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On Sat, 13 Aug 2005, jan V wrote:

> I recently had an unpleasant experience accepting an in-house job for a pure
> Java company, only to quickly discover that I had landed myself in a
> nightmare sweat shop. I actually blame myself for not having asked enough
> probing questions at the interview stage.
>
> I'd like to avoid making the same mistake in the future, so now I've drawn
> up a list of questions I'll be asking the interviewer(s) in the future, and
> wonder if any of you can suggest more of the same...? (For the [OT] police,
> see end of list for Java-specific content!

I spent two years interviewing companies for a good position. Rather than
ask a lot of detailed questions I found I could ask some questions that
immediately identified some companies as a sweatshop.

First, if they don't let you ask any questions they are probably a
sweatshop.

If they let you ask questions, start off by asking if it is okay that you
take notes. They always said "yes" for me. Making it apparent you are
keeping notes means they cannot just say whatever they want. They tend to
choose their words more carefully.

Ask them how they handle overtime. The company I currently work for told
me they view overtime as a failure of project management. No one has
worked overtime in the past 3 years. I've worked here for a year and never
done overtime. We either change scope, change the timeline or hire more
people.

Most sweatshops will either be honest because they believe being a
sweatshop is the norm. Easily eliminated. Some shops try to hide it but
you can tell because they are nervous or vague in their answer. Ask for
clarification if they are vague. If you have to ask for clarification more
than twice they are probably a sweatshop.

Ask them about the reporting structure. If you are not being interviewed
by the person you report to then you want to have a chance to talk to this
person. If he is too busy to talk to you then assume he'll be too busy
when you become an employee.

> Here's the list:
>
> Financial/Benefits
> At least 4300 Bruto without car. [This figure is Belgium-specific,
> please ignore]
> At least 4000 Bruto with car. [This figure is Belgium-specific, please
> ignore]
> Company pension and/or health insurance scheme?

I never ask questions about compensation during the interview. When they
offer me the job I expect a package detailing all the compensation. At
that time I will ask HR about anything not clear in the offer letter.

> What's the company's financial health?

If they are publically traded you can find this out by doing a little
research. Even if they are not publically traded you can still do some
research. I tend to research the company before I go in for the interview.
I'll ask deeper questions based on my research. This sends a clear signal
to the employer that I have done research on the company.

> Do you regularly disclose financial performance statistics to your
> employees? How frequently?

If the research bears no fruit then this is a good question. I rarely got
far enough to ask this question. Most the time I've eliminated the
employer by this point.

> What proportion of time do you spend on inward investment (research,
> projects not directly funded by clients)

Interesting. Not one I had been asking. I might use this.

> How frequently are there pay reviews? Is this frequency part of the
> employment contract?

I'd ask this when I get the job offer.

> Company Culture / Working Atmosphere
> What are the job titles (junior, plain, senior, project leader..?)

I'd be more interested in if they had job titles. Most the companies I
have worked for have a job title but the real job is nothing like the job
title. Most hiring managers realize this.

> Invest in training? How frequently?
> Book library?
> Attitude to quality?
> Attitude to process improvements? (SEI CMM Level?)
> Time sheets?
> Flexitime?
> Dress code?

These are okay and I usually ask them at some point but usually after I
get a feel for whether or not I'm seriously interested in the company.

> Obligatory travel?
> Where to?
> Recuperation for significant TZ crossing?
> Compensatory arrangements?

I've never had this be a problem.

> Internal email used a lot?
> Yes? -> BAD.. suppresses person-to-person communication, team spirit

Why ask such a pointed question? I'd be more inclined to ask, "How do you
keep morale up?" or "How do you maintain good communication between ..."

> Health/Safety/Comfort
> RSI-aware, RSI-safe?
> Ergonomic keyboard, gfx tablet
> Rest breaks
> Air conditioning
> Tea/coffee machine?

Government regulated in my country.

> Room set-up?
> How many people to a room?
> Rooms have windows? (Peopleware)
> Meetings?
> How often?
> What kind?
> Canteen?
> What regular activities are there after hours?
>
> Physical Tools
> Fast machine? (3.0Ghz+)
> Screen
> One or two ?
> TFT or CRT?
> Size? At least 19 inch
> Project Tools
> Requirements tracking? How?
> What Design tools? (UML MagicDraw?)
> CVS or similar?
> IDE? IntelliJ, Eclipse,..
> Code qualtiy analysis? Used? How frequently?
> Profilers?
> Bug tracking?

A lot of detail questions. I'd be worried I was going to annoy the
employer at this point. My attitude is, if you don't give me something to
be productive I'll approach you once I have the job and explain why I need
the things I need. I'd tend to spend the interview talking with my
potential manager to see if they are approachable and reasonable.

