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Comment by HarryHirsch | Hacker News Reader

How about the standard questions:

* How much money is in the bank, i.e. how long can they go until the next investment round?

* Where does the company see itself in five years?

* What opportunities are there for employee development?

And please, please stop with the cultural fit! Some people do not want to have to go for beers every other night or play Xbox tournaments all Friday!

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The "cultural fit" stuff is a sore spot with me. If you have any kind of life outside of work (or want one), this can be a real stumbling block. Maybe I want to take a walk during lunch, and relax, and not be forced to talk about work during communal lunches. I might want to go see non-work friends or family once the day's work is done, and not go to the bar and show everyone that I like the same microbrews that the office likes. And Friday evenings? Forget about me wanting to stick around the office.

Well said. We aren't looking for friends (although it doesn't hurt), we're looking for a great place to work!

I think "Will they laugh if I quote something from Office Space?" suggests something different, more about the levity of the team.

Actually, I've seen places where "Do they ever laugh?" would be a more appropriate question.

You know, it's not necessarily a bad thing. I and many others like some separation between "work life" and "personal life"

That's a fair point, but there are also many of us who want to be friends with our co-workers, and not just see them as little automatons that we interact with for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and never again.

Personally the kind of companies I prefer to work for are exactly the kind where lots of people are genuinely friends, where they do group activities (voluntary, of course) together outside of work, and where people actually like and enjoy each other.

Likewise with the company I've founded... when the day comes that we have employees and all that jazz, I do care about "cultural fit" and I would prefer to bring in people who want to be in that kind of environment. It has nothing to do with wanting to control anyone's "outside of work" life, or denying them "separation of work and personal", it's just that it's more fun to work in that kind of environment and also, IMO, more productive.

None of this implies that we would ever demand that someone sacrifice elements of their personal life in favour of doing things with co-workers, of course. And we would not be doing group events where participation is mandatory or where you would be "dinged" for choosing not to go. It's just that I like working in a very collegial, friendly, inviting culture where people genuinely enjoy each other.

'when the day comes that we have employees and all that jazz, I do care about "cultural fit" and I would prefer to bring in people who want to be in that kind of environment.'

When the day came when I had to hire a few people, I didn't want to hurt my social relationship with friends in case the business turned south so I hired people a bit more removed from me socially. It's hard enough to think about firing one of them (what will they do afterwards? will they land on their feet elsewhere?), but it would be nearly impossible to fire a friend for poor performance or for anything that isn't a crime.

It's presumptuous to say so, but I think it should be said since it is good advice: you should work towards removing that separation as it will likely improve your life as a whole. I get where you're coming from - work is just how you support the enjoyable parts of your life - but it really is possible to make work also an enjoyable part of your life by working with a team you enjoy on a project that you're passionate about. It's not easy, but it's worth working towards!

"you should work towards removing that separation as it will likely improve your life as a whole"

... and possibly destroy your business. It's hard enough to fire a person, but now imagine having to fire someone you spend your off-hours with. Entangling work and personal life basically clouds your ability to view people objectively.

"work is just how you support the enjoyable parts of your life"

That's not what I'm saying. When you entangle work and personal life, you make it harder for yourself to make the hard decisions.

I wasn't advocating having all of your work colleagues as best friends - just being comfortable enough with them so that everyone can share a joke.

I know I'm nitpicking here, but there could be many reasons for someone not to laugh at quotes from that movie, and not all of them are necessarily negative to me when screening an employer. I tend to groan when I hear anything from that now 14 year old movie, because it was ok at the time, but just ok and its a signal that you see yourself as part of a hacker/dweeb culture that I personally see as having lived past its due date. There's plenty of other movies you can quote from.

On a more serious note, I feel that the Dilbertization of the workspace is a problem, on both sides (employer/employee). It's essentially the replacement of idealism with cynicism, and a bad sign overall.

I don't necessarily need to be friends with coworkers, but if (say) once a month everyone grabs a beer together, that's not a bad thing and it is something I've asked about at interview.

I've worked in places where the answer there would have been "no, never, and we don't eat lunch together either" and really didn't enjoy it.

Cultural fit is a huge deal to me, and I think it's pretty essential, at least for the small company that I work for. We don't force people to come out for drinks or for lunch or anything (although most people are happy to). You can still be a great cultural fit without spending any extra time outside of the office with your coworkers. It's how you work together on a day-to-day basis. We have an atmosphere that not everybody will like. Some of us tell really terrible and unfunny jokes. We typically leave the lights off first thing in the morning. We talk through a lot of our internal stumbling blocks and are open about them. The cultural fit is to make sure that you'll be able to work in the atmosphere that the company has established, not to make sure you'll come get drunk with us.

What you've described is what cultural fit should be, I suppose. It is just that I've seen it too often degenerate into how the company can control your non-work hours. But yes, it is certainly important that the work environment be compatible with the way you like to work. In that regard, cultural fit makes a lot of sense.

That being said, you cannot seriously say that not going out with the rest of the office doesn't affect their relationships with their coworkers, at least in the sense that everyone will know everyone else better than this person knows everyone else.

Amen to the first question.

I also ask/try to figure out in a very small startup "Can you fire people?" Because many people are bad at this and the only thing worse than a bad hire is not dealing with it in a timely fashion.

For that matter, your interview will implicitly tell you how good they might be at hiring good people.

> And please, please stop with the cultural fit! Some people do not want to have to go for beers every other night or play Xbox tournaments all Friday!

But that is cultural fit. If the culture is not doing those things.

You can be a good cultural fit for a job even if you don't fraternize outside of work hours.

The culture thing to me has never meant doing things outside work. Is that a startup thing I'm not aware of? Even in the OP, I don't think that's quite what was meant. It's more a matter of shared interests and compatible personalities.

Maybe you're not the type to hang out outside work, you don't have time, whatever. But how well are we going to get along for the 8 hours a day we spend together?

These are great questions to ask! Especially, the second one. Understanding how and where the company is going is important because it says a lot about how your role might change over time.

However, I disagree about "cultural fit". I feel like being on board with the values and practices of a company are important. Beers and ping-pong aren't all there is to company culture.

"* How much money is in the bank, i.e. how long can they go until the next investment round?"

Is there any way to verify this information? Anyone can say anything, and even if they show you the bank balance you don't know the expenses etc

Indeed, but I've never found that necessary. The reactions to the question, including non-verbal, tell you a whole lot, as does the specificity of the reply.

You might be able to look at your country's company registration office and look at the annual reports they file. They might claim to have been profitable and cash flow positive for years, but their annual reports might show something different.

"look at the annual reports they file"

only applicable for public companies or those with enough shareholders that they have to issue public reports. For small startups it doesn't apply.

FYI: Just did the biannual report for NY state (for a small partnership) -- they don't ask for income; they just want a statement of ownership

Depends on the area and country. Some small non public companies that I'd consider start up have had to file reports.

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