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