There is absolutely no benefit to a potential employee or the employer not to be up front about these things to good hires. A good hire can easily find another job in a matter of weeks and given the cost to the company to train new hires and get them familiar with the project, it would be a colossal waste to hide these things until after they are hired only to have them leave and have to repeat the entire hiring process all over again.
Companies generally have tech sourcers use software like Gem to spam thousands of candidates, link press releases about their funding rounds, then expect candidates to be excited about the company right away. Very rarely is much invested in selling the company, I think it’s actually gotten worse over the years due to platforms that automate candidate experience like Gem.
I got “bait-and-switched” on some key details of my current job, but it’s not so simple at all to just leave. Hiring managers don’t like job hoppers, they will wonder if you got fired, whatever.
The idea that candidates are swamped with multiple offers is also just a oft repeated false narrative . I’ve 10+ years experience, was SWE at Google, CS degree from good school, can do most Leetcode medium and hard with ease, but still have about a 20% on-site to offer ratio. Companies say they are desperate to hire but can still be very picky. And to extent I understand why I got so many rejections I think it ties into me struggling with the “topgrading” grillings about why I left previous jobs, which would only get worse if I stormed out of a new job over anything that wasn’t a massive issue.
There’s a few reasons why the narrative employees have so much power persists in tech - excuse to push for more government funded training and visas, awful hiring practices that emphasize “false negative > false positive”, companies that pay way below market surprised candidates dont accept, outlier stories from rare candidates who played the job search game and negotiation game extremely well. But on average employers still have way, way more power in hiring and this idea that an engineer can just quit a new job and waltz into another one is absurd and false.
You aimed to resolve that uncomfortable tension by exaggerating the power of the candidate. In fantasy, a "good hire" is a rockstar; an amazing, fantastic individual who exists on the same plane as their paymaster. Of course, this one person and this group of people see eye-to-eye; they're equals!
In reality, particularly in the job realities outside of software engineering, candidates and employers are not equals. The applicant is the supplicant; they compete to do one job for a low price and at low risk to the company. Rejection for that candidate is hardship: a month without a paycheck, a month of uncertainty. Whereas rejection for the average company is just another process, a few more days filling a recruitment pipeline.
Such disparity sets the stage for the interview and beyond: the candidate refrains from poking into the gray areas of company for fear of losing the offer, and the company rigorously dissects the candidate for their own enjoyment. Maybe, once the candidate starts the job and sees the company's ugliness, they'll question their decision. But in most cases I've seen, the employee bows to the simple truth that they need their employers more than their employers need them.
or the company fails because they can't hire a key employee.
Companies that are competent in their business operation (not their domain, but the operation of running their business) will not suffer this hardship because they planned for it, and have put in redundancies or backups for business continuity.
It is indeed harder for a human candidate to do the same - but not impossible. That's why the FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) principle has the idea that you need to have at least 6-12 months of emergency funding. If you get rejected, this funding can keep you going and you're not shit out of luck (and be forced to accept a subpar offer).
The only problem is that most humans don't run their life like a business. But they should!
The practicality of this advise also depends on the situation of the job seeker: if you are looking for a job to pay your bills, then you will probably not try ask too many questions, for fear of giving the appearance of being 'difficult to work with'.
however the questions in the article are very thoughtful ones, i think that this article teaches how to ask good questions, that's also important.
I think you are making a questionable statement, specifically because you fail to describe what you mean by "these things" when talking about "these things or those things" can leak sensitive company information. For example, you would not want to describe what technology is used for secrets management or laptop security. What you mean may be very different, but that's the problem with the discussion: a lack of specifics. Everyone chooses to take the safest route.
> use the information they gain about company culture to determine where they want to work.
Yeah, culture, that you will inevitably talk about during your following interviews. This is a liability issue and game theory (again, because modern capitalism) dictates that you want to give the potential as little as possible when securing an agreement. Yes you can over-correct and probably do as a company for some situations, but it's better than the alternative.
Depending on your confidence level going in about how many offers you expect to get and how many offers you actually end up getting, your qualification and disqualification steps should be more or less rigorous. If you're confident of getting many good offers, then ask the tough questions in the phone screen to avoid wasting your time.
This isn't really an accurate statement, the asymmetry of the entire process ensures you will never really have the answers you need. Interviews grill you on everything you've done. When you ask about culture, they will invariably say "it's awesome" or some other vague response because they are the ones with the power in the relationship. They are not really under any onus or responsibility to answer any direct question or field specifics. "It's a good company, you want to work here" and that's about it. 5 min at the end is all you get and it's not even guaranteed to be anything other than a sales pitch.
r/CSCareerQuestions would readily contest you on that assertion.
I interview a LOT of candidates, and I make sure that there is always time at the end of the interview for the candidate to ask questions (even if that means running over on my time). Regardless of how well/poorly the interview went, I try to answer honestly and openly, to the best of my abilities. It's not in my best interest (or the company I work for) to hire someone who won't be happy working at the company - they won't be performing their best, and they won't last long.
Some (not all) hiring managers even treat this as an additional way to assess you, to see if you're the type of person who has done their research on the company and asks intelligent questions.
Much better to set expectations upfront and ask for half hour chat with the hiring manager (or even other team members such a tech leads) separate to the interview.
This is not true in my experience. Questions are expected and insightful questions have been considered major marks in favor of candidates. A lack of questions is seen unfavorably.
At this point in my career, as I'm looking for senior roles in internal development, I'm interviewing the company as much as they're interviewing me. If I have to take over major development projects and architecting, I need to know what I'm walking into. If they aren't comfortable answering questions, I don't need to work there.
Recently I interviewed for a senior position at a development company, and their CTO seemed miffed by fairly straight forward questions about their history and practices. I didn't get a third interview, but I also see they've now made a posting for that same job a 3rd time, so it doesn't seem like that strategy is working out for them. If you want senior developers to lead, you have to be honest with them about what they're leading.
Man! I can feel you. However, after these years, I've learned how to be a polite dick: You don't have to wait until they allow you to, job interview is a negotiation, not an interrogation. If you feel abused during an interview, give them an one star on Glass Door and try another company.
My strategy go like this: Whenever there is a chance to insert, I will start by asking which version control (or other quality management tool) they are using, followed by the detail of their CI/TDD/release/deploy system and code-reviewing tool, and then the code-reviewing and QA process, and then how they distribute responsibility and reward and so on.
In the real world, it sound like: "Oh, You guys using Git? Nice. So, do the team also use CI, such as Jenkins? ..... How you test your code? ..... So what's the code review tool the team is using?". Always sound positive, casual, cute and all while professional, like you just met the child of your middle school crush taking by his dad to your clinic for a flu shot. Control your emotion like an airplane lieutenant telling others "everything will be fine" while the airplane is crashing into the ground at supersonic speed.
If they can't produce an appropriate answer, maybe there isn't one[0]. I personally take it as a red flag, and will raise my caution when answering their question from the point and on.
Of course, you have to ask the question to the right person. Negotiation itself is a skill.
[0] You know, even if they don't have one, the correct and professional answer should be like "Oh, we don't have that right now. We would like to build one if it is necessary for us. [Do you like to share more information about it?|Do you like to build one with us?]"
But the article is about what you call the 5 minutes at the end, and how to make it work in your favour. If you ignore that opportunity, your experience will only be worse.
Once you're done with the interviews and they come back with an offer, ask for 30min with your future manager and 30min with someone from the team.
Then you can ask them as much as you want. It also shows the company you are seriously considering them.