I’m Going to Ask These 5 Questions in My Next Software Dev Job Interview
I need to be honest. I’m leaving my current position because I hate it. I hate the legacy code I’m working on, and I hate the attitude of my colleagues. I don’t enjoy what I’m doing and dislike the culture.
As a result, I’m thinking about how can I avoid working a similar job in the future. My simple solution is to ask the following five questions as early as possible during the interview process.
Some might say we shouldn’t even ask questions in interviews. I say this: you’re right. Hide who you are, particularly if you are a jerk
Can I see your coding standards documentation?
This whole article isn’t a joke, it’s not a parody. That doesn’t mean that it is lacking humor, however. Like when you ask to see a company's coding standards documentation and see your interviewer’s face fall.
A good company with high coding standards will be able to send you a copy of this documentation (it might even be publicly available). You might even ask follow-up questions about how the style guide is enforced in the team.
In your interview reader unfortunately that is unlikely to be the case. Many teams don’t have any coding standards let alone documentation about those coding standards.
We have a link to Google’s style guide. I’m surprised someone put that much effort in
Do You Publish A Career Path For Employees?
Invisible career paths cause issues. You don’t know what you need to do to progress and that’s pretty fair because, in all honesty, you aren’t going to progress unless you play the right political games.
Do ask whether the company has published a career path as this will suggest to you whether they have considered a path for their employees. If you find out the position you applied for is simply a dead-end job you will be able to act accordingly.
I still think if you’re looking for a job to get out of coding, perhaps the job you are looking for shouldn’t be a coding position. Does that make sense?
How Do You Avoid Silos In Cross-Functional Teams
This is a classic question and one that I’ve asked on many different occasions. The way to get to the truth is to keep asking and drilling down to get to the truth.
Let’s see how that might go:
How Do You Avoid Silos In Cross-Functional Teams
If you’re the single developer for a function in a team, what happens when you go on vacation
Will anyone in the cross-functional or functional team notice if you are not there for any reason
That last one. I took a sick day before and nobody noticed. I wonder how they would answer that question in a interview
Do You Have Paid Or Structured Training?
Training can take a variety of guises in software engineering firms. Perhaps a firm might bring a speaker or consultant in to help with specific problems in their codebase. They might send employees to WWDC or pay for some online training. They are all valid, but there are too many organizations that do nothing at all.
My employer wants to have T-shaped developers and have decided to enable the development of existing staff by telling them to be T-shaped.
Frankly it’s as effective as their meeting-free Fridays, where I can seldom schedule lunch due to the many meetings
Conclusion
Does anyone want to interview me? I mean I know. I’m anonymous for a reason, right?
Honestly, next time an interview is “not going well” I’m going to ask the questions on this post.
I’ve got a feeling that it definitely won’t go well after that