Ask HN: How do you evaluate the culture of the dev team you're interviewing for? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you evaluate the culture of the dev team you're interviewing for?

42 pointsthree_legs24 comments

I recently got a new job and the culture of what I expected the engineering team to be vs. how I am now experiencing it is vastly different.

The first thing that stands out is that during my interviews, everyone had their video on, but now during standups and sprint planning, no one (except me) has their video on; the standups are also everyone saying "yep, working on ticket 455, probably finish that today, that's all for me, no blockers" and no real interactive discussion or engagement.

Besides explicitly asking "do you all have video on for meetings?" or "is standup more than just a one line status update?", how do you evaluate (what kinds of questions do you ask) an engineering team when interviewing to get a good sense of their culture?

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Most interviews do not have enough time to assess for culture fit (from the candidate), so ask for time. Any company that has a good culture will be happy to give you an hour to ask questions, maybe more. This might be only at the offer stage, but by that point they are invested enough that there's no reason other than hiding a bad workplace to not give you that time.

Treat it almost like an interview. Write up questions, think about the questions for a while, think about what a good and bad answer looks like. They're probably going to be pretty open ended, and the conversation may be somewhat circuitous, but they will be valuable.

Questions I like to ask are things like:

- Walk me through the process from ideation, spec, code, testing, deployment, maintenance. Who owns each part? How long does each part take? Which people/roles, processes, tools/tech are involved?

- If you left, what would you want to take from this team to your next? What does the team do better than others?

- What do you think the team needs to improve at? What does it do less well than other teams you've been a part of?

- How does change happen? What mechanisms do you have for change? Can you give some examples of change happening?

- How does the team feel about... Code Review (or anything else you care about)

Very well summed up.

In addition, same set of questions can also be asked to people who've recently left the organisation.

I'd use the following criteria to filter ex employees:

- Reliable 1st/2nd level connections

- Folks who have shown stability in the past (generally stick to jobs for > 2 years)

Obviously, they'd come with biases. But, talking 2-3 people should also help reliably gather broad culture patterns. Should avoid listening to evidently disgruntled folks.

Based on a study by Stanford, there are 5 types of corporate cultures in tech.

1. Star: Hire the best people, give them super luxurious offices and perks, let them do what they like. Something like Fog Creek, where interns get a luxurious hotel when called in for interview and get flown in via helicopter.

2. Engineering-based: The whole org chart architecture is based on pushing engineering as far as possible. Something like Google and Facebook, where management decisions are made based on data, and marketing is done from a perspective of "if you build a good product, it will be easy to sell."

3. Bureaucratic: Culture emerges from the middle managers. Job descriptions are clear cut. Often things like pay and perks follow a rigid formula and there are regular rituals and routines.

4. Autocratic: Similar to bureaucratic, but designed around one person, usually the CEO. Work, do what the boss says, get paid. Not necessarily evil, something like Steve Jobs comes to mind.

5. Commitment: Build the company as a place where people don't want to leave. Avoid firing anyone, often offering retraining for existing staff. Lifestyle perks - generous maternity leave, work from home options, training. Basecamp is a model company.

Some are hybrids, which usually does worse than the others by mixing the worst of both worlds. E.g. if you adopt a star culture, you probably can't adopt rigid project management, and you can't do two months maternity leave.

The others are not bad. E.g. Autocratic does the worst on average. But that doesn't mean it's wrong. I probably work in an autocratic environment and it's the best job so far. There's upsides, like management being fully aware of the product, development, marketing, and users.

You can probably reverse engineer interviews to see which they fit. An org chart will clearly point out most of these.

Yours sounds like it's not a star or commitment culture. But it could well be an engineering culture, which is not bad either.

I believe the cited work is "The Company They Keep: Founders' Models for Organizing New Firms" by M Diane Burton, 2001. [0] That's 20 year old model. It's a chapter in the book "The Entrepreneurship Dynamic: Origins of Entrepreneurship and the Evolution of Industries" [1].

Any how, the paper talks about 3 dimensions of culture: attachment, selection, and coordination & control. Rishi Dean's summary [2] is OK.

From my perspective, I would look at trust, which Laszlo Bock has reported on, where your prospective organization's products are in market, and how that organization figures out what to build.

FWIW, Abstract for "Founder's Models" -- This chapter examines the employment models founders use as they begin to construct new firms. The empirical setting is a sample of emerging technology firms in Silicon Valley. This chapter focuses on two questions: (1) Why are new firms founded under different conceptual models? and (2) What are the factors that lead a founding team to espouse a particular employment model?

[0] https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a... [1] https://www.amazon.com/Entrepreneurship-Dynamic-Evolution-In... [2] https://rishidean.com/2010/10/23/startup-employment-design-p...

Yup, that's the one. Didn't realize it was a chapter. Excellent summary.

> You can probably reverse engineer interviews to see which they fit. An org chart will clearly point out most of these.

