The Best Questions To Ask At End of a SWE Interview

Have you ever googled what questions to ask at the end of your interview only to find generic questions? Something I couldn’t google was the best questions to ask at the end of software engineer interviews. Because of this, I decided to compile a list of questions that I like that I have actually asked.

I would like to share Amazon’s list of questions to ask. I thought that theirs covered a lot and had a lot of great questions.

1. What did you do yesterday? (People often ask what a “typical day” in the role is, but when we answer that question, we tend to overestimate and underestimate different aspects of the job. Asking about yesterday gets you a more concrete example and the interviewer will usually provide more specific details that you can turn into follow-up questions)
2. What did your team’s previous intern do for their project?
3. How does mentorship work in this team/org? Will I be assigned a mentor on day 1? What other frameworks for mentorship do people on this team typically use?
4. What is the biggest challenge your team is currently working on?
5. How does/did your team stay connected during WFH?
6. What is the structure of the team and its related teams? How do they relate and interact on a daily basis? What types of projects are multi-team efforts? (For a larger/more complex service such as AWS Fargate, there are probably multiple teams responsible for different features and sub-services)
7. What is the “north star” goal of this team/org/project? If there were no constraints on the scope of the product/service, what would its ideal “complete” state look like?

Some other questions I ask are the following:

1. How long are code sprints for this team and when is standup? A follow up: How many days a week is standup?
2. What are your expectations for someone new in the role?
3. What percentage of time do you find yourself coding versus in meetings?
4. What is the company’s policy on remote/hybrid/coming into office?
5. What is the tech stack of this team?
6. How large is the team and do you work with any other teams?

Some of these questions can be asked after receiving a job offer and wanting to clarify some things before potentially taking it. I hope that this helps!