
The Role
- What's the on-call plan/schedule? (what's the pay for standby and call-out)
- What are the tasks I would do on a usual day?
- Are there any specific goals for me?
- What's the junior/senior balance of the team? (and are there plans to change it)
- What does the onboarding look like?
- How much freedom for decision making do individual developers have?
- What are the expected/core work hours?
- What is your definition of success for this role?
- What do you expect me to accomplish in the first 1 month/3 months?
- How will you evaluate my performance at the end of the trial period?
- What does a typical day/week look like in this role?
- Do you have any concerns about my application?
- Tell me about who I would be working most closely with.
- What management style does my immediate manager and their manager have? (from micro- to macro-)
- How can I develop in my new role / what opportunities are offered?
Tech
- What are the usual stacks used at the company?
- How do you use source control?
- How do you test code?
- How do you track bugs?
- How do you monitor projects?
- How do you integrate and deploy changes? Is it CI/CD?
- Is your infrastructure setup under version control / available as code?
- What's the workflow from the planning to the finished task?
- How do you prepare for disaster recovery?
- Is there a standardised development environment? Is it enforced?
- How quickly can you setup a new local test environment for the product? (minutes / hours / days)
- How quickly can you respond to security issues in the code or dependencies?
- Are all developers allowed to have local admin access of their computers?
- Tell me about your technical principles or vision.
- Do you have a developer documentation for your code? Do you have a separate documentation for customers?
- Do you have some higher level documentation? (ER diagrams, database schema)
- Do you employ static code analysis?
- How do you manage internal / external artifacts?
- How do you manage dependencies?
The Team
- How is the work organised?
- How does the intra/inter-team communication typically work?
- Do you use any tools for project organization? What is your experience with them?
- How are differences of opinions resolved?
- Who sets the priorities / schedule?
- What happens after pushback? ("this can't be done in the projected time")
- What happens when the team misses a release target?
- What kind of meetings happen every week?
- Would there be a regular 1-on-1 with my manager?
- What's the product/service schedule? (n-weekly releases / continuous deployment / multiple release streams / ...)
- What happens after production incidents? Is there a culture of blameless analysis?
- What are some ongoing challenges the team is experiencing that you are yet to resolve?
- How do you track progress?
- How are expectations and goals set, and who does the setting?
- What does a code review look like here?
- Walk me through a typical sprint on this team
- How do you balance technical vs business goals?
- How do you share knowledge?
- How big are the teams?
Your Potential Coworkers
- Who do developers tend to learn from?
- What do you like best about working there?
- What do you like least?
- What would you change if you could?
- How long has the longest team member been there?
Remote Work
- What's the ratio of remote to office workers?
- Does the company provide hardware and what's the refresh schedule?
- How do you feel about BYOD? Are there any policies around it already?
- Are extra accessories/furniture possible to buy through the company? Is there a budget for them?
- Is there a budget for co-working space or internet access?
- How often are office visits expected?
- Are the office meeting rooms always prepared for video conferences?
Building Layout
- What's the office layout? (open plan / cubicles / offices)
- Is there a support / marketing / other call-heavy team close to my new team?
The Company
- Why is the company hiring? (product growth / new product / fluctuation / ...)
- Is there a conference/travel budget and what are the rules to use it?
- What's the promotion process? How are requirements / expectations communicated?
- What is the performance review process like?
- Is there a separate tech and management career path?
- Are there any company-wide resources for learning available, like ebooks subscriptions, or online courses?
- Is there a budget for getting certifications?
- What's the maturity stage? (early finding direction / feature work / maintenance / ...)
- Can I contribute to FOSS projects? Are there any approvals needed?
- Are there any non-compete or non-disclosure agreements I'll be asked to sign?
- Where do you see the company in the next 5/10 years?
- What does clean code mean to the majority of developers here?
- When is the last time you noticed someone growing here, and in what way were they growing?
- What does it mean to be successful here, and how do you measure success?
- Is there a Sports / Team building Activity?
- Are there any Hackathons conducted internally?
- Does the company support open-source projects?
Social issues
- What's the status of / view on diverse hiring?
- What do you think are the gaps in the company culture? (and what is the company culture?)
- What does work-life balance mean here?
- Does the company have a stance regarding climate change?
Conflict
- How are differences of opinions resolved?
- What happens after pushback? ("this can't be done in the projected time")
- What happens when the team is under pressure and commits to work over their capacity / velocity?
- If someone identifies areas of improvement in process / technology / etc, what happens?
- When there is a gap between expectations from management and performance of an engineer or team, what happens?
- Could you tell me a story about a toxic situation and how the company dealt with it?
The Business
- Are you profitable?
- If not, how long is your runway?
- Where does the funding come from and who influences the high level plan/direction?
- How do you make money?
- What's preventing you from making more money?
- What is the company's growth plan for the next 1 year? 5 years?
- What are the big challenges you see coming up?
- What have you identified as your competitive advantage?
Catch all
- What's the best and what's the worst aspect of working in this role / team / company?
- What got you to choose to work for the company initially?
- What keeps you at the company?
Compensation
- If you have a bonus scheme, then how are bonuses determined?
- If you have a bonus scheme, then what have been the typical bonus percentages over the past few years?
- Do you have a 401k or other retirement plan? If so, does the company match additional plan contributions?
- Are there medical benefits and if so, when do they start?
- Do you pay for relocation?
Time Off
- How much Paid Time Off (PTO) is offered?
- Are sick time and vacation time separate or do they come from the same pool?
- Can I use vacation time before it's accrued, effectively going into a negative PTO balance?
- What is the roll over policy is there for PTO?
- What is the parental leave policy?
- What is the policy on unpaid leave?
- What is the policy for sabbatical leave?
Other resources
Find more inspiration for questions in:
- The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code by Joel Spolsky
- Questions I'm asking in interviews by Julia Evans