okay, I expected to read another list of 7 questions to ask but this list is really excellent: each question made me think "yes, of course that should be asked and probably is not!"
And this is not just for engineers. I think anyone joining a startup, or new division of a company, would benefit from thinking through these questions.
or new division of a company - yes. From a budgetary standpoint, new divisions within an established blue-chip company can somewhat be thought of as kin to startups. They're young and have to prove themselves.
"how do you manage employee performance evaluations? What is the career advancement process like?" (if someone's got a better way to determine if a place does stack ranking without directly asking I'd love to hear it)....
Right, but that’s a great indicator of a company that is going to have plenty of other bullshit, and can lead to follow up questions to see how they disguise it?
"Tell me what led to the most recent time you fired someone in a role like this."
A big red flag is anyone who's never fired someone or never had a bad fit. The key to me is the follow-ups you ask:
• If you've never fired someone, what was the closest you've come? What was the outcome of that situation? Did they quit or did they improve? Why'd you wait for them to quit instead of addressing the issue directly? What made them improve?
• If it was a performance issue, how did you know they were underperforming? What steps did you take to help them improve?
• If it was a culture problem, why did it get missed in the hiring process? If they were initially a good culture fit, what changed?
• How do you identify low performers? Objectively? Subjectively? A mix of the 2.
The caveats are if a) you really really want this job or b) you really really need this job. In those cases, you should only be asking questions that you think make you look good to the hiring team.
I mean I dislike bullshit rankings and metrics as much as the next guy - but if someone asked me these questions I would just pass on the candidate - a person covering his ass about being a bottom performer, from the interview, is not really someone I would be thrilled hiring.
At least OP phrased it as career progression question.
I don't know. I think they're useful questions for a top tier performer to ask to make sure they're not joining a shitshow where they have to clean up after people who have been underperforming for a year and haven't been given any feedback.
Yeah, I'm not a top performer but I use those types of questions for a similar reason. Also any interviewer who's put off by those questions signals to me a company culture that I'm not particularly interested in. Additionally, I really enjoy flipping the script and interviewing the interviewer whenever possible.
Of course, if I was desperate for any job, I'd do what it took to get hired, not to satisfy my curiosity and find the right job.
I've hired a lot of people over the course of my career, and questions like this would be a major red flag. I'd pass on the candidate.
Completely fine to ask how performance is measured and/or how performance reviews are handled, but the nature of these questions is off-putting. Is a candidate trying to figure out how they can get away with being a low performer? How would their poor judgment in asking questions like this show up elsewhere? Likely a high-maintenance individual.
And, the caveats at the end of the comment indicate the author knows these questions would not make you look good to the hiring team. If the company hired you anyway, probably wouldn't be a good place to work.
Agree. I would simply ask about team growth and turnover (also ask about engineering department in general). That's a totally legitimate question and it might even get you the answer you want without bluntly asking when they last fired someone. That's like being asked if you took a shit that morning. Like, yeah... and everybody does it, but it's not ok to ask someone about it.
Well, in a startup, honestly, if you don't get fired you're doing good. I have seen zero early-stage startups that did evaluations or a career path. Many said they did but they really didn't.
Few things you don't need to ask and can find out on your own via visiting their website (if they have) and social media (if there's one), and earnings reports as well (if they are public)
I've been keeping a similar list for private use, only mine is much smaller - less than 30 questions now that I removed the more risky ones which I never asked like "Is any of the board members actively addicted to anything?".
I wouldn't have a clue. Short or knowing them socially, how would I know? Given they're 4 levels above me in the org (me->VP->SVP->CTO->BOD), I have zero reason to interact with them on any basis, let alone a social one.
There is no scenario in which they would a) know the answer confidently enough they'd tell an interviewing prospective employee about it; b) be willing to do so; and, c) be stupid enough to do so.
Actually I think those are great questions for a bank: liquidity crises still happen to banks and it's worse when other people's/user's money is also involved/entangled. Plus we are in an "exciting" era of "innovation" in banking where a bank's products aren't always as stable as you think or exactly what you think they are. If they are chasing "products" that aren't traditional accounts, that's important and useful to know. If they are chasing those and haven't any idea if they've made product-market fit, that's a good sign to run.
(I've had at least one interview with a bank that I didn't bother with any next steps for exactly these sorts of reasons.)
At a start-up, sure. At any company past Series C, you should know this before talking to anyone. The other questions here are fine, especially the revenue and DAU one. Even better questions are "what's your payback period?" and "what's the company's path to profitability?" Revenue doesn't matter if the company is burning 2x the money to get it.
> How much runway does the company have? Does their spending look within reason?
Kinda the same as asking about the path to profitability except also takes into account if the company can live to get there.
> What's the culture like?
I get asked this question and similar questions to the ones listed by almost every engineering candidate I've interviewed in the past 5 years...
> How strong is the team?
I think it's a good question but if you're just looking for someone to tell you how great the team is then you're better off not asking it. I think almost all interview questions should be asked with some level of doubt and in hopes of getting an honest answer. Also, the level of honesty matters. If you ask the engineering manager this question and they throw certain folks under the bus then you should run.
> What's in store in the future?
This (and more frequently the first 2 questions under it) gets asked in plenty of interviews. People want to know what they'll be working on and what kind of impact they'll have.
The "Do you plan to sell the company?" question under this one makes it seem like these were all supposed to be directed at a CEO/founder. I wouldn't ask this question because even if the answer is honest it'll be ambiguous. No one is going to say they're dead set on selling the company if there's still funding rounds on the horizon but they also won't rule it out because they need to give the compensation package some hope for liquidity.
>If you ask the engineering manager this question and they throw certain folks under the bus then you should run.
I one declined an offer for this very reason. I had the option to join one of two teams, and each team's manager took the opportunity to crap on the other team.
There were other indicators as well. The office was in an old warehouse building on the waterfront of the city, with massive windows and high ceilings. I walked in to amazing water views from the lobby. When I descended one floor to the dev area, every single window was covered by a blackout curtain. It was a cave with no natural light, and barely any artificial light.
When I declined the offer, the recruiter was totally offended that I would pass up on such an opportunity.
Ask about work life balance. One of my coworkers mentioned work life balance in front of the owner. The owner immediately said work life balance was for lazy people who didn't want to work.
I would not have asked that question simply because I'd assume everyone was smart enough to give the right answer, even if they don't believe it. I would never have expected your boss's answer.
From my experience, there's a strong overlap between companies that don't respect work-life balance and companies where interviewees (for anything below the C-suite) talk directly to the owner.
Just out of curiosity: how many startups are willing to talk so openly about their finances to a candidate? I don't see how this is such a viable thing. How do you know the candidate isn't sent by the competition to sniff you out?
> Just out of curiosity: how many startups are willing to talk so openly about their finances to a candidate?
If you are gonna take a cash paycut in exchange for stock options you better damn well know this stuff. I think these questions are perfectly okay to ask.
You should also ask about preferred stock and when it converts to common stock. Since you are common stock, you won't get shit until the valuation of the company goes above whatever threshold is set for the preferred stock to convert.
If you're being offered a cash paycut for stock options, you might as well ask for the paycut in lottery tickets because you're too far diluted to make anything off of the options.
I joined a start up with a great amount of equity. They got offered 100 million buyout offer after I'd been there a year. I would have been extremely happy with that outcome. But they had no interest -- they weren't interested in a 100 million dollar company. Been there, done that, that wasn't their goal. Now I ask that question. Or more generally, same line as the profitability one. What are your exit strategies (with many follow ups). You want to know if this is a multi billion dollar boom or bust play because it has serious impact on your risk and payout.