If there is room for process improvement then I see that as an opportunity
to shine. I'll present data showing how not only myself but others can be
more productive.

> Software Engineering
> Explicit concentrating on early stages?
> Do you use whiteboards or other large-surface drawing areas for
> analysis/design? How frequently?
> Extreme Programming? Any elements of?
> Use cases?
> Write tests first?
> Can you describe your coding guidelines?
> What degree of enforcement do you use?
> Do you use Sun's Java naming convention?
> If not, what's the naming convention?
> Refactoring?
> What's your attitude to code duplication?
> What's your attitude to code reuse?
> How do you achieve reusability? At what source code scale do you
> achieve it? (packages, classes, methods?)
> What's your attitude to Java package hierarchy issues?
> What's your attitude to javadocs? Do you enforce the need for javadocs
> for all public classes? How about all methods?
> Automated GUI testing?
> Code reviews?
> How frequently?
> How many people?

Again, room for process improvement is room for me to shine.

--
Send e-mail to: darrell dot grainger at utoronto dot ca

On Wed, 17 Aug 2005, Raymond DeCampo wrote:

> jan V wrote:
> > I recently had an unpleasant experience accepting an in-house job for a pure
> > Java company, only to quickly discover that I had landed myself in a
> > nightmare sweat shop. I actually blame myself for not having asked enough
> > probing questions at the interview stage.
> >
> > I'd like to avoid making the same mistake in the future, so now I've drawn
> > up a list of questions I'll be asking the interviewer(s) in the future, and
> > wonder if any of you can suggest more of the same...? (For the [OT] police,
> > see end of list for Java-specific content!
>
> Jan,
>
> I regularly do interviews for my company. We always ask the interviewee
> if he or she has any questions towards the end of the interview. Not
> having any questions is usually viewed negatively. Any of the questions
> you listed would not be unusual or cause any difficulty. We are also
> looking to make sure that the candidate is a fit for our corporate culture.

Agreed.

> Do you have quite a number of questions there however. It may be best
> to try to get some of them answered over the phone with human resources
> either before or after the interview. Also, you could ask more open
> ended questions to try to get more of your questions answered in one go.
> (You might also learn some things you didn't expect.)

Agreed. Open-ended questions are the best way to go. I have kept things
open-ended and had potential employers tell me things I would have never
thought to ask.

If the question is too open-ended a good employer will seek clarification.

--
Send e-mail to: darrell dot grainger at utoronto dot ca

Thanks for the feedback Ray, while we seem to be face-to-face here, can I
ask you exactly what you mean by your sig:

> --
> XML is the programmer's duct tape.

Do you mean XML is often used inappropriately, or do you think XML's
infinite usages is a good thing (My opinion leans more to the former)?

PS. Let's whisper here, otherwise Andrew may jump on us for conducting
email-like conversation over "Usenet"..

Hi Darell, thanks for your interesting feedback.. I've added some select
extra thoughts below..

> Ask them how they handle overtime. The company I currently work for told
> me they view overtime as a failure of project management. No one has
> worked overtime in the past 3 years. I've worked here for a year and never
> done overtime. We either change scope, change the timeline or hire more
> people.

You lucky son of a gun. You seem to have found one of those needles in a
haystack..

> Ask them about the reporting structure. If you are not being interviewed
> by the person you report to then you want to have a chance to talk to this
> person. If he is too busy to talk to you then assume he'll be too busy
> when you become an employee.

Interesting point. It just highlights that I should be more aggressive at
interviews, not less. For the nightmare employer I recently resigned from, I
was interviewed by the guy who would become my immediate superior. He was a
total jerk *during* the interview (and was just unbelievable as a
"manager")... next time I'll know I should just forget about the company at
that point.

> I never ask questions about compensation during the interview. When they
> offer me the job I expect a package detailing all the compensation. At
> that time I will ask HR about anything not clear in the offer letter.

In Belgium companies like to keep pay information really close to their
chest, which is truly childish. Often it is to hide quite pathetic
salaries.. .so now this is the first thing I ask long before I sacrifice a
day to go for the interview.

> > What's the company's financial health?
>
> If they are publically traded you can find this out by doing a little
> research. Even if they are not publically traded you can still do some
> research.

I am not that financially savvy. I know in the US half the population are
amateur financial analysts and stock market gamblers, but over here on the
old continent we're not that desperate (yet).

> > Obligatory travel?
> > Where to?
> > Recuperation for significant TZ crossing?
> > Compensatory arrangements?
>
> I've never had this be a problem.