I'm not so sure that's true. I've worked at companies where the culture of the hiring manager and the rest of the organization were at odds (for example, at one place I was hired by an engineering culture CTO, but the CEO and rest of org were autocratic, with a bit of star culture around enterprise sales rainmakers, and nothing in the hiring process suggested that as an IC I would have to routinely drop everything, implement a new feature, and deploy it to production because the VP of sales was trying to close a deal, with the CTO I report to helpless to intervene).

My personal anecdata suggests this type of misalignment is particularly hard to detect in orgs between about 70 and 150 employees, but other things can distort the picture you get, and in particular, you may not be able to tell that portions of the org chart vary in their level of detail.

I had an interview where the tech lead was typing on her computer the whole time and didn't seem to focus at all on the interview. At one point she asked me a question and went straight back to typing. When I was done with my answer she didn't even acknowledge it - the manager had to jump in and ask me another question after about 10 seconds of silence.

They offered me the job. I turned it down. The manager was surprised and asked me why. I told him about that part of the interview and that if she wasn't able to give me any attention to even acknowledge my answer to her question, then I doubt she would give me enough to guide my work or lead me. The manager gave some weak excuses and practically begged me to take the job, even contacted my current manager at the time to pressure me. I still declined. No way am I willing to jump in that dumpster fire of a team.

“The manager gave some weak excuses and practically begged me to take the job, even contacted my current manager at the time to pressure me.”

Whoa, to tell your current manager you were looking around? This is a good example of pushing on one part of bad culture and finding a bunch of others but wow, not cool.

It was at the same company. They expect you to discuss posting with your manager before applying. Even if you don't, the application system notifies them automatically when you submit a resume.

In this case the hiring manager called my then current manager to ask what was going on, why I declined (even after I already told him), and basically trying to make me look like I was wasting company time or being rude.

Luckily I got another call later that day offering me a position with a different team, so i didn't have to deal with either of these managers again. Although we are a pay for performance shop, and I feel like the old manager screwed me on my year-end bonus (target is about $7k and I got $1k) and this probably played into that.

Culture is a difficult thing to discover in a relatively short interview, but usually I look for certain signs. Typically if I feel that the interview is more like an extended discussion instead of like being in a game show, it's usually a good sign.

It's also things around the interview itself, e.g. are you being treated respectfully, or do you feel like being just one CV among many. Do they respect your time; do they talk as an equal, or as a superior person; do they get back to you if they don't go through; and more. I find that a company that treats their applicants respectfully typically have a more agreeable culture.

Of course this is just my experience. Some game show style interview companies may turn out to have a great culture, but what I find without fail is that if you're respected as an applicant, the culture can't be that bad :)

Can you explain more what you mean by "game show style"?

To me it's like a quiz style of interview, where you're up on a whiteboard trying to answer a series of rapid fire questions. There is little discussion about why you're doing what you did, only a pass/fail signified by a nod or no-nod.

In contrast, a discussion style feels more like they're trying to figure out how you approach some problem, nudge you toward a solution if you're stuck (everyone usually gets stuck somewhere, especially if they have interview anxiety. I know I do), and discuss with you why you did what you did, discuss the pro/cons of some approaches, discuss alternatives, and so on.

The first style is just checking if you know the answers to some list of things, while the second style is more like trying to get to know you as a person and as an engineer.

The drawback of the second style is that it's more time consuming for both parties. Quite tiring as well. However, I think it's part of respecting your time and respecting you as an applicant.

Yeah, I think respectful treatment is key. The best talents can often pick from any job they like. Things like compensation for interviewing time or travel matters a lot. Or even things like keeping you updated on the interview process so that you know what the stages are, and not giving you some random 3 day project to reject you.

I've been in this situation multiple times.

You interview, you like what you see, form a (partially subconscious) opinion about the company/culture, take the job... and then discover some warts that weren't visible.

Now you know to be skeptical any time you interview, and make it your job to _hunt_ for the hidden warts. Ask questions as if the next N years of your happiness at work depend on it! Don't feel satisfied (or take the job) until you have reason to be relatively confident about what culture/situation you're getting into.

Honestly, this is why I'm glad I switched jobs every couple years at the beginning of my career. I've seen a wide range of types of companies (non-profit, agency, corporate, start-up). I've also experienced various cultural problems they don't reveal in the interview process.

Do they act like they have a nailed down process? It actually might be fluid, and they're presenting the current iteration.

Does the interview process not seem very rigorous? You'll have peers who aren't very competent, because the bar is low.

Make the _most_ out of learning from this experience! Make persistent attempts to move the culture in the right direction. Don't be afraid to fail at that. You can still gain a lot of growth from this.

> and no real interactive discussion or engagement. That's not what stand-ups for. Stand-ups are time bounded to keep everyone informed about the progress. I suppose discussion and engagement is your expectation.

It will be hard to evaluate the culture from an interview, you'll need to join and spend few months to know better.

> That's not what stand-ups for. Stand-ups are time bounded to keep everyone informed about the progress.