Interviewee: "How much runway does the company have?"
Interviewer: "We have 86.2 billion. Should last us a while"
In these situations you should be focusing on how much support and "runway" the product or department you'll be working on has. The company at large might not go bankrupt, but I've both seen and been involved in situations where a product/project/department went 'bankrupt' and most people involved got fired.
Would an interviewing manager even know the answer to that? A VP+ might, but I'm guessing they would be unable/unwilling to share.
You could ask questions about how the position and product are related to the core business - should get the same result (it's mission critical vs it's VP's folly) without asking about financial info that nobody can/will share.
A lot of these questions seem to be ones aimed at startups. I think they are good ones, but won't necessarily map to more established companies.
In the "How strong is the team?" section:
> "Can you tell me about the team I'd be working with most closely?"
> "How do you compensate the team?"
> "How do you attract and retain really strong hires?"
> "Do you share board slides with the team?"
I'd add:
> "Who's been here the longest?"
and:
> "What's the median tenure of the engineering team?"
I'd apply these directly to the team I'd be working on. These can tell you a bit about the management culture.
And that depends almost entirely on the personality, experience, and style of individual managers. I know of what I speak. I was a very good manager, and kept senior-level engineers for many years, despite the corporation, itself, having a rather employee-hostile culture.
IMNSHO, Management culture is even more important than team culture.
I worked for a major (Fortune 5) corporation, for about a year and a half (back in the 1980s).
In that 18 months, they had three major reorgs.
After one one of them, the new VP (a lawyer), brought the team into his (very nice, very large) office, and started the intro talk with "I hate computers."
On the flip side, that is the kind of boss to which you might be able to say, "Great, I'll keep things running, just leave me do my work.", and end up with a fully autonomous position with a boss who never bugs you.
"You're all a bunch of weird dorks. I don't understand you, and I don't understand what you do; but you'd better not screw up, and, for Pete's sake, stay out of my office. This is the last time you'll be seeing the inside of it, unless I'm gonna ream you a new one."
Nice guy. Think Lumberg, from Office Space, but nastier.
I work in a large company, where we have very regular "re-orgs" and it makes no difference. It doesn't change the work I do, nor who I work with. It's busywork for middle management and power plays for executives, it doesn't affect me.
So I don't think that it's interesting to know to judge the position. It's irrelevant.
Also, is there a growth path for the position you are applying for? When I first tried software QA a few decades ago it was a dead end job, there were no opportunities for advancement. The software development and QA departments were kept totally separate.
Tenure on the eng team you are joining is so good to know. I've become the second most senior and tenured person on my current team after joining 3 months ago. I still love the company but its very different than when I joined and there was a tech lead on the team.
An interview is a two-way process. Ask as many questions as you can as you can make a terrible mistake that will badly affect your life.
The more questions you ask, even ones about company culture and how things are managed will make you look super-interested and that you are already imagining yourself in the role.
When I interview people I always remind them of this before we start: "Don't forget to interview us back. We might not be what you are looking for". It's surprising how many candidates ignore my advice (which, sadly, makes them look unenthusiastic).
Ask to have a coffee-chat / demo session with an engineer on the target team. You have decent odds you'll get someone senior who doesn't do all the interviews, so it will be much closer to the true day-to-day. You'll also get far more honest answers to things like on-call, support, performance reviews and other less-enjoyable aspects (even if it's by lack of omission, like they can only spare 15 minutes before their next meeting)
A lot of this can be simplified to three questions:
1. What problem is your company solving?
If you don't get an answer, beware. If the answer sounds vague, beware. If the answer makes no sense, beware. If the answer is multifaceted, beware. This suggests that the company will not even begin the process of becoming profitable.
2. Who has this problem?
You should get a clear picture of an actual person. If not, beware. If that person has no money, beware. If that person has no pull within an organization, beware. If that person is high maintenance or fickle, beware. This suggests that the company will never find the revenue they seek.
3. What's your solution?
If the solution doesn't actually address the problem, beware. If the solution is too expensive for the customer, beware. If the solution can't be differentiated from its competitors, beware. If the solution has no competitors, beware. If there are a dozen solutions, beware. This suggests that no matter how amazing the technology or technical team, the company will not be able to execute on its business plan.
If I was interviewing a candidate who asked me these questions it would be a pretty negative signal because it would tell me they had not even done cursory research before interviewing.
I would prefer clarifying questions about the product or market showing they had done basic research but didn't grok everything, but there are no cookie-cutter questions for this.
Fair enough. How many startups/company websites clearly state what they are actually doing? The problem is particularly bad in B2B space where the descriptions are replete with buzzwords and don't convey anything more than "Lorem Ipsum"
Eh that's easily parried by just asking how you would answer those questions. It's a pretty easy argument that the company seeking to hire someone should be able to answer these questions and that a direct answer will be more valuable than a statement on a webpage.
There is a huge difference between the sort of PR crap that companies post on websites and actually sitting down with a human being and have them explain it to you. "What problem is your company solving?" is pretty general, to be fair, but it would be a red flag for a startup that is selling a product but cannot articulate what problem customers have that the product is solving. It is in fact a pretty central differentiator between startups that succeed and startups that fail.
They are all good questions, but you would probably want to say more along the lines of "I understand that X is your companies product. Can you go into some more detail about what specific problems this product is solving for your customers?"
Exactly this. Good luck identifying the actual problem a startup addresses from their website. Most of the websites are deliberately diffuse for prospecting purposes.
That would presume the cursory research turns up clear answers. Or that the answers the interviewers give will match the answers online.
I have seen both presumptions invalidated enough not to think poorly of anyone asking and if the interviewer decides I’m wasting their time if I ask questions like this then it was never going to be a good fit.
I'll do cursory research which makes me intrigued enough to apply and show up to the interview. I'll do my sales pitch of myself when you ask me questions about myself. Why is it a "negative signal" for me to expect a sales pitch about what you're selling here? I know some basic facts, I can read what your polished marketing blurb, but I want to hear you speak about your team and your product and your market like a human, from first principles. Too much to ask?
(I'd probably have more specific clarifying questions as follow-ups to the open-ended ones. Judge me on those if you wish, though that's not why I'd be asking them.)
Funny enough these are the exact questions that founders need to ask themselves before committing to an idea. YC has overly broadened this to “make something people want” which at first order needs to be true. The questions you’ve laid out here are the direct implications of “make something people want”.
Companies manufacture crap all of the time that people don't really need, and these companies spend significant sums convincing consumers that they do, in fact, need or want them. I don't think people need to want your product now. You can also make something that people will want as well as what people do want.
Most startups don't have significant sums to spend to convince consumers that they want or need a product. Unless yours does, there's no way to succeed other than to make something people want today.
Not necessarily as a startup. Big companies with established products, existing revenue streams, and profits can afford the marketing budget to convince a wide swath of consumers they need this new thing that they really don’t. But startups with just one product or service generally can’t afford to be pushing on a string like that.
By the time you get to the interview the answers to these questions should be obvious if not then you’re probably just shopping around for jobs at whatever company comes your way.
I kinda agree, but this question should be resolvable by looking at the source material. The reason why "does your product have good market fit?" is so effective is that it forces the people to justify why, or why they don't have market fit.
This gives you lots of chances to ask followups and figure out if they are hand waving, misinformed, know what they are doing, or just plain naive.
The other two questions are very good, and well worth asking.