When a company tells you to go cross 5-7 time zones, and expects this to be
done during weekends (i.e. YOUR time), and they want to compensate you by
paying you a little token sum, then I want to know about such cockamaney
scheme so that I can privately think "Go find another sucker, sucker"

> > Internal email used a lot?
> > Yes? -> BAD.. suppresses person-to-person communication, team
spirit

In the last company, people used to send each other emails while sitting in
the same room, and I know of at least a number of emails going unanswered or
never discussed face-to-face. That's a sign of major dysfunctional
communication within a "team".

> > Health/Safety/Comfort
> > RSI-aware, RSI-safe?
> > Ergonomic keyboard, gfx tablet
> > Rest breaks
> > Air conditioning
> > Tea/coffee machine?
>
> Government regulated in my country.

Sure thing, so it is here, but the big question is "Does the company
proactively observe the law in these respects?" Loads and loads of companies
don't give a toss. In the last company, we were expected to type non=stop
all day execpt for the lunch break. That's an RSI killer.

> If there is room for process improvement then I see that as an opportunity
> to shine. I'll present data showing how not only myself but others can be
> more productive.

Your "room for improvement" may also be a symptom of a company stuck in its
ways and totally, utterly unwilling to improve or change in any way. How
will you shine then? You'll be hitting a brick wall at every turn, that's
what I experienced (and believe me, I was being *real* diplomatic in my
suggestions).

> Again, room for process improvement is room for me to shine.

Again, if you don't check their attitude in detail, you may find out that
that "room" becomes a set of brick walls forming a career prison.

jan V wrote:
> Thanks for the feedback Ray, while we seem to be face-to-face here, can I
> ask you exactly what you mean by your sig:
>
>
>>--
>>XML is the programmer's duct tape.
>
>
> Do you mean XML is often used inappropriately, or do you think XML's
> infinite usages is a good thing (My opinion leans more to the former)?

I was wondering if you realized the negative aspects of comparing
something to duct tape in your prior responses. It's difficult to know
how other cultures understand such things.

I think that the comparison runs the gamut from good to bad. Duct tape
is very useful for linking together pieces that were not designed to
work together and I think XML works there as well. On the other hand,
duct tape is not a permanent solution to many problems but a temporary
patch that should be replaced. XML fits there as well.

>
> PS. Let's whisper here, otherwise Andrew may jump on us for conducting
> email-like conversation over "Usenet"..
>
>

I think we are safe if we invite others to comment.

Ray

--
XML is the programmer's duct tape.

> I think that the comparison runs the gamut from good to bad. Duct tape
> is very useful for linking together pieces that were not designed to
> work together and I think XML works there as well. On the other hand,
> duct tape is not a permanent solution to many problems but a temporary
> patch that should be replaced. XML fits there as well.

I think XML may in many cases be a good solution when two different systems
need to communicate data, but XML is so often used in situations where the
data is going to go absolutely nowhere. Data which is known never to leave a
company, and never to talk to another program, for example. Program config
files spring to mind. Whatever was wrong with far easier-to-read plain text
files, such as the old properties files? Very often, XML's strength in
coping with structured/hierarchical data is not even used, and we end up
with linear XML "vommit". XML for XML's sake. Web apps for web apps sake.
Art for art's sake. I thought we were a rational bunch, in the IT industry,
but I've come to the conclusion we are, as an industry, about as rational as
Joe Doe in the street.

On Wed, 17 Aug 2005, jan V wrote:

> Hi Darell, thanks for your interesting feedback.. I've added some select
> extra thoughts below..
>
> > Ask them how they handle overtime. The company I currently work for told
> > me they view overtime as a failure of project management. No one has
> > worked overtime in the past 3 years. I've worked here for a year and never
> > done overtime. We either change scope, change the timeline or hire more
> > people.
>
> You lucky son of a gun. You seem to have found one of those needles in a
> haystack..

I took over two years, three resume revisions, over 1000 applications and
a few dozen interviews before I found my current job. Considering how
long it took me to find the current job, if there is even a hint of the
culture changing I'm going to start looking again.

> > Ask them about the reporting structure. If you are not being interviewed
> > by the person you report to then you want to have a chance to talk to this
> > person. If he is too busy to talk to you then assume he'll be too busy
> > when you become an employee.
>
> Interesting point. It just highlights that I should be more aggressive at
> interviews, not less. For the nightmare employer I recently resigned from, I
> was interviewed by the guy who would become my immediate superior. He was a
> total jerk *during* the interview (and was just unbelievable as a
> "manager")... next time I'll know I should just forget about the company at
> that point.

Exactly. The scariest thing in my two years of job hunting were the number
of managers who just thought working 60 hour weeks with the occasionally
80 hour week, without compensation, was normal. They usually took offense
when I asserted my right to fair compensation. They also never called me
back; when I interview someone I call them back to let them know they
didn't get the job.

