Avoid Bad Job Fits with Five Interviewer Questions

YOU get to ask questions during the interview, but so many folks don't use that opportunity to ask real questions that will weed out the bad jobs.

00:00 Introduction
00:45 How do we make money?
01:11 What will I be doing on day one?
01:39 Will I be working with YOU?
02:10 How much input does the team have on features?
02:32 How has your tech stack evolved?
02:57 How is your team organized?
03:25 Coming up with your own questions?
03:40 Outroduction

👉 Shot on location at Mt. Scott Nature Park, Happy Valley, OR

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#interviewing #techjobs

[RandomPotatoDev]

I usually ask - “ if you hire me and i start tomorrow, what would you want me to achieve in 6 month or a year?” Some companies have really crazy expectations.

[Cavaleria]

Great questions! I also ask “how do you ship code to production?” This gives you insight on how much they invest into making the deployment process easy and bug free via tooling like a CI/CD, peer review, and testing.

[barrsm]

1. In addition to (as mentioned) meeting the team you will work with, ask to see (or at least have described to you) where you will be sitting if not working remotely.
2. Ask if the company uses any homegrown versions of standard technologies (such as their own version of CSS which doesn't work exactly (or much at all in some cases) like real CSS).
3. Ask how the company rates employees. Are you pitted against others for a limited number of good ratings or is everyone rated individually?

Maybe you could do a video on red flags for JS jobs based on their tech stacks?
I think of things such as:
1. No standards about what to use, so one project is in React, another in Vue, etc. Each project uses the pet libraries/dependencies/tools of the original developer.
2. Using a large number of dependencies. Each additional dependency is one more thing to learn and keep up to date.
3. (IMO) Using libraries which change what the developer writes (i.e. lodash). The farther from standard JS, the harder to onboard new developers.

[saideepesh]

Yeah, these are some of the great questions to ask, I might want to list down few

1. What's the learning culture at the company
2. What's the tech stack I might be working on
3. (In Addition to Day 1) What I will be doing in a week or month

[ToddDunning]

Compliment the interviewer by asking if his wife is hot. Show you are down to earth by eating peanut butter during the Zoom. A Venmo of $20 in the chat window can help skip you through the Hackerrank. And always close your tent flaps for privacy from loud vehicles.

[me_hanics]

This video has opened my eyes much more, than I expected. Great video with quality information, explained shortly. Not too fast, but not slow either.

[victorlongon]

In my interviews i have always asked, how the company makes money. People forget that in the end of the day that's why everyone works, so to know this is vital, imo.
Another great question is how the think around testing.

[jr-hper]

This are some of the great questions Jack. Wish I knew it few years back...can't go back, surely I'll ask once in future :)😅 thank you so much for sharing with us

[AutisticThinker]

As a lover of physics as well; I would love to understand the optics of what was turning you yellow most of the video. :D

[noccer]

I always ask if the company is in profit. A company in Loss but perhaps with a pot of money from investors may penny pinch if revenue is way behind outgoing costs. A profitable company gives me confidence I'm going to be able to provide for my family. Profitable companies take less shortcuts and host a more relaxed/productive atmosphere imho. ☘

[nickadiemus]

Some great questions! I've always tried to make my interview questions at the end fun (if all my questions were answered during the interviewing process).

My favorite one to ask that always enlightens the mood is "What is your favorite movie and why?"

[francis_n]

I am not looking for work yet but these are amazing questions: What will I been doing on day 1? Will I be working with you? How is your team organised. I will save this for my next move. Thanks Uncle Jack!

[atwright]

This video and the comments are pure gold!

[Dunktastic]

These are excellent questions! Thanks for sharing!

[jagggy_snake]

Another one - what's the product roadmap currently look like?

[rjmunt]

I always ask what's the most challenging aspects of working with this company.

[lardosian]

Thanks Jack, on a side note, can you advise anywhere to practice aptitude tests, a node js job I interviewed for this week are keen to take me on but then HR sent a ridiculously difficult aptitude test which has tripped me up, the engineers are letting me do it again and are on my side thankfully. Such a pain, no way I would ask someone to do one of these, thanks!

[slayern]

The first question about money is so true. You must know how much money they are making and how much they are giving you.

[Simon-lkky]

Have you ever worked more than 40 hours a week and why?

[Endrit]

I never ask any question, how bad is this?
I always got the job tho.