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