It's weird that you dont judge potential hires on the quality of their questions, the most important parts of most creative jobs are being able to ask the right questions.
And no, not really. My job is to assess their technical skills, not how well they ask me about my work life balance while in a relatively high stress environment.
If I am interviewing at a company I certainly want to know that I am not going to be working at a dumpster fire. I want to know how you internally resolve conflicts relating to code reviews for example, so I know that you uphold standards and dont just allow things to get progressively worse as time goes on due to systematic indifference. Now you could be lying to me but that's why I ask more than one question. Certainly to me it feels like if a candidate is asking these kinds of questions during an interview process then that candidate also cares about those things, which depending on whether you are running a java sweatshop or an organized and productive development company seems like it would have some importance.
I call this process fit. It's important to some candidates, and some employers. It's clearly important to you, and you should ask those questions; interviewing is a two-way street.
But if I'm an employer that makes process a big deal, I'm not giving you points for those questions, because I'm going to be sussing out your process fit earlier anyway. If I'm not an employer that makes process a big deal, I'm probably not giving you points for those questions, because it's not a big deal to me (this could be a red flag for you, depending on the answers you get from your probing questions)
An apt symmetry, as typically the questions a candidate gets asked during an interview also have no overlap to the questions they would get asked as part of the real job.
When I'm actually working at a place, I don't need to ask those questions. I already know the answer.
I would be worried if someone nevet asked about the thing they were going to be working on, asked why certain design decisions were made, or asked how it gets developed.
The unfortunate reality is usually you're given 5-10 mins at the end in a hasty "what would you like to ask me?" so I tend to stick to the more basic type questions. Repeating across interviewers to see what patterns pop up.
That said I'm not shy about pushing back with questions during an interview session itself, and that's where things like you're talking about can get worked in. Of course if they insist on "solve this problem" type sessions, there's less of that. But it's also less likely I want to work there. So it works out for me.
after all that, I feel the candidate deserves at least 5-10 minutes at the end to ask their own honest questions without having to worry about what they're signaling.
if not how do you decide to allocate them?