The essence of all these questions is to figure out if they have put any thought into the business side(if they are a startup) or how well the business is doing, if they are more established. The crucial thing that often gets lost is that tech is there to fulfil a business function, not the other way around. Figuring out the business model helps you predict what _should_ be built later on.
I guess all fine questions if you apply for unknown startup position. In any serious company, first would give you a big fat warning for ignorance of not preparing for interview at all and checking company. Normally that's 5 mins effort max.
Second would mark you as clueless about whole business segment company operates is, and then why hire clearly inexperienced you, unless asking for intern/junior position.
Third is fine in any environment I guess, but can be weird in say banking.
What happened about asking about team, job, workflow, methodologies and tools, management structure, office structure, WFH and so on?
The set I use is below, with explanations. Note that this is entirely a b2b list. I don't think there is a meaningful list one can ask for consumer startups, since in my view the consumer space is purely the domain of the ycombinator "throw it at the wall and then double down on what sitcks" - there is no engineering, marketing, etc. that you can apply to a b2c startup that isn't working and I don't think you can ask anything other than "how fast are you growing?" for consumer stuff.
For everything else, though ...
1. What is the critical problem on the customer side? How intense is the problem?
The company should be able to explain one or two very crisp, very clear customer-side issues. This goes beyond "what problem are you solving" because solving problems aren't enough to get a buyer to take action. Diffuse or "nice to have" problems means you never have a champion or buyer who will simply say "take my money" and most likely the reason for the diffuse/dull/etc. issues are behavioral or structural and that no one will actually pay to solve them.
I cannot emphasize enough that PLANS TO ADDRESS STRUCTURAL ISSUES AT CUSTOMERS ARE ACTUALLY THE LINES IN A STARTUP SUICIDE NOTE.
The other thing you see a lot is that people try and shore up crap businesses by throwing a lot of things in the solution to address a lot of problems at once with the idea that the sum is more valuable than its parts - that is a body shop mentality, not a good startup position. Startups should have something that they address that people want to buy, not be the business equivalent of a "52-in-1" Atari cartridge. A collection of dull, diffuse issues means the solution will usually not have buyer priority. Worse is purely hypothetical """problem""" where product is just a vitamin or insurance = no buyer outside of compliance, which is super low margin and low urgency (lots of security plays have this, or worse, fail to recognize it). Let garbage vendor-integrators like IBM or Cisco weakly assemble an array of crap, low-margin products into a "solution", that is not a good startup business.
2. What is the solution? What does the solution directly and completely solve in terms of the critical problem? Why now? Is the solution a necessary part of other changes or is it in and of itself sufficient to have day one+ value without big changes on the customer side?
Another issue you see a lot is that the solution only works if the customers make other changes that would also partially alleviate the problem, and so the solution is actually part of a collection of important customer-side changes that are going to be impossible to get done in a repeatable way. The solution has to deliver value without large changes on the part of the customer, especially changes that would have helped alleviate pain _already_ since there's an obvious issue there that the solution startup is missing. Customer-side-changes also means sales repeatability will be very poor which is a death sentence for startups.
5. What is the customer type? Who is the buyer? What existing budget are you redirecting if any?
This is another issue that shows up a lot: businesses are broken into groups of functions with independent owners. If the startup's business spans multiple business areas and multiple business owners are going to need to cooperate (not just agree, but they have different timing, different priorities, and so on) that is a big problem.
If buying the solution has to come from multuple discrete budget line items, that is a big problem because that implies trying to coordinate what is effectively a sale to each of them, with different trade-offs and different priorities and timeframes, and then conclude the real sale after all of that. This is a serious momentum and timing problem because it's hard enough to rendevous with need-and-now customer side without having multip...
As a founder I can tell you that candidates who enter the interview process with their own good ideas for answers to these questions are lot more attractive, i.e. anyone that has done even a modicum of their own research stands head and shoulders above their peers.
At the end of the day, if you don't know these basic things about a company, why have you applied for a job there?
You're asking candidates to answer questions like "What problem is your company solving?". Maybe I'm misreading your comment, but if the founder is looking to hires to answer these questions, that sounds very concerning, and probably a place I'd avoid.
Enthusiasm is great, but the founders/current employees should have an understanding that far outstrips anything an outsider can provide (unless you're dealing with someone who already has deep knowledge of a well known domain, which is a bit of a different angle).
"candidates who enter the interview process with their own good ideas for answers to these questions".
"Candidates ... their own good ideas for answers". Yes: the candidate asks these questions, but the commenter seemed to suggest that they also want candidates who have good answers ready for those questions.
That seems like a bit of a funny thing to expect from a candidate who doesn't necessarily know the domain, and certainly wouldn't be an authority on the company.
I would agree with that for dev positions. But when I was hiring PMs, these types of questions were actually a key part of the interview. The particulars of the answers mattered a lot less than the fact they did _some_ research, and formed a limited mental model of business from which we could discuss different scenarios, tradeoffs, pivots, features, etc ... Major bonus points for them basically turning the tables around and interviewing/grilling me on how we were going tackle "recent announcement from competitor" or "trend in market" and asking good followup questions to dig into how that could relate to what impact they could have.
To be fair, these answers aren't always obvious when looking into a startup company, especially in the early stages. I'm not even sure many companies actually have firm answers to all of these. The founders may have lofty ideas, but often they aren't very public about them to avoid tipping their hand.
My two most recent jobs I was reached out to by a recruiter who could describe the general market the company is in but actually getting into detail and nuance required speaking with someone at the company.
OTOH well establish startups and businesses almost always have the answers to these questions front and center on their website. Some basic due diligence on a candidate's part is always welcome.
> At the end of the day, if you don't know these basic things about a company, why have you applied for a job there?
Because I need money, and you might be the 3XXth company I've applied to. Job hunting when there's something unappealing about yourself can be quite a pain, but rent is still due at the end of the month.
If you're applying to 300+ companies, something is wrong. When I've gone looking for work I've talked to maybe 5-10 companies at most. Specialization and a good network of contacts makes all the difference.
Can you expand on that? Every time I've looked for a new job I've had to use the "carpet bomb" approach with my resume to get anywhere. Any time I've been out of work historically, it's taken a minimum of 3 months to find a job.
I think the difference is having a network. A soft introduction, even from an acquaintance, is much more likely to get you an interview. It doesn't get you the job, you need to do well on the interview and appeal more than the other candidates, but you get the classic "foot in the door." Without that, it is a crap shoot. Another approach to the same thing is a professional middle-man, such as a recruiting agency.
Carpet bombing can get interviews, but it tends to waste a lot of time and be relatively ineffectual. Last time I looked at getting interviews, a number of the interesting job listings were behind absolutely horrific web sites that basically require mangling all the relevant content from a resume into a web form. Ask around between a few friends and former coworkers on Linkedin and it's pretty easy to get a resume into the hands of the hiring manager bypassing all the HR filtration garbage. From there it becomes an actual two way conversation to figure out if there's a good fit on both sides.
It's a 2 way street. If a job or contract that seems like a good fit for someone I know, then I pass it on to them. Over time it's mutually beneficial.
I guess it must also depend on location and level of experience. I haven't had to go out of my way to land a job in 20 years, but I get not everybody's circumstances are the same. FWIW I'm not at all specialized, pretty much a jack-of-all-trades type dev, and while I do have a good network of contacts, I didn't rely on them for finding the new role I'm moving into.
Location definitely matters. Certain types of work are more popular in some regions than others. The level of trust required for landing remote work jobs also strongly leans on having good references from one's network of mutual acquaintances.
