? What are the key accomplishments you'd like to see in this role over the next year?
  • How did you get your start in this industry? Why do you stay?
  • What keeps you up at night? What's your biggest worry these days?
  • What do you think of people with a background like mine (coding bootcamp)
  • How does the company / my future boss do performance reviews? How do I make the most of the performance review process to ensure that I'm doing the best I can for the company?
  • What is the typical career path for someone in this role?
  • RISKY: How do I compare to other candidates you've interviewed for this role?
  • RISKY: How soon can I start?
  • What is the best time/way to follow-up with you?
  • What part of my resume stands out to you the most?
  • What made you choose to interview me out of all the other applicants?

Company

  • Why are you hiring for this position?
  • Which competitor are you most worried about?
  • Where do you see this company in 5 years?
  • What's working here at XYZ?
  • What's not working at XYZ?
  • If you could change anything about this company what would it be?
  • What's next for this company?
  • What are the company values? How do the people working here reflect them?
  • Is this a company that values learning? How does this company support that endeavour? (books, conferences, etc)
  • On a scale of 1-10 how diverse would you say this company is?
  • What is the rhythm to the work around here? Is there a time of year that it's all hands on deck and we're pulling all-nighters, or is it pretty consistent throughout the year? How about during the week / month? Is it pretty evenly spread throughout the week / month, or are there crunch days?
  • Is there a company reward system for employee accomplishments?
  • What type of people are successful here? What type of people are not?
  • Am I allowed or expected to take my work home with me?
  • What are the expectations with regards to hours worked, deadlines, and overtime?
  • How much vacation time do you provide?
  • Open office, personal offices or cubicles?
  • Is there a dress code?
  • Does the company provide snacks and/or drinks?
  • What are your expectations for how many productive hours a developer will have per day?
  • What's one thing that's key to this company's success that somebody from outside the company wouldn't know about?
  • Does your company provide maternal/parental leave?
  • Will the company pay for training programs / certifications / conferences? What is the approval process like?
  • What is the company policy with regards to side projects? Am I allowed to work on my own sites?

Technical

  • What will be the first projects I’ll be working on once hired?
  • Do you work on any side projects? One you're most proud of?
  • Do you do any work in open-source?
  • What is the tech stack here? (usually can be researched beforehand)
  • What is your favorite new technology?
  • What is your frontend software stack? (jQuery?, Underscore/Lodash?, Angular/Ember/React?, etc)
    • Why did you make those choices?
  • Is your front-end code bundled using a module loader such as Webpack or Browserify?
  • Do you use a templating engine, such as EJS, Jade, or Handlebars?
  • Do you use a compiled language such as Coffeescript or Typescript? (If yes, is it required?)
  • Do you use NodeJS as a software platform? (ie, beyond tooling)
  • How do you personally keep up with technology and keep your skills sharp?
  • What was the last big mistake you made?
  • What was the last cool feature you helped ship?
  • What source control do you use? Can you explain why you chose it?
  • Do you do pull requests, or does everyone just merge to a central repo?
  • Are you using a ticket system?
  • What comes first, bugs or features?
  • How are tasks added to the backlog?
  • Who determines the features that would go into the product? How are these chosen?
  • How are developers involved in that decision?
  • How are testers involved in that process?
  • Do you have a code review process?
  • Does your code review process promote empathy?
  • Do you have established code style rules?
    • Did you create your own style guide, or are you using a third party's (PEP8, PSRs, Standard JS, etc)
    • Is there an automated linting process to validate your styles?
  • Does everyone have an identical development environment?
  • Will I be provided with a new laptop?
  • Will I communicate directly with clients on a regular basis, or does this typically happen through an intermediary?
  • How is QA/testing done?
  • Who designs the User Interface?
    • Are developers expected to do it?
    • Are there graphics designers in the company?
    • Are there UX designers in the company?
  • Do you use open source libraries?
  • What is the company policy with regards to me releasing open source code (personal projects)?
  • How old is your codebase?
  • Do you have an automated test suite?
  • Do you use MVC or similar code structuring?
  • Is there an in-house framework, and if so who controls it?
  • Do you have a "story book" or library of resuable components?
  • Could you give me an example of a project I’d be working on?

Team/Work Environment

  • How do you and your team handle conflict resolution?
  • What kind of methodology do you follow here? (Agile, Kanban, Waterfall?)
  • Can you tell me of a time you made a false assumption? What happened?
  • How is your team structured?
  • How many developers do you currently have?
  • How large are your team groups?
  • Are teams seated together?
  • How frequently do team members find themselves in meetings?
  • Do your developers pair program on a regular basis?
  • What is your (or my future boss') leadership style?
  • How frequently does your team interact with other teams?
  • Do you find yourself frequently blocked by dependencies from other teams?
  • What hours does the team work?
  • What does the new employee on-boarding process look like?
  • Is there good documentation or a wiki?
  • What are the biggest challenges facing your team right now?

Other Benefits

  • Does this company support a healthy lifestyle? Gym membership, health insurance, etc?
  • Do you have a target salary range?
  • Is your company currently profitable?
  • What are the next steps in the interview process?
  • Is there food? Lunch? Snacks? Drinks?