10 Questions I'm Asking All Companies Before Scheduling Any Interviews

Interviewing requires a lot of time and energy. Maybe you need to study some technical topics ahead of time. You probably already have commitments that require a lot of your focus—like another job or children. That’s why it’s important to be selective where you can about companies you want to interview with.

Here are the ten questions I’m using to decide whether or not I’m interested in interviewing with a company:

1. How large is the engineering team?
2. What is the make-up of the engineering team? Such as, how many managers are there, who do they manage, etc.
3. How often are one-on-ones?
4. Who are the one-on-ones with?
5. Is there career coaching?
6. Are there performance reviews?
7. How have you handled performance reviews with the pandemic?
8. What’s the development process like? For example, do you work in sprints?
9. How tasks are estimated and assigned?
10. Are there regular team retrospectives?