Ask HN: Reverse interview questions or how to avoid bad clients & employers | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Reverse interview questions or how to avoid bad clients & employers

9 pointsCptCodeMonkey6 comments

I've been a consultant for a few years now and have done alright in that role, but I very much miss being able to invest into a product or platform vs. being the rock star messiah and showing up to hopefully save the day.

Over the year's I've tried being an employee and don't mind most of what that entails. Crunch time's within reason are expected and pivoting in startup's is just the way things go. What I do have a problem with are companies that outright lie: "Oh yeah we have test coverage" from 3 years ago, "We are going to be the next Google!" but we have crippling technical debt, and other more bizarre incidents "We are fiscally sound and will last for a thousand years!" but we will start laying people off next month.

Somethings just cannot be foreseen or detected early, several years ago I was with a fairly successful startup that partially imploded because the partners could not handle the stress ( alcohol & substance abuse ). That said, besides obvious things like whiteboard interviews and out of domain technical questions (ex "How would you implement a B-tree?" for a webdev company ) is there any questions that might give a better insight to a company's soundness?

Here's a reverse interview question I'm toying with. One question I've had a few times is "Give an example of a time when you've had conflict at work?" - or variations on that theme. After giving the normal canned response I like to add:

1. You're asking because there is the normal amount of office conflict in your work place? 2. You're trying to build a "Team of Rivals" company culture like Barrack Obama in 2008 i.e. making Hilary his secretary of State 3. You're giving me a coded message that there are genuinely prickly personalities and a lot of conflict in your team?

Number 3 is the real question.

The good thing about asking reverse questions is that you can avoid getting bad clients and employers. The problem with asking these kind of questions is that it puts the employer on the back foot and is unlikely to result in a job. It will depend on how much you want the job I suppose.

Yeah, I've worked in two shops where every developer was on guard for themselves, those were not fun situations. I can usually figure out I am in such a scenario when I ask someone if they would mind helping me by reviewing or talking through how I solved a somewhat prickly problem. If they instantly turn me down in such a way that to suggest "Not my problem, not my concern" I usually tack that onto a mental score sheet for deciding not to renew or extend my contract.

Usually I am more receptive towards teams that have a final interview stage where all of the other dev's weigh in. I've avoided some fairly toxic places because of that step.

One that I quite like but have not tried yet is: "What is the reason this role is available"

This provides insight into if the role has come out of an expanding workload/new projects or replacing an employee.

If it is to replace an employee you could follow up with "how long were they with you". What you are trying to do is get hints of if there is high staff turnover. You could also add in some more questions about staff retention but this could lead to some uncomfortable situations and might not go down well with the employer, as Stonk has mentioned already.

The other side of this is if they have new projects or increased workloads. This will lead you into discussion about the projects/work and hopefully let you get a better idea on where the role will fit into the company.

I like that, seems fairly benign.

With clients, "Why aren't you using the same consultant as your last project?"

I usually ask that one right off the bat, usually its because they've realized off shoring wasn't working out or the "consultancy" they were using was only effective in ensuring the "consultants" had a pulse.

I am not very popular with a few of the local firms in that regard because I usually teach my preferred client's to ask really stupid questions like "We're using MVC version 2.0 but want to upgrade to 2.6.3, do you have someone with that skillset?" My client's like it because it makes them feel smart and I like it because I usually don't get re-contracted to fix my stuff and work around the client's reduced budget from a bad hire.

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