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Comment by teeray | Hacker News Reader

The trouble with “interview the interviewer” is that you typically have, best case, 10 minutes left over to ask your perfunctory “any questions for me?” Just enough time for you to scratch the surface. If you throw hardballs, the interview will run out of time before you can throw many of them.

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As someone who’s been an interviewer approximately 50X more often than I’ve been interviewed, I have come to love the “any questions for me?” part of the interview.

I have progressively reserved more and more time for it, particularly for candidates who are already making a strong impression. And for candidates who are otherwise hard to read or on the boundary, it’s been a great opportunity for clarifying discussion.

Would strongly recommend leaving 30-50% of the interview for candidate-driven topics.

Same. I want candidates to ask me questions. If they don't, I prompt them. If they still don't have any questions, that usually counts against them.

Of course, that's because I cultivate teams where I want people to think for themselves, even if that means dissent or arguing with me. I'm not trying to hire a bunch of "yes people" who just make me feel good. And I'm aware that it takes a lot of courage to ask questions or challenge an interviewer, but that's a similar trait that I'm after in the roles I'm usually filling.

At 44 years old and with 22.5 years of experience I will now go to the corner weeping that I have met maximum 3 people like you in my entire life.

You people apparently don't dwell in Eastern Europe or even most of Europe (I have been around). It's a meat grinder here.

I find value when in asking questions when I’m interviewing for a particular team.

But, some companies do team matching and allocate time for you to ask questions to managers/ICs you won’t be working with.

What questions are worth asking in this context?

That just opens up questions for a third-party perspective. If the team you are interviewing for is hated, that is a red flag because usually teams need to collaborate with other teams.

With team matching, you generally don't even know what team you might be working on until after you've passed the technical/behavioral interviews

I've asked for and received more time during the interview process to ask these kinds of questions, so you can just do that. If they say "no", that's a pretty strong signal itself.

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