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.
Ask about work life balance. I’ve had an interviewer tell me that they don’t work “too many Saturdays” go on to say that they “only worked 4 Saturdays this year” in March. That’s like a quarter of the weekends.
Another good one is what they’ll do to prevent share dilution if they’re bought out. Startups love to give you equity but it is paper money they can burn easily. Always remember salary is the only thing that is guaranteed.
Ask about how they protected staff during Covid. Ask how much vacation people typically take at places offering unlimited PTO.