Usually I try to get as complete of a picture as possible when interviewing for a role. Some of the information can be found online, but many are more realistic to ask the interviewers. Typically, I ask 1-2 different questions at the end of each interview to get some coverage. If I get to the offer stage, I ask to speak to the hiring manager again, and gather more of the answers. The questions about compensation usually go to the recruiter.
Many of the questions are more geared towards startups, where public information is more limited, and variations are higher.
Company & Financials
- How many employees are there? How many on the technical team? What’s the growth plan?
- What’s the company’s funding history? Who are the investors?
- Is it profitable yet? What’s the current/historical/projected revenue/burn rate/runway?
- What are the top company priorities this year?
- What do the unit economics look like for the product(s)?
- Is there an exit strategy for the company (i.e. IPO)?
For enterprise products:
- What does a typical sales cycle look like? What is the distribution of deal sizes?
- Is there an implementation cycle & how long does it typically take?
People & Organizations
- How is the technical team structured (breaking down all of engineering down to this team)?
- What are some of the most important qualities that make people successful here?
- What are the top 3 challenges for this team at the moment?
- How does the team interact with other functional teams (i.e. product manager, sales, etc.)?
Technology & Work
- What’s the tech stack, i.e. typical tools and technologies used?
- What is the process that decides what work needs to be done? Who’s primarily responsible for it?
- What is the development process, including:
- Do people typically write requirements/design docs?
- How do you do code reviews?
- What does the release cycle look like? How often are updates deployed to production?
- Is there a QA team? What do they do? Is there tension?
- How are the critical, important architecture decisions made?
- What does oncall look like? How about incident management?
- What’s the work-life balance like for you?
- What are the biggest pain points of your day-to-day work?
Role
- What is the official title of this role? What is it leveled at if there’s one?
- What is a typical onboarding process here?
- What are the main focus areas/projects this role would be expected to work on?
Manager & Leadership
- For Hiring Manager:
- What made you decide to join?
- How big is the team and how many are you hiring?
- How would you describe your management style?
- What are your biggest worries at the moment? What keeps you up at night?
- For team members:
- What do you think about the HM and company leadership in general?
- What would be the top 3 things you think they can improve on?
- For founders of very small companies:
- What is the key insight that led to you starting the company?
- What’s your long-term product vision?
- What’s your expected revenue model, i.e. where would the money come from?
Performance & Compensation
- How are performance reviews done here? At what frequency?
- What is a typical promotion process?
- Is there a sign-on bonus?
- Is there relocation support?
- Is equity part of the compensation? If so:
- Options or RSUs?
- How many units & what percentage ownership is it notwithstanding dilution?
- What’s the current implied valuation as of last funding round?
- What’s the vesting schedule?
- Are there annual refreshers?
- For Options: ISO or NSO? Early exercisable? Strike price? What’s current FMV? What’s the post termination exercise window?
- For RSUs: Is it double trigger?
- Is annual bonus part of the compensation? If so:
- How is it determined?
- What’s the typical expected amount/percentage given good performance?
- Other factors:
- Immigration support?
- Return to Office policy?
- Medical/Dental/Vision benefits? HSA/FSA/Dependent Care FSA?
- Commuter benefits?
- 401(k) matching?
- Is there ESPP?
- PTO/Parental Leave policy?
- Education/Wellness/Home office allowances?