this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
63 points (98.5% liked)

Experienced Devs

3950 readers
1 users here now

A community for discussion amongst professional software developers.

Posts should be relevant to those well into their careers.

For those looking to break into the industry, are hustling for their first job, or have just started their career and are looking for advice, check out:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I was wondering if anyone else had any questions they always asked the interviewer in the "we'll give you five minutes at the end to ask us questions" bit in interviews.

Personally I always ask what the staff turnover rate is. Mainly because in my first dev job I was one of four people who started on the same day. One of the other guys left after two days, I left after six weeks, and another guy left after two months.

Another I'll be asking after my current job is if they have a mainframe. I've now worked at three companies with mainframes and they all were old corporations where they were outsourcing loads of stuff to unhelpful companies (often IBM) which generally meant lots of headaches.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Maybe this is because I'm still relatively junior (2ish years), but my favorite question to ask is, "What are some of the characteristics you're looking for in someone in this role?"

I use it as a vibe check, especially at the end of interviews. If they start reading my resume back to me, or listing the things we've talked about during the interview....well, that's a good sign. If they start describing a bunch of stuff that we didn't talk about, it's a chance to throw a 'Hail Mary' pass and show them how that's me, as well - maybe we didn't talk about something that was important to them, but I have relevant experience or a background.

If they start describing somebody else....well, that's not great.