This is a community resource for questions to ask when interviewing for a software engineering position. Some questions may be applicable for non-technical jobs too.
If you are the interviewee: Interviews are a two-way street, and when you are interviewing for a role, it is important to ask questions to get a sense of the role, organization, and team to make sure it aligns with your interests, values, and goals. Pick and choose the questions that are most important to you.
If you are the interviewer: These questions can help you better explain more about your organization, which will help the interviewee tremendously.
Questions are broken down into sections to make them easier to browse. Commentary is provided as nested list items in italics. Additional information and follow-up questions are also nested list items.
- How does the team work together on projects?
- What tools does the team use to communicate and collaborate?
- Does the team review code?
- If so, what does that process look like?
- Has there been an effort to pair program to work through tougher problems and new technologies?
- At what point does the development team get looped in to a project?
- Where do project designs come from?
- How does the development team work with the designs and/or design team?
- Does the design team layout PSDs or do they actually write code?
- How do analytics play into the development of the product and user experience?
- How does the team share thoughts and ideas?
- Are there morning stand-ups or check-ins to get the day rolling with the team?
- Is there an expectation of being on-call? Are weekends actually weekends or are people working through them?
- What time is work expected to happen? Can I work on my hours? How much overlap?
- Are there regular 1:1 meetings with supervisors to discuss how things are going, challenges, and feedback?
- How do new team members get brought up to speed?
- What is the process for releasing new versions of the software?
- Do the applications have multiple environments for testing before releasing to production?
- How is burnout approached and avoided?
- What is the organization’s approach to hiring a diverse team?
- How does the organization deal with conflicts and issues?
- How often does the organization do non-work things together and what are those activities?
- What is the organization’s approach to drinking in the office?
- If you don’t enjoy being around people drinking often and a lot, this is very good to know.
- Does the team document and share their findings and implementations to the rest of the team?
- Does the team approach tasks as get it done as quickly as possible or take the needed time to get it done right?
- For example, if someone has to get something done for a deadline, does it get done (but not cleanly) and then get forgotten about (thus becoming technical debt) or does it get updated and maintained?
- What programming languages are primarily used?
- Is there test coverage on any of the code?
- If so, how much is the coverage?
- What is the team’s approach and philosophy to automated testing?
- Are continuous integration services used?
- Related: Is continuous deployment used?
- How do new technologies get evaluated and decided upon?
- Can I use my editor of choice or is there an editor that must be used?
- Is version control being used?
- If so, which?
- Is source code hosted on a collaborative environment like GitHub or Bitbucket?
- Do you all provide hardware to use?
- If so, what are the specs and operating system?
- If being able to use Linux is important to you, be sure to ask.
- What drives what projects get worked on?
- Is it driven by marketing initiatives?
- Is it driven by users?
- What is the general lifecycle of a project?
- Is there a busy season or is work well balanced throughout the year?
- Are there regular retrospectives after major features and projects are completed?
- What does the organization do to help employees grow and be their best?
- What career progression is there and how does it work?
- Is there support for switching to other roles within the team and organization?
- Is there a budget for books, screencasts, and other educational materials?
- Is there budget for attending conferences at conferences and workshops?
- Is there 10% time for community, open source, and experimenting with technologies?
- Is the organization involved with supporting the local community (tech-related or not)?
- Is there the opportunity to work remotely full-time or partially (half-day home, half-day office)?
- If so, is the team able to communicate and function remotely?
- If in-office:
- Is "in the zone" time valued?
- Does music get played?
- What is the lighting like?
- Is "in the zone" time valued?
- Are employees expected to use personal accounts for their work?
- Whether it is instant messenger, sharing things, social media, etc.
- What is the process of getting access to necessary information (logins, configurations, data)?
- How are logins and sensitive information shared?
- What are the policies for contributing to and using open source code?
- What are the policies for personal projects, freelance work, and other jobs?
- Does the team create and maintain any open source projects?
- When and why do employees get raises?
- What are the benefits?
- How is time off approached?
- If the policy is unlimited time off, is there a minimum?
- If there is not a minimum, how do you all prevent people from not taking time off?
- This is a really important question. There may be pressure (even just perceived) to not take time off since it is abstract.
- If the policy is unlimited time off, is there a minimum?
- If there is a 401k, is there a percentage match? If so, what is it?
Contributions are welcome and encouraged. Let’s make this useful for as many people as possible. Please submit PRs and open issues on the repository to contribute.
See CONTRIBUTING.md for specifics.
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