These days it's usually the case that the company came to me, rather than me applying to them. I'll do full research before the final round but for an initial intro? I'll glance at your website, otherwise I'm there to hear your story and decide if I want to take the time to learn more. Lately early stage companies seem to expect you to have a fully formed motivation to work there before the first conversation which is just not the way this works, sorry.
I feel like most startups I’ve talked to in the past couple years realize this. They are surprised if I know anything about them at all during the initial convo
It's for the same reason your recruiters or engineering managers only take a 10 second glance at a resume and never look at the side projects in Github profiles for their potential candidates; ain't nobody got time for that.
Well, if you can properly formulate these questions, distinguish a good answer from a bad one, AND know how to write code, you should be talking to investors (or prospective customers) rather than applying for coding jobs.
Couldn't agree with this more, sadly the other missing piece is the personality required to do that. When added to the other three traits that are already uncommon to find in one person, you're talking about a very unique individual.
Well, then as patronizing as it may sound, if you are looking for regular developer job, you should care more about the technology stack (as it affects your resell value for the next job), what big features the company recently delivered (to see whether you'll be stuck doing soulless maintenance) the cash part of your salary (since you don't really control the value of that equity), the amount of work hours per week, and how much of an asshole your boss is going to be.
This makes me wish I lived in a tech hub so I could have some semblance of an idea of what the market wants. The Midwest sucks for tech work. Maybe I should be reading TechCrunch more often lol
I see this sentiment all the time, and it is so backwards. Startups in tech hubs tend to solve problems that people in tech hubs have.
"I'm rich and lazy, I want someone to deliver me food from my favorite restaurant and I don't care if it costs 2-3x as much and takes 90 minutes."
"I need some place to put my piles of IPO money that might appreciate because returns are down elsewhere, and also I think securities laws are confusing and bad."
These startups attract a lot of venture money because investors in tech hubs have similar problems and so they are attracted to them.
But they are fundamentally not productive. They are market makers or middlemen or financial products. There is a much lower ceiling on what people will ever be willing to pay for these kind of things relative to, say, some novel industrial software that gets purchased by multi-billion dollar companies. Those industrial companies are tech companies, make no mistake, and they are almost universally not headquartered in SF or NYC. There's also a much higher ceiling on the potential market because your customers are actually making things.
I think it depends on the problem space you're interested in solving. I'm interested in databases and data tooling, of which a very sizeable chunk of the users for that are in SV.
That's a pretty narrow definition of what's productive. Information is capital. Being able to link up a customer with an on-demand driver adds a lot of value into the system.
You're right that middlemen are productive in the generality.
But
> Being able to link up a customer with an on-demand driver adds a lot of value into the system.
This is only true if the driver's rates are something the customer is willing to pay. Finding that match is the primary job of a middleman; a lot of American services matching this basic description gloss over that part of the match entirely.
You’re still rolling the dice if you go work in a startup, you might as well not bother and go to a FAAG (excluding Netflix) for that. Or is it MAGAF (Microsoft apple google amazon Facebook)? Lol.
In india the acronym is WITCH which is apt given the track record of these consulting shops.
Then work at a large firm which will let you do these things, and fund you should it not work out. Our industry is still young, and problems to solve are myriad. If you can tell what the good ones and bad ones are then you are much to valuable to work on someone else's idea.
"Then just get your dream job; god, it's not that hard!"
I invite you to search developer jobs in a large (3 million+) metro area that is not San Francisco, Seattle, or New York. Developer jobs you will find:
- Shitty ad-tech company
- Knockoff ad-tech
- Shitty, knockoff ad-tech
- Fintech, but shitty
- Fintech, but even shittier
- Fintech, but actually a scam
- Fin-ad-tech
- Fintech for dogs
- Adtech for dogs
- Giant telecom where you will be put in a prison of a narrowly defined role where shitty developers go to slowly die
- Remote office of a FAANG where you can be put in a prison of a narrowly defined role doing shitty ad-tech to help an evil psychopathic hundred-billionaire get even more of a death grip on all aspects of our lives, but at least you're paid well
- (Rarely) Internal developer for a company that is actually doing something useful and interesting, but where you'll end up maintaining a shitty out-of-support enterprise system built on a base platform that does nothing where the real business logic is all embedded in their inner-platform key-value tables by engineering interns.
Hehe, I really like this answer. I feel a bit cursed and also lucky at the same time in my current role... I was given ownership of a project that is solving a $100M problem at a big company, but now that it is working well... random people from other teams are showing up to take control of it and kill it with their idiotic ideas.
And I suppose the alternative is to start your own company, take VC money, and thus become one of those shitty ad-tech, knockoff ad-tech, fintech but shitty, fintech but actually a scam, etc. companies? But at least you'll probably end up owning >1% of the company!
I guess I'd say if your idea revolves around shitty ad-tech or fin-tech, then no, that's not a good answer. But if you have a genuinely new niche ... maybe? It's a little like "burn this codebase and start all over". It's a gut reaction we all have, and 90% of the time it's a bad idea. But that 10% of the time ...
I disagreed at first read, but you're right. These questions are geared for tech interviews in a startup environment, which assumes the candidate can take on risk. So why not grab for the brass ring?
If you want a regular no-risk paycheque then check out government jobs. Runway? Oh yeah we've been collecting taxes for centuries. Product-market fit? Yeah, we have these big guys with badges and guns who will come to your house if you "don't fit." We pay an absolute pittance compared to private, but your job will be there your entire working life.
I think the point they were making was it’s risky to join a startup, and it doesn’t seem like that much more of a risk to start a startup if you have the stomach for risk already.
There is a ton more risk to be founder than an early startup employee. A ton more benefits too, but the costs real. For one thing, if you are pre-funding, then you need to go acquire that funding without being paid in the interim. If you can afford that risk, then it might be good option.
There are tons of engineering jobs that are not startup risky or government boring.
You can be an engineer in retail, medical, insurance, finance, etc. there are tons of stable engineering jobs working for companies that don’t deliver a digital service or physical product.
I wouldn't come to that conclusion at all, they're completely different skillsets.
FWIW I'm quite prepared to join a startup that seems like it has some great ideas and good people but isn't quite sure yet how it's going to become profitable. You do so always knowing there's a moderate risk it might not work out and you'll be back out hunting for another job within 12 months or whatever.
You're received lots of responses pointing out why this is inaccurate, but one point I didn't see covered was that the degree of confidence required in "distinguishing a good answer from a bad one" as a prospective employer is _much_ lower than that required as a founder. Additionally, evaluating whether something is good is easier than coming up with something good.
I expect recruiters and hiring managers to do their research too, but every time they reach out I'm still astounded how poorly they've done it. Then they still have the gall to expect you research them, which takes more than a light glance at their page written in a way to sell themselves.
It's about time we push back on this. If they need employees so bad, how about they stop making demands which resemble being in a position of power?
Many company websites and resources like to describe what they do with word salad bingo instead of getting to the point. At best you can know what market they are in.
Even more so for startups who don't really know what their solution is.
To some extent you have to help them answer one of these questions. One of these answers has to be flawed, and you fill it in, then they see you as a companion on their adventure.
I've actually asked it always on every interview. The generic answer I get is that "You will be working with experts in the field" yada yada.
When you actually join the team:
- Two juniors
- Few 20 years experience dudes that finished their growth at "Cobol is the best" with "Mainframe" T-Shirt on them
- And the same manager that hired you! (Avoiding eye contact)
So yea, one salary later you are on the new hunt for new job. I don't understand why ppl lie so much during interviews. It's a employee market, if I don't want to waste my time with teams like that -> it's a 100hunder I'll jump the ship ASAP.
