My Favorite Interview Questions

"Do you have any questions for us?"

No matter the job, the company, or the industry, every decent interview includes this question, or one very similar to it. There are countless articles, books, videos and posts that discuss how you should handle it. Even Hollywood includes it in shows and movies, and they rarely get things right about our industry! But despite it's prominence and importance, I had several people in my recent slew of interviews mention how glad they were that I had questions for them, because the last N interviews they had, the interviewee just said, "Nope, no questions from me."

So this week, I thought I'd share some of my favorite questions to ask during interviews.

Now, there is no list of "right" questions to ask. During this part of the interview, the point is to interview them. Figure out if this is a place you want to work and if these are the kinds of people you want to spend a huge chunk of your day with. So these questions are not just a list of the "right" questions to ask. They are questions I like to ask to find out if this is the right place for me.

When I interview for a job, I'm typically trying to learn about 3 things, the project, the culture, and what is actually valued here. These are the 3 things that matter the most to me in a job. I want to learn as much about them as I can during the interview process, so you will see my favorite questions are all focussed around these 3 topics in some way.

I encourage you to really think about what it is you value in a job. Once you know what your top 3 or 4 things are, come up with questions that will help you find out if this company shares those same values. Maybe you and I share some of them, and these questions will help you in your search for that next great position! If not, I'm also going to share my thought process around why I ask these questions, so I hope that will help you figure out what questions you can ask to learn more about the things you value.

But that's enough jibber jabberin, let's take a look at my 5 favorite questions to ask during an interview!

Question 1 - Could you walk me through a "regular" day working here?

This is generally the first question I ask. More often than not, up to this point, the interviewers have been talking about highlights and glamour, trying to sell you on the company. "We use these tools. We just finished this project and that feature. We just started working on X, which is what we would like the person filling this role to help with. We even shut down every Friday at 4 to have beers with everyone." All that sounds great, but what is it like the other 98% of the time?

It's not the one-off events, or miscellaneous milestones that make people love or hate their job. It's the day to day things that add up. I like to celebrate wins and have fun just as much as the next person, but a LOT of stuff happens between those events, and I want to know what that stuff is. So I'm looking to find out things like how many meetings are engineers typically involved in a given day? How much time is dedicated to focussed work? What kind of communication goes on with the team on a "regular" day? Are there lots of Slack or Teams messages? How many impromptu video calls or stopping by desks typically occur?

I personally prefer a collaborative team culture, and plenty of communication, but only having formal meetings when they are actually necessary (ask yourself, could this just be shared in an email?). So the answer to this question can tell me a lot about the culture of a company.

Every company has negatives or downsides. That's just the nature of the world...nothing is perfect (except maybe cake 🍰). So I ask this question to see if any of the regular goings-on are on my Oh-No-No's list.

Question 2 - If someone were to fill this role and do an amazing job...What would that look like in your eyes?

With this question, I'm not looking for a how-to manual to tell me how to do the job well. Instead, I'm looking to find out what is actually valued here. I don't mean the core values that are written on the wall, or posted on the homepage of the marketing site. No, I want to know what the people who work here actually value. Are new ideas valued when they don't come from higher leadership? Do they value someone who stays in their lane? Or do they value someone who is hopping on client/customer calls, and helping other teams? Do the team members value heads down, headphones on, focussed work? Or lots of collaboration and communication? Or both?

By finding out what different people's definition of "doing an amazing job" looks like, you can get a real sense of what is valued.

Question 3 - How do you know when someone is doing a good job here? What kinds of things are you looking at to measure success?

There are all kinds of ways performance can be measured in our industry, especially these days. With this question, I'm hoping to learn about that, as well as the culture. How a company measures success can tell a lot about it's culture and values.

For example, if a company doesn't use any metrics to measure success (not uncommon in smaller companies) you can reasonably assume that the feedback you'll get in your 1:1's (if you have them) will be largely observational and opinionated, and not much in the way of technical or data driven. Also, in my experience, this means processes within the company are ill-defined or non-existent, which can often mean day to day work is very reactionary, and advancement (promotions, raises, etc.) are not very consistent.

