Ask HN: Interview tomorrow – How to learn whether an org is “healthy”?

Is this outgoing manager already gone? If not, see if you can talk to him/her. Take that story, and the story you get from the people hiring you, and average them.

I would ask them what, specifically, within the organization itself failed w/r/t the manager being replaced and what has the organization changed to prevent the same thing from happening in the future.

For example, did they not evaluate the manager before putting them into a position where they failed? How do they know it was a communication problem? Remember, this question is not asking the details of what happened (those don't really matter). This question is asking what the organization did and how does the organization improve itself over time.

The last thing I'll say is that it's very difficult to establish the 'health' of a team during a brief interview. 'Health' is often variable in that what I find healthy and effective you may not. Most teams aren't filled with psychopaths. Also, if you have the right tools and a willing team you (that's a plural you) can change and build a team that is healthy and productive.

Ask permission to talk to the outgoing manager. If they balk at transparency, you'll know where the "communications" problem lay.

So they told you, an external candidate, that they're firing someone, and that you would take their position?

That's a pretty big red flag with respect to organizational behavior. It seems incredibly unprofessional.

Observe the employees.

Is the office full after 5 - 6 PM? Is everyone looking at the floor when the boss walk in? Is everyone's nails bitten to a bloody mess? Are there any female employees? Are the desk too clean and absent of personal items?

My favorite interviewing question as an IC was "Tell me about someone on your team you admire". It let me learn about what people valued based on why people were admired, and gave some depth-of-bench sense whether there were lots of distinct names, or if everyone was in awe of the one good person on the team.

If you're looking for cross-team health, maybe you could adapt it to "Tell me about someone on the other team that you admire?"

There are a lot of things you can ask for that will red flag an organization as a whole.

Are you being given stock. Ask for a cap table and learn to read it.

Tell them your wiling to sign an NDA, and that you want to look at the repository. Tell them that you may need to ask follow up "who is who" questions to pin checkins. Code never lies. Embattled areas of code, and comments are great targets for your search.

Ask about recent outages and technical issues. Are they having problems keeping things up and running. Ask about how they were identified and how long to resolve.

Do they have documents for requirements? Wireframes, PRD's. Ask to see these as well.

If they raise any objection to any of this, just ask for a reason. It might set off an alarm for you. It might be reasonable.

Since you have some history with the other team leads, make a personal phone call. Start the call off that way (that its a personal call) and that you want to know the truth/history here because you have concerns. If there is something funny going on in the background one of them might just give you an honest answer.

Talk to as many people as you can at the company, especially people who aren't in leadership positions. Ask if you can talk to a couple of the people who'd be reporting to you. A scheduled interview is like talking to a provided reference, while an unscheduled interview is like calling up someone not on the provided reference list - you're more likely to get something interesting from the latter.

Whether it's a scheduled or unscheduled interview, people generally want to speak honestly with you - they just might not feel like they have permission to do so, or feel that airing the company's dirty laundry would be inappropriate. In my experience, it can be hard to get people to initially admit things aren't perfect, but once they've done so, the floodgates open.

I tend to ask things like "so, how would you rate working here on a scale of one to ten?" Unless they're absolutely delighted with their workplace, most people respond with an eight or a nine, which doesn't mean anything - you'll get an eight or nine if the company's pretty great, and you'll get an eight or nine if the company's a total dumpster fire. But then you can say "A nine? Why not a ten? What would make your experience here a ten?" This doesn't always work, but at this point the interviewee figures they've already admitted the company isn't 100% ideal and I've usually gotten an unvarnished opinion.

> They want to replace the existing manager for vague, but apparently real, "communication" problems ...

"Communication" is a two-way process.

As they say: Communicate, it can't make things worse.

Check out their employees reviews at www.glassdoor.com

Some interesting advice I got from another thread a while back: During your interview excuse yourself to the restroom at some point. The general cleanliness there says a lot about how they value employees.

A friend of mine once said he asked an interviewer, "so just how screwed up is this company"? Not because he expected a straight answer, but because he wanted to watch the interviewer's first reaction -- if their facial expression showed genuine surprise, or a knowing nod, maybe even an incriminating smile...

I like to ask, "Do you have a bug tracker?" then follow up with "Is your bug count increasing or decreasing?" No matter how they answer, it tells you a lot about the organization.

check the coffee machine, general cleanliness of the office especially breakroom if they are clean and well stocked,look for notices on printers or washroom's that "xxxxx is not working & repairs has been notified". See if they have a gym,check the condition of office chairs,are they ergonomic ?. Ask about appraisal process and career path. If they dont answer well and the interviewer is not clear on that,it means an unhealthy org structure. Finally check on glassdoor and a wild card search on google with the email domain of the org,something interesting might come up.

"Communication" issues is a catchall b.s. reason rarely used for legitimate reasons. Whenever i hear it my b.s. radar sounds and I instantly suspect the person claiming another has communication problems as trying to undermine them...throw them under the bus etc.

The reason being is its an abstract issue that is hard to define or fix.

Have them clearly define the "communication" issue that led to the person getting fired.