> - Few 20 years experience dudes that finished their growth at "Cobol is the best" with "Mainframe" T-Shirt on them
Probably joking, but a reminder that people with 20 years of experience started their careers after the dotcom bubble burst, and might not even have turned 40 yet.
Asking to see the pager log can be quite revealing as well. I worked at an MSP where you could expect 1-5 pages per night while on-call. It was definitely hidden during the interview process and I bet they never would have been able to hire anyone if that information was revealed.
I was actually recently discouraged from applying to GitLab after seeing their public on-call weekly reliability newsletter[1]. I've been on-call in all of my positions, but the level of incidents they seem to go through in a week seems like it would be very stressful. This isn't to throw shade on GitLab though, I absolutely adore what they do and use it on a daily basis <3
Another one I'd ask, unless it's in a country that mandates this by law: how many days of annual leave do people get as a minimum? If you get some vague answer like "as much or as little as they need" that doesn't include a number, then assume that number is zero in practice. You might or might not still want to work there, but you should take this into account.
These are great questions to ask any early-stage startup you're considering working for. The reason they're great is that they're almost exactly what an investor would ask. And that makes sense: a startup's earliest employees are also its most committed investors.
Why... might the answer to that depend on the applicant at all? I don't know what you're getting at. Is this to find out how much time is spent on Mandatory Fun and other such garbage?
I always recommend https://www.keyvalues.com/culture-queries for ideas on what to ask because you can narrow down the questions to the aspects of the job that are important to you.
The most important to me, no joke, "Is there free coffee?"
It's such a simple, easy and cheap morale and productivity booster to give your employees. If there isn't free coffee, it's not a place you want to work because they're skimping on their employees.
Love this but let’s go deeper here. “Tell me about the coffee situation.. what coffee do the team members that drink coffee drink day to day, and where does it come from?”
As a consultant once on a due diligence gig at a medium-sized quasi-tech company in the Midwest, on the day I arrived, one smart and charming QA engineer took me aside and shared “the free coffee in the micro kitchens is crap, here’s our [employee-provided] coffee pot on a filing cabinet in the corner, please drink as much as you want”. That told me, among other things, this was a decent team in a mediocre company..
(spoilers:) during a collab between Microsoft and IBM, Microsoft engineers were frustrated with the coffee at IBM's offices. IBM refused to let them set up their own coffee pot, but IBM was not allowed to look at anything marked "confidential". so they put a cardboard box over the coffee pot and wrote "confidential" on the side.
Heh, we brewed desktop kombucha under a cardboard box at my big tech co. Facilities staff were very kind to us when it exploded during the Covid lockdowns..
No, but things like internet and/or cell phone stipends are in the same vain. Same with small yearly stipends to buy office equipment like a chair or desk. Relatively cheap ways for a company to show they care about an employee.
During college, I interned and then contracted with a research division of an automotive company in Ann Arbor. To be clear, it was a great opportunity and I had a ton of fun. During the automotive downturn in 2008 or so, the company stopped stocking up free coffee and tea, and put in pay-per-cup machines. My small lab happened to be in an otherwise abandoned floor, and there was enough stock in our nearest micro kitchen for us to continue to drink free tea for years.
Also during college, I travelled to Australia multiple times to race solar cars. We went as a "race crew", and while I was there to do embedded electronics, there were team members responsible for providing meals to the rest of the crew. They would unnecessarily pinch pennies, and buy the absolute lowest quality bulk anything. It was so bad that I would try to go shopping with them, and offer to pay the $1-2 out of my own pocket to get the lunch meat that wasn't gray, or cheese that wasn't plastic. During the race, someone brought a seasoning salt shaker in my support vehicle to pass around, and it was a massive morale boost! I also started a "beverage club," where folk could contribute to a pool to buy liter bottles of soda when they got sick of warm tap water.
One company I worked for had an employee's only "coffee shop" because they claimed that they wanted only good coffee. They charged Starbucks style prices, but if you brought a company mug (and when you were hired you were given exactly one, but you could buy more at retail costs) you could get black coffee for "only" $1.
It doesn't matter how good your beans are or how far they are driven in if you are still just making industrial sized carafes of black coffee. The "mandatory" company mug becomes a symbol of control (among others; the company had some strict rules about desk adornments). The "coffee shop" mentality creates the cashier flow and long lines of an actual coffee shop, with the even more awkwardness that any conversations are in full view of your bosses (all the way up the chain) because they chose to subject themselves to this too "for good beans" every morning.
I learned a lot from that job, including how often what people say they want ("quality") is a mask for what they really want ("control"). I'm not sure I'd ever again choose to work for a company where making coffee at home and bringing it in the travel mug of your choosing was a small daily act of rebellion.
As someone who struggled to give up caffeine, as well as a handful of other highly addictive substances, I eye the coffee pot with a much more critical eye. Its been my experience that caffeine makes most people jittery, impulsive, sometimes frantic in their never-ending frenetic movements in the pursuit of "getting things done".
I've watched as promising young kids took up the addiction to make their deadlines and end up wired, tired, and burnt out. I've watched fights erupt recently at the drive-through line at Starbucks near my home. It reminds me of my time as a cocaine user, and the way people would fight to get their fix.
I've read that coffee was the fuel that sparked the colonization of the western hemisphere. I've read that when the industrial revolution kicked off, the coffee break was invented to keep workers working.
So these days, when I hear free coffee, I also hear the metaphorical cracking of the 1%'s whip at the back of the workforce. I prioritize my health over my work output. I prioritize rest over frantic action.
Hyperbolic? Absolutely. Stimulant addiction is a real thing. I wonder what human society would look like without it. But I know for certain that removing caffeine from my life has made me happier, healthier, and more able over-all.
Well, I'm not a doctor, and I don't even really know what the "standard timeframes" are for experiencing changes. But, I can share my experience. YMMV.
After a lifetime of consuming caffeine, early in the pandemic when I started staying home fulltime, I saw my opportunity. I'd been trying to quit both coffee and caffeinated sodas for years. I immediately noticed the withdrawal symptoms, but then I'd had them for so long: irritable and dehydrated in the mornings until I had my fix. It took me 6 months to finally ween myself off coffee in the mornings. Sodas had fallen by the wayside earlier. So I finally was caffeine-free on Oct 26, 2020.
It took a solid 4-6 weeks, likely toward the longer end for the morning cravings to really stop. After that it took me another 2-3 weeks for my restless leg stopped moving. It took about 4 months after that for my body to readjust to not constantly shaking my right leg. Parts of the musculature of my hip had over-developed in the decades I'd had that problem. I continue to work on stretching out that part of my body on an ongoing basis.
The real gains started after about 3 months. That's when I noticed I slept much more soundly. Falling asleep remains significantly easier, as does waking. I'm never irritable in the mornings unless I read some awful news first thing -- point being that the caffeine withdrawal symptoms have abated.
I think more clearly. I'm not as easily irritated. I feel like caffeine left me on an emotional raw edge, and I was always snapping at people, or much worse. It ruined my emotional state for the majority of my life, since I started drinking colas heavily around age ten, and I'm 46 at present.
It has really been a very eye-opening experience. I feel like a fog on my mind cleared after a lifetime. I'm not sure I can really relate that feeling with mere words.
TL;DR: ~3 months from cessation I started to notice real benefits
I wish my remote job would give me $1000 to spend on an at-home coffee station. Even though I earn very well, I can't justify spending that much on coffee out of pocket. But it would be an even better morale and productivity boost than a raise.
