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?

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