> > I never ask questions about compensation during the interview. When they
> > offer me the job I expect a package detailing all the compensation. At
> > that time I will ask HR about anything not clear in the offer letter.
>
> In Belgium companies like to keep pay information really close to their
> chest, which is truly childish. Often it is to hide quite pathetic
> salaries.. .so now this is the first thing I ask long before I sacrifice a
> day to go for the interview.

I always looked at interviewing as a way to improve my skills. Every
interview I went to helped me with subsequent interviews. I'd take a half
day (or sometimes full day) off work to go to an interview. I'd run a few
errands but the main focus of the day would be the interview. I kept the
attitude that a new job was important to me but it was not urgent. I
always took my time.

Additionally, if I had any doubts about a job I'd try to get them
clarified. If I still had a bad feeling I'd turn the job down. A number of
the jobs I had a bad feeling about would post the same position every 4 to
6 months. I'm guessing they hired someone, took the ad down, that person
quit, they'd repost the job, and the cycle continues.

> > > What's the company's financial health?
> >
> > If they are publically traded you can find this out by doing a little
> > research. Even if they are not publically traded you can still do some
> > research.
>
> I am not that financially savvy. I know in the US half the population are
> amateur financial analysts and stock market gamblers, but over here on the
> old continent we're not that desperate (yet).

I understand. Until I worked for a reasonably good Fortune 500 company I
didn't know anything about this sort of stuff. Got a job for a Fortune 500
company (U.S. based) and everyone would be talking about stocks, options,
E/P, dividends, etc. plus the VP would come to our site and tell us about
the quarterly report.

> > > Obligatory travel?
> > > Where to?
> > > Recuperation for significant TZ crossing?
> > > Compensatory arrangements?
> >
> > I've never had this be a problem.
>
> When a company tells you to go cross 5-7 time zones, and expects this to be
> done during weekends (i.e. YOUR time), and they want to compensate you by
> paying you a little token sum, then I want to know about such cockamaney
> scheme so that I can privately think "Go find another sucker, sucker"

I guess I've been lucky in this regard. Even the worst companies would be
reasonable about this. For example, on a three day business trip (monday
to wednesday) we'd get the fourth day off if we had to fly out on a sunday
night.

> > > Internal email used a lot?
> > > Yes? -> BAD.. suppresses person-to-person communication, team
> spirit
>
> In the last company, people used to send each other emails while sitting in
> the same room, and I know of at least a number of emails going unanswered or
> never discussed face-to-face. That's a sign of major dysfunctional
> communication within a "team".

Wow. That is sad. The last sweatshops I worked out, the workers became
closer. A common dislike of management.

> > > Health/Safety/Comfort
> > > RSI-aware, RSI-safe?
> > > Ergonomic keyboard, gfx tablet
> > > Rest breaks
> > > Air conditioning
> > > Tea/coffee machine?
> >
> > Government regulated in my country.
>
> Sure thing, so it is here, but the big question is "Does the company
> proactively observe the law in these respects?" Loads and loads of companies
> don't give a toss. In the last company, we were expected to type non=stop
> all day execpt for the lunch break. That's an RSI killer.

My wife works for a government run insurance company that deals withis
this sort of thing. Companies are regarded to pay into the insurance
company. She has ABSOLUTELY no alliance to the company. So far this year
she has sided with the employer once. All other times she sides with the
employee. We also have three levels of government that workers can
complain to as well as an Ombudsman. Some companies try to get away with
it but when they are caught they are heavily punished.

> > If there is room for process improvement then I see that as an opportunity
> > to shine. I'll present data showing how not only myself but others can be
> > more productive.
>
> Your "room for improvement" may also be a symptom of a company stuck in its
> ways and totally, utterly unwilling to improve or change in any way. How
> will you shine then? You'll be hitting a brick wall at every turn, that's
> what I experienced (and believe me, I was being *real* diplomatic in my
> suggestions).

True. However, in those cases there were usually other signs the culture
was toxic. I'd decide not to work for them before I found out the culture
was stagnent.

Case in point, talking to my manager during the interview it was clear
that there was no right answer for most questions. He believes there is
the best answer currently available but there is always potential for a
better answer, he just hasn't found it yet.

You can also see this if you bring up something that many managers would
have a strong opinion about. A good manager will listen to your opinion
and explain why he disagrees. A bad manager will decide not to hire you.

For example, what software development process do they use. If he responds
"Spiral" then argue for "Agile" or "Waterfall". So how he responds.

Bottom line, I'd want to work for a manager that is willing to listen and
open to change. You don't have to know what methodologies they use now.
You just need to know they are willing to change if you know better.

--
Send e-mail to: darrell dot grainger at utoronto dot ca