I was wondering if anyone else had any questions they always asked the interviewer in the “we’ll give you five minutes at the end to ask us questions” bit in interviews.
Personally I always ask what the staff turnover rate is. Mainly because in my first dev job I was one of four people who started on the same day. One of the other guys left after two days, I left after six weeks, and another guy left after two months.
Another I’ll be asking after my current job is if they have a mainframe. I’ve now worked at three companies with mainframes and they all were old corporations where they were outsourcing loads of stuff to unhelpful companies (often IBM) which generally meant lots of headaches.
I want to make sure my work-life balance isn’t going to be awful, and hearing that they have Unlimited Vacation doesn’t tell me how much vacation people actually take. I also want to know that the place isn’t just doing what a manager thinks “feels right” but actually measures and has standard processes for making decisions.
Another question I usually ask that may be relevant for many of you: what proportion of your developers are women? And: are there any women in tech leadership roles?
Personally, with that one, I’m mostly just looking for a normal response and that it isn’t zero. I don’t want to be the only woman around.