2 min read
Software Engineering Interviewee Questions
I’ve been putting together a list of good questions to ask as an interviewee for a software engineering role, and thought I’d put them in a blog post instead.
- What is the ratio of testers to developers to program managers? What is the interaction like? How does project planning happen on the team?
- What brought you to this company? What has been most challenging for you?
- I noticed that you use technology X. How do you handle problem Y?
- Why did the product choose to use the X protocol over the Y protocol. I know it has benefits like A, B, and C, but many companies choose not to use it because of issue D.
- I’m very interested in scalability, and I’d love to learn more about it. What opportunities are there at this company to learn about this?
- I’m not familiar with technology X, but it sounds like a very interesting solution. Could you tell me a bit more about how it works?
- What keeps you up at night?
- What do you hope I will accomplish in this position?
- What is the team structure?
- What was the department/team’s biggest challenge and what did you learn from it?
- What does the team do for lunch?
- Tell me about the team’s biggest achievement and when was it?
- What benefits are negotiable?
- What percentage of employees are promoted?
- What will my day look like?
- What are the expected work hours?
- How does the company give feedback?
- How has your position allowed you to grow?
- What are my career options?
- How is the company funded?
- How profitable is the company?
- What’s the most rewarding thing you worked on in the past year?
- What percentage of your time do you spend putting out fires vs engineering work?
- How good is the CI feedback loop? How quickly does it catch bugs after they’re committed?
- How diverse are the engineering teams?
- How big is the company? How big is the engineering department?
- What opportunities are there for continuing education? Do you have hack days or lunch and learns? Is there tuition reimbursement?