Oh lord. I know this is off-topic and will probably get killed, but somebody really should have googled "post hog" before settling on a name for this company.
e: If you do change the name please keep "hog" in there, that mascot is adorable
I don't see any particular reason for it, so I've since whitelisted it. It is indeed an odd choice, but its a long-used namespace which sees a dwindling number of available and useful domain names over time, IMO.
Nice list of questions :)) Always good to ask questions about the working culture and how your role looks like as it can heavily differ between companies
225 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 246 ms ] threadAnd this is not just for engineers. I think anyone joining a startup, or new division of a company, would benefit from thinking through these questions.
"how do you manage employee performance evaluations? What is the career advancement process like?" (if someone's got a better way to determine if a place does stack ranking without directly asking I'd love to hear it)....
A big red flag is anyone who's never fired someone or never had a bad fit. The key to me is the follow-ups you ask:
• If you've never fired someone, what was the closest you've come? What was the outcome of that situation? Did they quit or did they improve? Why'd you wait for them to quit instead of addressing the issue directly? What made them improve?
• If it was a performance issue, how did you know they were underperforming? What steps did you take to help them improve?
• If it was a culture problem, why did it get missed in the hiring process? If they were initially a good culture fit, what changed?
• How do you identify low performers? Objectively? Subjectively? A mix of the 2.
The caveats are if a) you really really want this job or b) you really really need this job. In those cases, you should only be asking questions that you think make you look good to the hiring team.
At least OP phrased it as career progression question.
Of course, if I was desperate for any job, I'd do what it took to get hired, not to satisfy my curiosity and find the right job.
I’ve seen quite a few eng fired for non-performance reasons and entirely due to culture. Firings for performance are something I’ve rarely seen.
Completely fine to ask how performance is measured and/or how performance reviews are handled, but the nature of these questions is off-putting. Is a candidate trying to figure out how they can get away with being a low performer? How would their poor judgment in asking questions like this show up elsewhere? Likely a high-maintenance individual.
And, the caveats at the end of the comment indicate the author knows these questions would not make you look good to the hiring team. If the company hired you anyway, probably wouldn't be a good place to work.
> Is a candidate trying to figure out how they can get away with being a low performer?
If you're wondering this, just ask them.
I ended up with something with the cloud.
I've been keeping a similar list for private use, only mine is much smaller - less than 30 questions now that I removed the more risky ones which I never asked like "Is any of the board members actively addicted to anything?".
Of course they would rather not disclose such a thing to prospective candidates and it's rude to ask, so I dropped this question.
Archive link:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220628135027/https://posthog.c...
Not every engineering role is for a startup.
(I've had at least one interview with a bank that I didn't bother with any next steps for exactly these sorts of reasons.)
At a start-up, sure. At any company past Series C, you should know this before talking to anyone. The other questions here are fine, especially the revenue and DAU one. Even better questions are "what's your payback period?" and "what's the company's path to profitability?" Revenue doesn't matter if the company is burning 2x the money to get it.
> How much runway does the company have? Does their spending look within reason?
Kinda the same as asking about the path to profitability except also takes into account if the company can live to get there.
> What's the culture like?
I get asked this question and similar questions to the ones listed by almost every engineering candidate I've interviewed in the past 5 years...
> How strong is the team?
I think it's a good question but if you're just looking for someone to tell you how great the team is then you're better off not asking it. I think almost all interview questions should be asked with some level of doubt and in hopes of getting an honest answer. Also, the level of honesty matters. If you ask the engineering manager this question and they throw certain folks under the bus then you should run.
> What's in store in the future?
This (and more frequently the first 2 questions under it) gets asked in plenty of interviews. People want to know what they'll be working on and what kind of impact they'll have.
The "Do you plan to sell the company?" question under this one makes it seem like these were all supposed to be directed at a CEO/founder. I wouldn't ask this question because even if the answer is honest it'll be ambiguous. No one is going to say they're dead set on selling the company if there's still funding rounds on the horizon but they also won't rule it out because they need to give the compensation package some hope for liquidity.
I one declined an offer for this very reason. I had the option to join one of two teams, and each team's manager took the opportunity to crap on the other team.
When I declined the offer, the recruiter was totally offended that I would pass up on such an opportunity.
In a logical world, this would be the case. But currently, I am looking at a Series B company and having serious doubts that they have PMF.
If you are gonna take a cash paycut in exchange for stock options you better damn well know this stuff. I think these questions are perfectly okay to ask.
You should also ask about preferred stock and when it converts to common stock. Since you are common stock, you won't get shit until the valuation of the company goes above whatever threshold is set for the preferred stock to convert.
I joined a start up with a great amount of equity. They got offered 100 million buyout offer after I'd been there a year. I would have been extremely happy with that outcome. But they had no interest -- they weren't interested in a 100 million dollar company. Been there, done that, that wasn't their goal. Now I ask that question. Or more generally, same line as the profitability one. What are your exit strategies (with many follow ups). You want to know if this is a multi billion dollar boom or bust play because it has serious impact on your risk and payout.
Interviewee: "Does the company have product-market fit?"
Interviewer: "Yes, we own Wholefoods, Ring, the entire internet cloud ecosystem"
Interviewee: "How much runway does the company have?"
Interviewer: "We have 86.2 billion. Should last us a while"
Interviewee: "What's in store in the future?"
Interviewer: "Take over every market segment" ... Interviewee: "Great, where do I sign?"
Interviewer: "We have 86.2 billion. Should last us a while"
In these situations you should be focusing on how much support and "runway" the product or department you'll be working on has. The company at large might not go bankrupt, but I've both seen and been involved in situations where a product/project/department went 'bankrupt' and most people involved got fired.
You could ask questions about how the position and product are related to the core business - should get the same result (it's mission critical vs it's VP's folly) without asking about financial info that nobody can/will share.
In the "How strong is the team?" section:
> "Can you tell me about the team I'd be working with most closely?"
> "How do you compensate the team?"
> "How do you attract and retain really strong hires?"
> "Do you share board slides with the team?"
I'd add:
> "Who's been here the longest?"
and:
> "What's the median tenure of the engineering team?"
I'd apply these directly to the team I'd be working on. These can tell you a bit about the management culture.
And that depends almost entirely on the personality, experience, and style of individual managers. I know of what I speak. I was a very good manager, and kept senior-level engineers for many years, despite the corporation, itself, having a rather employee-hostile culture.
IMNSHO, Management culture is even more important than team culture.
> when was the last re-org this team went through and what was the reason for it?
In that 18 months, they had three major reorgs.
After one one of them, the new VP (a lawyer), brought the team into his (very nice, very large) office, and started the intro talk with "I hate computers."
That was when I decided it was time to move on...
"You're all a bunch of weird dorks. I don't understand you, and I don't understand what you do; but you'd better not screw up, and, for Pete's sake, stay out of my office. This is the last time you'll be seeing the inside of it, unless I'm gonna ream you a new one."
Nice guy. Think Lumberg, from Office Space, but nastier.
So I don't think that it's interesting to know to judge the position. It's irrelevant.
The more questions you ask, even ones about company culture and how things are managed will make you look super-interested and that you are already imagining yourself in the role.
When I interview people I always remind them of this before we start: "Don't forget to interview us back. We might not be what you are looking for". It's surprising how many candidates ignore my advice (which, sadly, makes them look unenthusiastic).
"Describe what a typical day would look like?"
1. What problem is your company solving?
If you don't get an answer, beware. If the answer sounds vague, beware. If the answer makes no sense, beware. If the answer is multifaceted, beware. This suggests that the company will not even begin the process of becoming profitable.
