How to interview your interviewer

7 Things to Ask in a Software Developer Interview 

Interviewing is a two-way process, while your potential employer interviews you, you are also interviewing them. This guide is about the latter part, how to know whether this is the right company, the right team, and the right job for you. While the focus of it is primarily on Software Developer interviews,  it can also be used in other Software/IT job interviews.

Of course, there are other factors for each individual before making a decision on an offer but these below are the ones  I have been using for myself and I believe are the common ones to check for. 

 I group these into two categories: The things you need to observe and the things you need to ask about.

A) Things to observe during an interview

1. Quality of Questions

Are the interviewers asking high-quality questions ?

A good interviewer should try to assess what you have done in the past and what you bring to the table based on your past work. If you used Oracle as a developer you should be able to pick up SQL Server in a few weeks or if you used  AWS lambda then should be able to switch to Azure functions in a fairly short amount of time. If they ask too specific questions that should raise a question mark

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The quality of the questions also directly signals the skills of the interviewers with whom you most likely will work in the same team.  There might be exceptions to this in some large companies where most of the interviewers will not work with you but that doesn't change the fact that the quality of the questions shows the quality of the engineering in the company (in case you care).

Also if you get the same questions repeatedly that shows the lack of coordination in the hiring team.

2. Quantity of Questions

If you know your stuff the more questions asked by the interviewer the better, this will improve the connection between you and your future employer.  And if you start your future job with strong connections you will move faster in your new role. If you don't know your stuff I suggest to learn it

If interviewers can continue asking high-quality questions that shows that they know what they are doing,  but if you are asked only a few questions during the interview process that usually  indicates one of two things :

a) The interviewers don’t have the skillset to assess your skillset, this might be simply because they are newly adapting the tech stack they plan to use themselves or they don't know what they are doing

b)  They already know your work from another source (either positively or negatively)

3. Body Language and Attitude

I recommend reading about the body language and observing interviewers. That will help to assess a few important data points.  

Was the hiring manager among the interviewers? If not why? Did you feel connected to the interviewers when talking to them, especially the hiring manager? Ask yourself the question of how they made you feel?  Did you feel a lack of empathy ? 

B) Questions to clarify : 

4. Modernity of the Tech Stack

This is something you should ask the interviewers: What tech stack they are on? Are they still on VB6?  Do they have automated tests? 

 You may feel comfortable working on a dying tech stack but you should consider the opportunities you will miss in the future because you didn’t gain experience in the new technologies.

5. The quality of the code base:

No one wants to work on an undocumented, spaghetti code base. Did the team use SOLID, DRY or similar principles to create it? How is the onboarding process for developers? What kind of Tech Debt is there? How much of the team capacity in the past year is used to resolve the Tech Debt? Does the codebase have high code coverage?  If you really enjoy writing code, then the lack of the 3+ items from the above list will make your life difficult.

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6. The Process:

Which SDLC methodology do they follow? What practices are mandatory in software development?

Do they require a lot of documentation? Some regulated environments require you to write one line of documentation for every line of code. Are you ok with that?  Does the team have a product manager? 

A lot of the companies state that they are following Agile but everyone has a different version of it. 

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Are you able to use the tools you want easily, or will it take 6 months to get it approved by the IT department? And if so are you fine with that? In startups, this process is usually quick but in regulated environments, it may take months. 

7. The Team

You can ask about the team culture, how long have the interviewers been with the company? How do they like it there?   Is it remote first, hybrid, or fully onsite?  Do they have team gatherings or team-building activities? Do they care about their employees? How is the WLB?

Conclusion

Keep in mind most of the interview decisions are made by a team to hire the right candidate, and it's very common that the decision is not unanimous. Some of the interviewers might have given you thumbs up but some haven't.  You should do the same and use multiple data points to decide before accepting an offer

Oguz Altuncu is a NY Metro based Software Engineering leader with 20 years of experience in the field