Communications issues are usually two-sided so I'd lean more heavily towards figuring out what those could be. 30 people split between 3 timezones is challenging.

1) Ask why the other person is leaving for real. They should be vulnerable and tell you the truth. Sometimes they'll hide behind something like "thats confidential" which you can't really argue with, but I'd dig into it. If they get nervous walk away.

2) Ask them what systems or processes they want to improve or change and why. What isn't working? etc.

3) How will you be evaluated in your role. Sometimes there are unclear expectations from managers or any other "leadership" style role at a company. This isn't OK because it might just take one person to change their mind about how you're doing for you to be "not good enough". Again; dig into it.

4) How is the company doing from a financial perspective. Whats the burn? Whats the revenue? What's the LTV/CAC? If they can't answer or won't, I'd consider that a red flag.

5) How is the product roadmap set. How far out are they thinking? Make sure it lines up with your vision of how to organize groups the right way.

I like to ask things like, "If you could change one thing about the company engineering practices, what would it be?"

The answers can be telling. If they give an answer like, like, "I wish we would adopt $random_programming_language." That, to me, indicates a fairly healthy organization, because this is just one guy's technical preference.

If they give an answer like, "We need need to stop thrashing", that gives a different picture.

If they say, "Nothing at all", you need to run, because they can't think critically about themselves.

If they use pronouns like "them" and "they" instead of "us" and "we", then the interviewer doesn't feel like part of the team.

This flips your question on its head a bit, but are you going into this offer excited to try and get the teams to work better together, or because you want a role leading teams that are already working really well?

If you expect to inherit fully functional teams I think you're probably not going to enjoy the gig. If, however, you're excited about the chance to get a group of developers firing on all cylinders again then perhaps this is the right job for you.

If you want to ask a question, I'd ask what challenge they have experienced to date linking these teams together to get them working well. What specific things do they expect you to try and fix and improve, etc. I'd also ask how, as leaders at the company, they stay aware of how things are going, touchpoints, etc.

Key symptom for a lot of issues at a company tends to be a lack of transparency (at least this has been my experience). Asking questions that get to employee engagement, involvement, and feedback processes can be good signals of transparency or potential issues.

Worry less about "organizational health" and more about "organizational fit".

"Healthy" can mean different things to different people. Some employees care primarily about work/life balance, and being able to sneak out early on Fridays to hit the slopes. (I'm looking at you, entire state of Colorado.) Others want a high-pressure, high-reward environment, where their colleagues live up to the same high standards they expect of themselves. (cough Amazon cough)

So rather than trying to find a place which is healthy, find somewhere which is healthy for you; with a culture which reflects your values, benefits which support your lifestyle and leaders who help you grow.

No company is a perfect employer and no person a perfect employee, but that doesn't mean there doesn't exist perfect relationships.

Its a leadership position, Can't you deal with the situation? are you hoping to find a perfect team to lead?

IMO, Its a negotiation. Ask for autonomy so you can shape the culture the way you want it to be.

A question I like to ask at the end of an interview is 'What do you most like about working here?'. Not only does it end the interview on a positive note, it also allows you to get a better grasp about what the corporate culture is like. I'd suggest that you want to look for responses that indicate a strong team dynamic, interesting work or freedom to manage your own time as long as you get the work done. However, regardless of what is said, if the responses don't quite sit right with you I'd suggest you trust your gut.

A few things:

1) Reach out to people who used to work there. You have to discount the negativity somewhat, but if the response is positive then that's a good sign.

2) Rather than ask "Are there communications problems" you should ask "What are the biggest communication challenges?" Also ask, "What are the 2-3 most important managerial areas for me to fix on day one, and the 2-3 most important areas for me to leave alone"

3) Go to Glassdoor. Again you have to discount the negativity, but that will give you good areas to probe and it's fair to ask, "I see this on Glassdoor, what do you say?"

Good luck tomorrow!

Just ask them straight out what the "communications issues" with the existing manager are.

If you're uncomfortable challenging them, frame it as you trying to be the best candidate you can be. "If I take this position, I want to make sure I have a full understanding from day one of what I need to do to contribute the most to the team. What could I be doing to help you?"

This is a question they really ought to be able to answer; not in terms of why the current person sucks, but in terms of where the team is breaking down currently. A good answer to this question means they've thought about the problems and the personnel change is part of some kind of strategy to solve them, which is a good sign.

If they won't answer that, odds are their internal culture isn't very communicative in general, which is bad. And if they can't answer that, it means they don't know where the breakdowns are and are just blaming someone reflexively, which is even worse.

I would definitely ask them to elaborate on the communcations issues.

I would also ask how they're currently handling three teams on three continents - if you as a manager are supposed to deal with all three teams and at least one of them is "needy", I wouldn't be surprised if the communications issue is that the current manager is speaking in tongues because he hasn't had more than an hour's worth of sleep a night for the past year...

For engineering jobs, most future coworkers will tell you pretty honestly what's going on if asked directly.

You don't want to have to be exposed as a liar once the candidate starts, after all.

For leadership jobs, it might be a bit different.