2. Who has this problem?
You should get a clear picture of an actual person. If not, beware. If that person has no money, beware. If that person has no pull within an organization, beware. If that person is high maintenance or fickle, beware. This suggests that the company will never find the revenue they seek.
3. What's your solution?
If the solution doesn't actually address the problem, beware. If the solution is too expensive for the customer, beware. If the solution can't be differentiated from its competitors, beware. If the solution has no competitors, beware. If there are a dozen solutions, beware. This suggests that no matter how amazing the technology or technical team, the company will not be able to execute on its business plan.
I would prefer clarifying questions about the product or market showing they had done basic research but didn't grok everything, but there are no cookie-cutter questions for this.
(startup role, but I'm not sure it matters)
They are all good questions, but you would probably want to say more along the lines of "I understand that X is your companies product. Can you go into some more detail about what specific problems this product is solving for your customers?"
2022: We use AI on the blockchain to change the world.
I have seen both presumptions invalidated enough not to think poorly of anyone asking and if the interviewer decides I’m wasting their time if I ask questions like this then it was never going to be a good fit.
(I'd probably have more specific clarifying questions as follow-ups to the open-ended ones. Judge me on those if you wish, though that's not why I'd be asking them.)
I kinda agree, but this question should be resolvable by looking at the source material. The reason why "does your product have good market fit?" is so effective is that it forces the people to justify why, or why they don't have market fit.
This gives you lots of chances to ask followups and figure out if they are hand waving, misinformed, know what they are doing, or just plain naive.
The other two questions are very good, and well worth asking.
The essence of all these questions is to figure out if they have put any thought into the business side(if they are a startup) or how well the business is doing, if they are more established. The crucial thing that often gets lost is that tech is there to fulfil a business function, not the other way around. Figuring out the business model helps you predict what _should_ be built later on.
Second would mark you as clueless about whole business segment company operates is, and then why hire clearly inexperienced you, unless asking for intern/junior position.
Third is fine in any environment I guess, but can be weird in say banking.
What happened about asking about team, job, workflow, methodologies and tools, management structure, office structure, WFH and so on?
The set I use is below, with explanations. Note that this is entirely a b2b list. I don't think there is a meaningful list one can ask for consumer startups, since in my view the consumer space is purely the domain of the ycombinator "throw it at the wall and then double down on what sitcks" - there is no engineering, marketing, etc. that you can apply to a b2c startup that isn't working and I don't think you can ask anything other than "how fast are you growing?" for consumer stuff.
For everything else, though ...
1. What is the critical problem on the customer side? How intense is the problem?
The company should be able to explain one or two very crisp, very clear customer-side issues. This goes beyond "what problem are you solving" because solving problems aren't enough to get a buyer to take action. Diffuse or "nice to have" problems means you never have a champion or buyer who will simply say "take my money" and most likely the reason for the diffuse/dull/etc. issues are behavioral or structural and that no one will actually pay to solve them.
I cannot emphasize enough that PLANS TO ADDRESS STRUCTURAL ISSUES AT CUSTOMERS ARE ACTUALLY THE LINES IN A STARTUP SUICIDE NOTE.
The other thing you see a lot is that people try and shore up crap businesses by throwing a lot of things in the solution to address a lot of problems at once with the idea that the sum is more valuable than its parts - that is a body shop mentality, not a good startup position. Startups should have something that they address that people want to buy, not be the business equivalent of a "52-in-1" Atari cartridge. A collection of dull, diffuse issues means the solution will usually not have buyer priority. Worse is purely hypothetical """problem""" where product is just a vitamin or insurance = no buyer outside of compliance, which is super low margin and low urgency (lots of security plays have this, or worse, fail to recognize it). Let garbage vendor-integrators like IBM or Cisco weakly assemble an array of crap, low-margin products into a "solution", that is not a good startup business.
2. What is the solution? What does the solution directly and completely solve in terms of the critical problem? Why now? Is the solution a necessary part of other changes or is it in and of itself sufficient to have day one+ value without big changes on the customer side?
Another issue you see a lot is that the solution only works if the customers make other changes that would also partially alleviate the problem, and so the solution is actually part of a collection of important customer-side changes that are going to be impossible to get done in a repeatable way. The solution has to deliver value without large changes on the part of the customer, especially changes that would have helped alleviate pain _already_ since there's an obvious issue there that the solution startup is missing. Customer-side-changes also means sales repeatability will be very poor which is a death sentence for startups.
5. What is the customer type? Who is the buyer? What existing budget are you redirecting if any?
This is another issue that shows up a lot: businesses are broken into groups of functions with independent owners. If the startup's business spans multiple business areas and multiple business owners are going to need to cooperate (not just agree, but they have different timing, different priorities, and so on) that is a big problem.
If buying the solution has to come from multuple discrete budget line items, that is a big problem because that implies trying to coordinate what is effectively a sale to each of them, with different trade-offs and different priorities and timeframes, and then conclude the real sale after all of that. This is a serious momentum and timing problem because it's hard enough to rendevous with need-and-now customer side without having multip...
At the end of the day, if you don't know these basic things about a company, why have you applied for a job there?
Because the company head-hunted me?
Enthusiasm is great, but the founders/current employees should have an understanding that far outstrips anything an outsider can provide (unless you're dealing with someone who already has deep knowledge of a well known domain, which is a bit of a different angle).
The questions are meant to be asked by the job candidate, not by the employer.
That seems like a bit of a funny thing to expect from a candidate who doesn't necessarily know the domain, and certainly wouldn't be an authority on the company.
I.e., those aren't considered basic qualifications for the job, but are awesome if a candidate is actually like that.
My two most recent jobs I was reached out to by a recruiter who could describe the general market the company is in but actually getting into detail and nuance required speaking with someone at the company.
OTOH well establish startups and businesses almost always have the answers to these questions front and center on their website. Some basic due diligence on a candidate's part is always welcome.
Because I need money, and you might be the 3XXth company I've applied to. Job hunting when there's something unappealing about yourself can be quite a pain, but rent is still due at the end of the month.
"I'm rich and lazy, I want someone to deliver me food from my favorite restaurant and I don't care if it costs 2-3x as much and takes 90 minutes."
"I need some place to put my piles of IPO money that might appreciate because returns are down elsewhere, and also I think securities laws are confusing and bad."
These startups attract a lot of venture money because investors in tech hubs have similar problems and so they are attracted to them.
But they are fundamentally not productive. They are market makers or middlemen or financial products. There is a much lower ceiling on what people will ever be willing to pay for these kind of things relative to, say, some novel industrial software that gets purchased by multi-billion dollar companies. Those industrial companies are tech companies, make no mistake, and they are almost universally not headquartered in SF or NYC. There's also a much higher ceiling on the potential market because your customers are actually making things.
But
> Being able to link up a customer with an on-demand driver adds a lot of value into the system.
This is only true if the driver's rates are something the customer is willing to pay. Finding that match is the primary job of a middleman; a lot of American services matching this basic description gloss over that part of the match entirely.
If you have something nice to fall back on (rich family, nest egg) or no dependents, then sure.
In india the acronym is WITCH which is apt given the track record of these consulting shops.
