Everything Except Money -Questions I ask myself when I am interviewing

From a junior developer diaries — not technical series

During the Covid-19 first wave, I found my self without a job, and with only a few months of experience. I was very nervous that I would not found the next position or, worse, got to a position that would not fit my career path. Surprisingly I got a lot of chances and invitations to interviews, and in only three months, I interviewed in over 40 companies.

In this article, I will pass on to you what I learned in this period time and how I chose my current job in the form of the questions that I ask my self during the interview process.

It will not necessarily suit all of you, but I hope it will give a direction.

I invite you to mark the three to 5 questions that are most important to you, I have marked mine :)

The Company:

1. How many people work in this company? How many of them are in the R&D?
2. How long has the company been around?
3. Is the company known? Does it have a good reputation?
4. How many women compared to men are in the company? Are there women in senior positions?

The team:

1. How many people work in this team? How many of them are developers?
2. How much experience do the other developers on the team have?
3. Am I supposed to replace someone who is leaving the team, or is the team growing?
4. Did the team members look happy? (If I get to meet the team before if not, You can always ping them on Facebook / LinkedIn and ask (or just in the hallway before/after the interview or through common friends).

The manger:

1. How many years of relevant experience does the direct manager have?
2. Is the direct manager friendly? Did I feel a connection with her/him during the conversation we had? Or else, Did I feel anything suspicious/fishy during the convo? (Sometimes you have a great connection with someone, but there’s also a feeling that something is not 100% right. You can’t tell what exactly, this kind of gut feeling).
3. Did the direct manager work with juniors before? (for juniors)

The work style:

1. Which development methodology do they use? Agile? Waterfall? Scrum?
2. How long is a sprint?
3. Do they work with a task management system?

The position:

1. How many hours of work per day are expected of me? Can I occasionally work shorter days and complete the hours on another day?
2. Are the hours flexible, or am I supposed to be from 9 to 18 at the office?
3. How late do most people stay in the office?
4. Is it OK to work from home occasionally?
5. Is it horizontal work on several projects or on rotating projects? Or is it in-depth work on one product?

COVID-19:

How did they deal with COVID-19? How are they going to continue to deal with COVID-19?

Conditions & Perks:

1. Is it customary to receive bonuses?
   What are the conditions for receiving a bonus?
   What is the size of the bonus? Salary? Two? Three?
2. How many days off do you get?
3. Is it possible to take unpaid days off if necessary?
4. Is there a pension arrangement?
5. Is there a bank arrangement?
6. Are there any formation evenings? Happy hour? Company trips? In the country? Abroad?
7. Are stock options available?
   What happens if the company is sold?
8. Is there a gym or classes?
9. Is there a charge for lunch?
10. Is there a kitchen on-site?

Work Environment

1. Open space or rooms or working from home?
2. How many screens, and what sizes are they?
3. Are there orthopedic chairs?
4. Are there adjustable tables?
5. Do you get noise-canceling headphones? Is it customary to have such headphones?
6. If rooms, how many people in a room?
7. Are there telephone booths?
8. Are there any meeting rooms?
9. How many toilet cubicles are there, and are the toilets clean?
10. What parking options are available around? Does the company pay for the parking? Is parking in a shady or underground area?
11. Is there public transportation coming to the place? “convenient”, it’s not a big pleasure to wait in the sun or rain 30 minutes for a bus because the bus station has no roof

More questions for students and first jobs:

1. Is the job is just developmental, or is it expected that some of the time will be brought forward to other things like support or QA?
2. Is there an organized training program?
3. Have there been or are there now juniors in the company?
4. How long have juniors who worked for the company and left stayed with the company?

The technology:

1. What are the programming languages used?
2. What can I learn when working there?
3. In what architecture?
4. Who leads the decision-making on these issues?
5. Are their forms of work compatible with the market? Are they ahead of the market? Behind it?
6. Does it advance me in my career to work with these technologies?
7. Do they interest me?

Final Words

I hope you’ve enjoyed this article and learned new things.
If you like this post, I would appreciate applause and sharing :-)
If you have something to add or change, I would love to hear. ❤️

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Who Am I?

My name is Michal Porag. I am a Full-Stack Developer working at Skillset and a Computer Science student at The Open University. Also, I am a co-founder and a community leader of Pull Request and a Tech Speaker.

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