Ask HN: What questions would you ask your interviewers? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What questions would you ask your interviewers?

18 pointspmoriarty18 comments

What are the most important questions to ask prospective employers at an interview?

Or what are some questions you didn't, but wish you had?

The questions I ask are designed to help me learn about the actual environment I'd potentially be walking in to. Understanding the technical parts are easy, grok'ing the environment is a bit tougher. You're making a decision for potentially years after only a few hours of input.

1. If there is one thing you could get the company to stop doing today, what is it?

2. On that note you're in tech, there are numerous opportunities everywhere, what are the top three things that keep you here?

3. What's the job you want after this one? Why? How is the company helping you get there?

4. What do you and your manager discuss in your 1:1s? What do you and your reports discuss in your 1:1s?

5. Name a mistake you made in the past year. What did you learn from it? How did your team and/or manager respond?

6. Same question as above but name a success.

These questions all really resonate with me. If I were to receive these questions as an interviewer, it would speak to someone who has been around the block a few times (which I would count as a positive).

This depends highly on what you're optimizing for in a job (read: what burned you before that you don't want to get burned by again)

Some questions for CEO/upper management that I intend to ask next time:

Tell me about the coolest thing you made without help from anybody else.

(This question is basically: "do you know what its like to make, not manage?" There are totally different mindsets and ways of measuring time and whatnot. I want a manager who has felt those themselves.)

Tell me about a time you let your team down, and how you got through it.

(This is somewhat of a trick question: can they admit that they've let their team down at some point? Can they blame themselves or fall back to other factors? Lots of important stuff comes out here)

How often do you say no to a feature or initiative even though it seems like it might be a good idea?

(Can they say no and mean it? Cleanly? Huge.)

I have developed and tested several times this "test-case" with very positive results:

1. Create set of cards with pictures/outputs/descriptions/scheme/diagrams/code outputs/whatever is relevant to desired job/position. Some of them should be out of context of bigger picture. One card with only one item.

2. Suitable amount is around 10-12 cards.

3. During interview ask candidate to group relevant cards together.

4. Logic and number of groups is upon candidate.

5. Candidate has time limit 5-6 minutes and after this time you will discuss what, how and why.

----

Outcomes from test-case:

A. During "sorting" period you can see how candidate deal with unknown, real-life information and situation related to your job

B. You can see how well is organized

C. Can see time-management (time-pressure) ability

D. Will see whether is able to get bigger picture or is diving deep into details

E. Can see whether he asks more questions

F. Can see logic how he think about possible solutions

----

From my experience from IT hiring...

> Guy with 7 years of experience, deep technical level, ability to solve issue and deal with customer - sorted 15 cards within 3 minutes with persuasive logic and great reasoning. After short discussion we have seen he is right for position.

> Another guy ...the same test-case cards, was totally lost and after 5 minutes he did confess he has no idea based on what key he should create groups.

Salary and bonus system. Rules on code ownership and individual OS contributions. (do they think they own that) Option of working from home when you need to do something that would otherwise require 1 day off. Work assignment: do you get tasks from small team pm, or 30 different people with different priorities. Work system: everyone does their thing, or are you working in a group of N. What kind of tasks you get assigned: month long projects, or small bits.

1. What is the main skill you see necessary for someone to have to be successful in the position?

2. What is the most important thing you feel the person in this position will need to accomplish in the next 60-90 days?

3. What do feel would be the biggest roadblock that will prevent someone from being successful in this position?

Make sure you have experiences you can tie their answers to.

I spent a fair while thinking about this one for my first job in journalism--after all, what good's a reporter without questions. In the end, I asked the interviewers how they got their break in the industry. I think it worked well, I got my foot in the door at least.

I would ask: If a watermelon costs $5 dollars plus half the cost of a watermelon, how much does a watermelon cost?

Too much? (Limit approaches infinity?)

It's 10. You are essentially looking to the solution for:

x = 5 + (x/2)

10 = 5 + (10/2)

10$

$7.50

Cost = $5 Half = 2.50

you know I recently interviewed at a place I was even sort of interested in and they turned me down because they said they thought I wasn't really interested, and I didn't even ask them anything like this question. Imagine if I had!

I should have asked and now do, how the code quality is (in their opinion) and if I can take a look at a representative sample or samples. This is probably the most important. Also, if they practice TDD so I can avoid the job.

Isn't TDD supposed to be good? Maintainability? Makes it easier to sleep at night?

One person's best practices are another person's reasons to 'get me outta here!'.

Depends on your opinion. My opinion is that it's a ridiculous idea based on the concept of unit testing which for most code makes absolutely no sense (because at least with OOP code, you hardly ever have units worth testing). Then again, some people swear by them and TDD. Whatever rocks your boat. But regardless of your opinion, asking if they use it is a good idea so you know what you're getting into.

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