I invite you to search developer jobs in a large (3 million+) metro area that is not San Francisco, Seattle, or New York. Developer jobs you will find:
- Shitty ad-tech company
- Knockoff ad-tech
- Shitty, knockoff ad-tech
- Fintech, but shitty
- Fintech, but even shittier
- Fintech, but actually a scam
- Fin-ad-tech
- Fintech for dogs
- Adtech for dogs
- Giant telecom where you will be put in a prison of a narrowly defined role where shitty developers go to slowly die
- Remote office of a FAANG where you can be put in a prison of a narrowly defined role doing shitty ad-tech to help an evil psychopathic hundred-billionaire get even more of a death grip on all aspects of our lives, but at least you're paid well
- (Rarely) Internal developer for a company that is actually doing something useful and interesting, but where you'll end up maintaining a shitty out-of-support enterprise system built on a base platform that does nothing where the real business logic is all embedded in their inner-platform key-value tables by engineering interns.
- Fintech
If you want a regular no-risk paycheque then check out government jobs. Runway? Oh yeah we've been collecting taxes for centuries. Product-market fit? Yeah, we have these big guys with badges and guns who will come to your house if you "don't fit." We pay an absolute pittance compared to private, but your job will be there your entire working life.
You can be an engineer in retail, medical, insurance, finance, etc. there are tons of stable engineering jobs working for companies that don’t deliver a digital service or physical product.
It's about time we push back on this. If they need employees so bad, how about they stop making demands which resemble being in a position of power?
Even more so for startups who don't really know what their solution is.
> How strong is the team?
I've actually asked it always on every interview. The generic answer I get is that "You will be working with experts in the field" yada yada.
When you actually join the team:
- Two juniors
- Few 20 years experience dudes that finished their growth at "Cobol is the best" with "Mainframe" T-Shirt on them
- And the same manager that hired you! (Avoiding eye contact)
So yea, one salary later you are on the new hunt for new job. I don't understand why ppl lie so much during interviews. It's a employee market, if I don't want to waste my time with teams like that -> it's a 100hunder I'll jump the ship ASAP.
Probably joking, but a reminder that people with 20 years of experience started their careers after the dotcom bubble burst, and might not even have turned 40 yet.
This is my favorite question since it isn’t something you can generally lie about.
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[1]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/gl-infra/reliability/-/issues/...
"How much time are we going to spend dealing with unprofessional antics?"
I'll give you a hint, the question was rhetorical... and the answer should be 0 minutes regardless of the applicant. ;-)
Think what "antics" would mean from a kindergarten teachers perspective.
Sure most adults rarely eat glue, but the number is not 0. The real insane ones will feign ignorance, and assume people will mistake it for wit. ;-)
It's such a simple, easy and cheap morale and productivity booster to give your employees. If there isn't free coffee, it's not a place you want to work because they're skimping on their employees.
As a consultant once on a due diligence gig at a medium-sized quasi-tech company in the Midwest, on the day I arrived, one smart and charming QA engineer took me aside and shared “the free coffee in the micro kitchens is crap, here’s our [employee-provided] coffee pot on a filing cabinet in the corner, please drink as much as you want”. That told me, among other things, this was a decent team in a mediocre company..
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220426-00/?p=10...
(spoilers:) during a collab between Microsoft and IBM, Microsoft engineers were frustrated with the coffee at IBM's offices. IBM refused to let them set up their own coffee pot, but IBM was not allowed to look at anything marked "confidential". so they put a cardboard box over the coffee pot and wrote "confidential" on the side.
Also during college, I travelled to Australia multiple times to race solar cars. We went as a "race crew", and while I was there to do embedded electronics, there were team members responsible for providing meals to the rest of the crew. They would unnecessarily pinch pennies, and buy the absolute lowest quality bulk anything. It was so bad that I would try to go shopping with them, and offer to pay the $1-2 out of my own pocket to get the lunch meat that wasn't gray, or cheese that wasn't plastic. During the race, someone brought a seasoning salt shaker in my support vehicle to pass around, and it was a massive morale boost! I also started a "beverage club," where folk could contribute to a pool to buy liter bottles of soda when they got sick of warm tap water.
It doesn't matter how good your beans are or how far they are driven in if you are still just making industrial sized carafes of black coffee. The "mandatory" company mug becomes a symbol of control (among others; the company had some strict rules about desk adornments). The "coffee shop" mentality creates the cashier flow and long lines of an actual coffee shop, with the even more awkwardness that any conversations are in full view of your bosses (all the way up the chain) because they chose to subject themselves to this too "for good beans" every morning.
I learned a lot from that job, including how often what people say they want ("quality") is a mask for what they really want ("control"). I'm not sure I'd ever again choose to work for a company where making coffee at home and bringing it in the travel mug of your choosing was a small daily act of rebellion.
I've watched as promising young kids took up the addiction to make their deadlines and end up wired, tired, and burnt out. I've watched fights erupt recently at the drive-through line at Starbucks near my home. It reminds me of my time as a cocaine user, and the way people would fight to get their fix.
I've read that coffee was the fuel that sparked the colonization of the western hemisphere. I've read that when the industrial revolution kicked off, the coffee break was invented to keep workers working.
So these days, when I hear free coffee, I also hear the metaphorical cracking of the 1%'s whip at the back of the workforce. I prioritize my health over my work output. I prioritize rest over frantic action.
Hyperbolic? Absolutely. Stimulant addiction is a real thing. I wonder what human society would look like without it. But I know for certain that removing caffeine from my life has made me happier, healthier, and more able over-all.
Try it -- you might like it!
After a lifetime of consuming caffeine, early in the pandemic when I started staying home fulltime, I saw my opportunity. I'd been trying to quit both coffee and caffeinated sodas for years. I immediately noticed the withdrawal symptoms, but then I'd had them for so long: irritable and dehydrated in the mornings until I had my fix. It took me 6 months to finally ween myself off coffee in the mornings. Sodas had fallen by the wayside earlier. So I finally was caffeine-free on Oct 26, 2020.
It took a solid 4-6 weeks, likely toward the longer end for the morning cravings to really stop. After that it took me another 2-3 weeks for my restless leg stopped moving. It took about 4 months after that for my body to readjust to not constantly shaking my right leg. Parts of the musculature of my hip had over-developed in the decades I'd had that problem. I continue to work on stretching out that part of my body on an ongoing basis.
The real gains started after about 3 months. That's when I noticed I slept much more soundly. Falling asleep remains significantly easier, as does waking. I'm never irritable in the mornings unless I read some awful news first thing -- point being that the caffeine withdrawal symptoms have abated.
I think more clearly. I'm not as easily irritated. I feel like caffeine left me on an emotional raw edge, and I was always snapping at people, or much worse. It ruined my emotional state for the majority of my life, since I started drinking colas heavily around age ten, and I'm 46 at present.
It has really been a very eye-opening experience. I feel like a fog on my mind cleared after a lifetime. I'm not sure I can really relate that feeling with mere words.
TL;DR: ~3 months from cessation I started to notice real benefits
e: If you do change the name please keep "hog" in there, that mascot is adorable
https://v.firebog.net/hosts/AdguardDNS.txt, which is available from https://firebog.net/
I don't see any particular reason for it, so I've since whitelisted it. It is indeed an odd choice, but its a long-used namespace which sees a dwindling number of available and useful domain names over time, IMO.
It's pretty low on google without the "your" and doesn't even have a knowyourmeme page, so I don't think it's a big deal.
1. "Why is this position open?"
and if the answer is anything other than "we're doubling the size of our company", I like to follow up with:
2. "Tell me about the last person who had this role."
The way #2 gets answered can usually tell me a lot about the culture.
Do you have project managers?
Do you have product owners?
Do you fill out timesheets with your working hours?
Do you use an RPC framework GRPC/etc
What languages do you use? Are you polyglot?
What is the promotion process?
What would you like to see change?
How big is the company and how big is your organization?