If that's what they're for, why is it even synchronous? If all you need is a one sentence status update, asynchronous Slack message would do. But I find that effective standups surface latent details that wouldn't come up asynchronously and also serve as a bonding time for the team

Covid is messing it all up. Our culture has suffered a decent bit (efficiency is up though :) ), I'm sure the new hires at my company are in the same boat as you..many of us know each other, so no video is just a whatever thing, but it's definitely something that could be off putting when not having the context of why. I'd say don't look to far into it and wait to judge until pandemic is over..well that is if they ever get people corralled back to offices full time

Well it's helpful not to look too deeply into it, but this is for a permanently remote position.

Your stand-ups sound like an absolute joy! I wish all of them were like that.

It is definitely challenging to get a sense of culture fit when interviewing, and Covid has forced some rapid changes for teams that may still be adapting to "temporary" work from home six months later. Companies that are focused on culture fit tend to have some declared core values and a mission statement, but these aren't always part of the ethos of the company/team goals or recognition.

Interviewing is a discussion of fit for both you and the employer, so you should feel free to ask questions (and they should allow time for this in the interview process). I would try to determine how committed the interviewers are to adhering to the company's values and mission, or if those are just words for the careers page.

For example: What is your company's mission statement? Does your team have a mission statement or vision? What is your favourite company value, and why? How do your company values factor into decision making or planning? Tell me about a recent decision influenced by your company values? If good values are embedded in the company culture, I would expect some passion and examples of their influence.

My company tries to be strongly aligned to our core values, and we have value-specific interview questions to be transparent about how those values are applied. For example, for our "Be Intellectually Honest" value one of the interview discussion points might be "Can you describe a time your manager took a stance or action that you didn’t agree with, and how you responded to it.". The spirit & intention of this core value is that we have courage in our convictions but work hard to ensure biases or personal beliefs do not get in the way of finding the best solution. This is not a pass to use candor as an excuse to make kind or unproductive remarks.

I think the specific examples you've mentioned (video during meetings, agenda/format for stand-ups) are more about connection and collaborative workflow than culture. I expect companies will probably have a core value that maps to collaboration, so you could ask how that value is reflected in team activities. Daily stand-ups in scrum are normally quick updates rather than social chatter: what did you work on yesterday, what are you working on today, any blockers. Ideally there will be other team activities that encourage more social interaction (share & learn, beverage o' clock, etc).

Personally I would encourage video-on for synchronous stand-ups and sprint planning. as otherwise it is challenging to feel engaged in the discussion. However, if your team isn't doing this you should be able to have an open conversation on why that is the case. Perhaps there is some underlying issue (video is distracting or unreliable for some) that you haven't considered. Great company culture is owned and shaped by the employees, so you should feel empowered to help make your company culture better.

Thanks for the detail and for the super helpful actionable advice! I'll give that a try. How would you go about asking the team why they keep their video off? Should I ask during standup, in Slack?

Not judging, but they might have their video off because they are in their pyjamas, laying on the bed, they might be doing something else until it's their time to speak.

I would start by asking your team lead or manager why the team doesn't use video (particularly for longer meetings like sprint planning), as they may have more context. I expect the daily standup aims to be a fast and efficient status update without the distraction of folks getting their video sorted. There is probably a more appropriate team meeting for discussions, but if you don't have a suitable regular team meeting then discussing in a team Slack channel would be better than sidetracking the standup.

If you want to make the suggestion of adding video to a meeting, think about what the benefits might be for your team and whether there may be more suitable occasions to do so (eg sprint planning or a meeting later in the day). If your coworkers understand more of the Why behind your request they will hopefully be more willing to give this a try. They may also have valid reasons for not wanting to use video too often (camera shy, limited bandwidth, messy workspace, meeting is too early/late in their day, etc).

Another idea that might have less resistance versus changing an existing meeting would be to try starting something new (and optional), like a Tech Talk series. We have occasional internal Tech Talks, where the goal is short technical presentations or discussions (about half an hour) over one of our lunch breaks. Sometimes there are visiting presenters from other offices or companies. These sessions are great if you want to learn more about job-relevant tech that someone is learning, using, or building.

If your goals include fostering more social interaction and connection with the team, you could also try suggesting a format that more directly achieves that. For example, we started a Share & Learn series where anything is on-topic except work. The concept is to facilitate directed discussion about a personal passion topic. We plan for an hour (usually at the end of the day, once a month) with up to 3 speakers and around 15 minutes per speaker plus questions (delivery format up to the speaker). This has resulted in some great talks/demos/discussions which helped us learn more about our coworkers (and beekeeping, craft beer, technical interviews, video game mods, DNS, knots, ballet, ...). We also open those up to everyone in the office and encourage everyone to participate (irrespective of their department/org).

Some companies or teams may not be open to these sort of ideas, but circling back to your original question about trying to evaluate company culture before you accept a job... you can ask about these aspects in interviews as well. What does your team do to keep up with new tech? What regular social or tech sessions does the team have? Is there a budget for team lunches or social activities and how often do these happen?

Thanks for all the great detail, it's really useful! I appreciate the time you took to share and I feel inspired and more prepared to try some new things out!

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