These are questions that are good to ask as an interviewee, a candidate for a developer job.
- What's the best part of the job?
- What's the worst part of the job? Or, what would you most like to change?
- What are the primary dysfunctions of the team?
- What does a typical day look like?
- What does success look like?
- What's the recent turn-over look like? Why are people leaving? Where are they going?
- How has the company changed/evolved in the past few years?
- What's the next step in the interview/hiring process?
- How many meetings do you have in an average week? How long are they? What's the content?
- What does your deployment process look like? How long does it take? Who does it? How often?
- How long are your iterations?
- How long are your standups?
- How much test coverage do you have? Do you have end-to-end tests as well?
- What branching strategy do you use?
- What's your code review process?
- How do you track stories, tasks, bugs?
- Do teams go out to lunch together?
- How much pairing does the team do?
- How do developers and QA testers work together?
- How do developers and designers work together?
- How do developers and product owners work together?
- How much access to actual customers/users do we get?
- How does work get from the customer to the developers? Is there a feedback loop?
- How big is your backlog? What state is it in? How often is it groomed?
- How are developers protected from distractions?
- How much conference attendance will you pay for? What if I'm speaking?
- How much vacation time? How is it earned? If unlimited, what's average/typical?
- What are the policies on working from home?
- Can you tell me about all the meetings you have in an average week?
- What does your deployment process look like, how long does it take, who does it, and how often?
- What processes do you have that could use significant improvement?
As recommended by my buddy Jim Leingang, an interviewee needs only convince the interviewer(s) of 3 things:
- I can do the job
- I want the job
- I can be trusted
One other piece of advice he gave (for a phone interview):
- Smile