The one question every interviewer asks is, "Do you have any questions for me?"
Most of us forget to prepare questions, so we make up generic ones on the spot, or say, "Mmm... well... no, I think you covered everything!"
It's an incredibly important part of the interview, which I why I went ahead and compiled thoughtful questions for you!
Culture Queries gives you the best questions to ask your interviewer.
Here's an example:
👎 Don't ask: "Is there work/life balance here?"
👍 Do ask: "How responsive are people to emails/Slack over the weekends and after 6pm?"
Why? Because some interviewers will interpret the first question as an unwillingness to work hard. Plus, a yes or no question that is so direct will almost certainly get you a canned response. Instead, ask a more specific question that gives you an idea of what the expected working hours are and how team members communicate with one another without sounding like you're already trying to cut corners.
I'm still making improvements and adding content, but I hope it'll be a useful resource for anyone preparing for interviews. Culture Queries is made for developers, by a developer (aka me 🙋🏻), so all feedback (good, bad, ugly) is welcome and appreciated.
Good luck on all of your interviews! And remember: you're evaluating the company as much as they're evaluating you. 🙌
Latest comments (35)
Hi Lynne! The link to Culture queries seems to be broken
Hn. Works for me. 🤔 Can you be more specific about the error you're getting? What browser are you using? On what device? (All the questions so I can look into this please!)
On a mac, latest chrome:
This site can’t provide a secure connectionwww.keyvalues.com sent an invalid response.
ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR
EDIT:
So looks like my company firewall categorized your website as "Alcohol & Tobacco" and blocked it :(
This is an insightful article. I'm in the job hunting process as a junior dev and I think this will help me in deciding when the offers do come.
I really like what I have seen at keyvalues.com. I think its a refreshing way to search for jobs-- searching for companies that fit one's values.
Great work!
One of my favorite questions to ask prospective employers is "How do you gauge the success of your staff?". This tends to expose their value systems. If they gauge their employees on lines of code of some arbitrary metric then that is a red flag. Code quality, test coverage, and peer reviews are all examples of things I think are much more indicative of successfully developers and are the types of things I look for when I ask these questions.
I always ask the interviewers are you pround and love what you are doing right now? Yes, it's a yes/no question, yet, it's quite hard to lie and you can easily see through their response. If even a HR person in the company can confidently answer this with enthusiasm, then you can almost be sure about their company culture.
Just saw this and took a peek at Culture Queries. It looks very interesting. I was happy to see it had the manager perspective. I need to carve out some time to dig in!
Lynne - I like the idea of framing the question in the right way. I think I saw similar idea in a guide for entry level job seekers to asking questions in an interview here: questionsforinterviewer.com/questi... (this guide is more general - not specifically targeting developers).
Is "no communication after 6pm and on weekends" really a good work/life balance? Or maybe it is more like the minimum for a regular job as a developer?
In my opinion, a good work/life balance includes not requiring attendence every day, that the individual can decide to use his time of highest motivation, that he/she can take a day off if it is good for the family - and work on weekends if she/he decides to.
Asking for work/life balance makes you look unwilling to work? You are right, maybe for some, but definitely not for all the companies.
Instead: Asking for a default work/life balance and getting it will make you a default developer, not a hard working one because you will not love your job because you can not use the peaks of motivation ( hint: they are not scheduled regularly from 9am to 5pm ;-) )
I asked about work/life balance in my letter of application and in the job interviews. It sorted out a lot of companies fast, still leaving enough open positions. This allowed me to find a company which I like to work hard for now, because I have good work/life balance.
There are not as many developers as there are jobs.
The demand of companies is higher than the supply.
But there is not only demand at the companies, there is also a demand at the developers, a demand for a healthier, more productive, higher motivated and more fulfilling permanent position.
Interesting, I'd suggest the exact opposite.
I think it's less about a numbers game. If I was being courted (as an employee, employer, or potential love interest), you wouldn't win me over by making me feel like I was just an option out of a pool of hundreds. I'd feel more connected to someone who spent time learning about me and expressed genuine interest because they saw me standing out from the rest.
It's the same reason why we, as developers, dislike generic recruiting emails. Because we know the recruiter sent the same email to a thousand other people.
😂 Tons of people at tons of companies. If you feel this way, you should probably ask this question to make sure they're on the same page as you hahaha. Never assume that other people and other companies operate the same way you do! Because... not all surprises are good ones!
Unfortunately, there is very little information about most companies online. This is especially true for smaller companies/startups who are busy building their product and supporting their users/customers, and don't have a lot of time to develop content for their business. Then, the bigger the company/corporation, we tend to get a lot of marketing fluff. If you look at 50 career pages or 50 job descriptions, you'll notice they all look shockingly similar.
A company's core values don't tell us anything about what the day-to-day is actually like. The life of a salesperson and the life of an infrastructure engineer are really different, and "Grit" as a company core value probably has a different translation to each department and team.
Imagine getting married to someone w/o actually asking him/her questions. You can't just read about them on the internet! (I mean... I guess you can. 😜) In my opinion, it's much much better to interact w/ them 1-on-1 and gauge for yourself whether you're compatible.