Interviewing companies correctly

Every IT specialist knows how important it is to answer the questions asked by the interviewer during an interview. But for some reason, not everyone understands the importance of what questions the candidate asks the company representatives. And this is, by the way, a good chance to win the interviewer over to your side at the end of the interview.

So, let's say our interview is coming to an end and we are given a chance to ask our questions. What questions do I usually ask?

The answer to this question depends on who exactly is in front of us: a manager (the candidate’s future supervisor) or another technical specialist.

Questions for developers

Let's say that at the first interview we are faced with a developer from the team that is hiring:

In this case, I find it interesting to ask what are the pros and cons of working in the company from the developer's point of view. You can ask how much on a 10-point scale the developer would recommend the company. In response, of course, not everyone will tell the truth. It is unlikely that the interviewer will begin to reveal the company's cons. But, based on their answers, you can try to dig deeper and understand whether they are lying or not.

You can also ask what the interviewer, as a developer, would like to know before starting work at this company that he himself did not know.

Next I ask questions on the technical stack. Why is this particular stack used? For example, why do they use RabbitMQ and not Kafka. Do they use Kafka from some AWS or do they support it on their own servers? Sometimes companies use certain versions of Java that are not long-term support versions. Here you can ask why these versions are used.

You can also ask the developers what task they are doing now, what interesting but difficult task have you encountered recently?

I am also interested in how architectural decisions or decisions about the technologies used for a specific functionality are made. For example, you can ask what the team does if there is a task that is clear from the point of view of functional requirements, but how to implement it is unclear (in terms of the solution architecture). How exactly and by whom is the decision made?

Next, you can learn about test coverage, and the overall process of developing a feature from requirements analysis to release with monitoring. Ask if there are separate testers, whether each developer releases their feature as it is ready or if there is a general release at a certain time. Here you can tell from your experience about the pros and cons of each approach, ask how the team copes with certain problems of each approach, find out what technologies are used for monitoring, are there on-call shifts?

In general, as a developer, I would be interested in clarifying these points before starting work in the company, so as not to learn about any unpleasant surprises later.

What can you ask the manager?

I like to ask about what developers complain about. This question shows how much the manager is aware of the problems of the development team, how trusting the relationship between the team and the manager is, etc. It is even more interesting to compare the answer with the developer's answer.

It is also informative to find out about the team composition, what level of specialists work in it. This question is important from the point of view of acquiring new skills. Still, the opportunity to learn something new on the job is one of the main criteria for choosing a company for me.

Next, it's interesting how employees get promoted. Who on the team was the last to get promoted? It would be ideal to hear that the person you're being hired to replace got a promotion.

If not, it would be interesting to know why the team needs a new employee? Are they hiring me because they are expanding the team or did someone leave? Why did they leave?

How open is the team to new ideas?? What is the approval process for an idea if I propose a change in work processes that could potentially bring certain benefits to the team and the company?

It would also be a good idea to ask the manager what results they would like to see from me by the end of the probationary period?

It's also important to ask about the onboarding process. I once waited 4 months for a working laptop. During this time, I had already found a new company.

How is the development process organized in general: scrum or something else? Why this particular approach? A conscious choice or just fashionable?

Does the company invest in employee training? Is there a budget per employee? Can the company pay for my conference ticket if I want to?

If I'm interviewing for a startup, I try to understand how stable the company is. I'm interested in what stage the product is at, whether there are already clients, how they plan to expand, what about investments? You can ask where the company sees itself in 5 years 🙂

Naturally, it would be a plus to read about the company and ask 1-2 questions related to its activities.

Summary

It is important to ask questions at the end, not only to show your interest, but also to understand whether the company is right for us, because the interview is a two-way process, and we don’t want to be disappointed in a few months and look for a new company.

This is also another opportunity to show your technical knowledge, interest in self-development, understand what worries developers the most, how aware the manager is of the team’s problems and what he is doing to solve them.

Share in the comments what questions you like to ask company representatives during interviews? If you conduct interviews yourself, it would be interesting to know how you feel about such questions from candidates?

P.S. I write a little more articles on IT topics in my telegram channel https://t.me/dev_nation