Or maybe the metrics used are things like number of lines coded, number of commits, and/or number of PR/MRs. In this case, I would assume that significant control lies with non-technical people and not with the engineering managers/leaders (in my experience, no reasonably experienced engineer would use this as a measure of success). I (personally) would also wager to guess that the engineers aren't focussed on things like joining client calls to hear the pains of their users, writing documentation, or collaborating with one another, as none of these impact the metrics the company is looking at to see if they are successful.

Or perhaps they're tracking things like average PR/MR time, average PR/MR size, and code churn and how those leading indicators are affecting the DORA metrics. This would tell me that the company is focussed on efficiency and quality, but in a healthier way. They care about data, and are looking for a larger, more holistic view of the success of the engineering team.

It's important to note, that I am making some assumptions here based on my experience. That's why it's important to use this question as a conversation starter, and not the end-all-be-all answer. The answer I get gives me a general sense of things, but I am sure to follow-up on my assumptions with more questions to turn assumption into fact and understanding.

Question 4 - If the CEO came to you and said you can change any 1 thing about your's or your team's job, no approval necessary. What is the 1 thing you would change?

This question, and the next, I like to ask to get a sense of the good and bad parts of the company. It could be culture, process, values, anything. With this question in particular, I want to understand what people's biggest frustrations are here, while keeping the conversation positive, which is why I phrase this question the way I do. I found when you ask something like, "What don't you like about working here?" 2 things happen. One, people tighten up, and you often don't get a natural or real response. And Two, the conversation takes on a bit of a negative focus...not the kind of last impression you want to leave...

So instead, I phrase like you see above. This way, I'm still bringing up the topic of things they don't like, but in a much more positive tone. Rather than "don't like" the focus is on "change". And the little story told in the question about "the CEO coming to you", and you not needing approval to make things better adds a bit more positivity to it. I've found that I get much more honest answers from people when asking this way, and their responses have lead to some great conversations. It's also a bonus if you know of a tool you can suggest to them that might allow that change to happen!

Question 5 - In the opposite direction, if someone else on your team was given the same opportunity to change 1 thing, but you could "protect" 1 thing. What's the 1 thing you wouldn't want to be changed?

As I said before, I like to ask this question immediately after the last question, since they are kind of related. Again, still keeping to a positive tone of "change" rather than what someone else "doesn't like". The goal here though, is to find out what people really like about working here. What is something they don't want to change because it's a part of the job they really enjoy or look forward to.

One of the best answers I received that made me really want to work there, was the answer I got from one of the mid-level engineers on the team. They said something along the lines of "The camaraderie and freedom of our team. We've become a close knit group. We work together really well, and we've all become friends. There isn't any problem I could run into here that I wouldn't go to any member of the team with." I could tell in how they talked about it that they really meant what they were saying. This lead to a great discussion about the team and some more specific examples of what it was like to work with them.

I have lots of other questions, but I know you're busy, so I'll stop here

So those are my 5 favorite questions to ask in an interview when I want to learn more about the company. Over the years they've lead to some very interesting conversations that have shed a lot of light, and helped me to know if that was a place I really wanted to work at or not.

Again, I want to stress that this is not a list of the "right" questions to ask in an interview. These are merely the questions I like to ask that have answered my own questions about the things I find important. If you value different things in a job, I encourage you to sit down and think about how you might suss out information about those values. Remember to always try and keep the conversation positive though. The part of the interview where you get to ask your questions usually comes at the end, and you always want to leave on a positive note.

I'll leave with one more little nugget. I like to end each interview by letting the interviewer know that I will likely have lots more questions after I digest everything we talked about. I want to leave them with an impression that I'm curious and interested in them and their company. I've yet to not receive an invite to email/text/call them with any other questions I have.

Do you have your own favorite questions to ask in interviews? I would love to hear them, as well as why they're your favorite!

Thank you for taking the time, and allowing me to share my favorite interview questions with you! Until next time, Happy Hacking!