How To Conduct A REVERSE Software Engineering Interview

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it's Thursday January 9th I did not do much commuting today so going to do a little update from the office here at home um I have a I guess a question sort of theme topic I guess I don't know how to frame it from LinkedIn it's from a a friend of mine on LinkedIn who I haven't heard from from a little while so this was kind of nice um and they're talking about doing bit of a job transition they had actually watched a video on my M Channel Dev leader about looking for like kind of how you value going from company to company and this is actually something that we talked about together on code commute so um I use that topic from code commute to make a YouTube video and on my main Channel and then now I'm sending this person back to code

commute to watch this one so it's pretty cool um and essentially what they're saying is like the the act of like reverse interviewing is kind of challenging and I think this is something that people don't think about a lot but like what does that mean to reverse interview well it's kind of like you you might have some companies in mind where you're like hey I hear that they're awesome to work at like a lot of people will do this for big Tech where they're like oh my God I would love to work at Google or Facebook or wherever um because they carry like that I don't know the brand associated with them is like people want to go there to go make money work on cool stuff like whatever it happens to be but obviously these are like only a couple of companies right there's

lots of amazing places that you could be working so um this person's saying like I'd love to hear your take on this in terms of like reverse interviewing um any red or green flags to look out for questions to ask to get a good idea of what the work environment is like um so I wanted to talk through this I think this is important um I know probably I'm making an assumption here but I feel like probably a lot of people that are watching this are like why does it even matter like I'm just trying to get a job but I I think that even when things are challenging in terms of um the job market and stuff like that I think that you still need to establish like a like a bar a threshold of uh of places that you're willing to work at

um and I I understand that's hard to hear because if you are like I just need something I get um and one could argue if you're going from zero paycheck to some paycheck that's better um so I'm not there to disagree on that but my my point here and what I want to be able to focus on is that like when it comes time to getting a job keeping that job a big part of our Lives is our career um we spend a lot of Our Lives working and if you're you know in in the in the long run if you're just working somewhere to get that paycheck and that's it there's probably a large part of your life just literally based on the amount of time you spend at work if you're not enjoying work in some capacity that I feel like that's uh

ultimately going to be a lot of wasted life unfortunately so and not only that if you end up working in a place where you feel stuck like I need this job and I and I hate being here but I need this job I feel like that's kind of um trapping probably people um so again regardless of your current situation I'm not trying to minimize the um you know challenges with the job market just wanted to kind of set the stage here so my thoughts on on this in terms of being able to reverse interview or to make sure that you're going to a place that you want to work I think this starts before the interview and that's sort of my my first tip is lots of research um if you're going to larger companies one of the nice things is that it's probably easier

to find people that work at these larger companies it's probably easier to find reviews online with the some caveats though uh I think it's kind of like a common thing with um I would say like company reviews like in terms of like exit stuff or like job boards where people are posting like about places they've worked usually if you were to leave a place and you loved it there even when you love it somewhere you probably don't go you know what I'm going to go on blind or what's the other one uh glass door whatever and like and I'm going to write something awesome like it's it's just like not a I don't know I feel like that's not a thing people do statistically but if you were pissed off if you had a terrible experience somewhere it's almost like we're soured by some experience

we're going to go write something negative um more often than not so um I don't have exact stats on this but I would say that when you're reading stuff you'll likely notice that stuff is more heavily skewed to be negative um now that's not to say that we should ignore that um but what I what I would do in instead of just saying like oh look there's some negative comments therefore we should rule it out I would try to look for some like what you might feel like are grains of Truth or common patterns in the negative com ments so for example if you started to notice like people talking about culture and okay well what about the culture oh the culture is Cutthroat or uh culture very much doesn't value work life balance or culture is uh I don't know like maybe culture is

laidback like some some positive things right culture is uh very bureaucratic like you can't basically you're not working you're just kind of like playing politics the whole time I think these are um I think these are important things to try and see if you can extract but this is something that happens before the interview right before you're considering applying to these places uh so I'd recommend that on on the first part of that that I said you can go on LinkedIn you can go on X you can go wherever and look for PE like for employees that are posting stuff on social media I think that's a maybe an easier way to do it this might be like uncomfortable for some people if you're not active on social media so I get it um but it might be an opportunity for those you that are

kind of willing to do this is uh you know look for for employees at the company um you know maybe you can reach out on LinkedIn send them a message I don't know for like as a Creator I I you pay for a premium account just so there's a little bit more accessibility um I don't know you probably get a couple of inails per month or something it might be something you could reach out to an employee that seems like they're active on LinkedIn and um and you know send them a curious message not to be like hey here's my resume like get me a job refer me but to be like hey I've been just give you an example I've been interested in Microsoft um you know if I got a message that was like hey I've been interested in Microsoft could you you

know um I know maybe you're busy but like could you uh spend a couple minutes and just like maybe let me know about the work culture all right something like that this actually came up um the other day on Blue Sky someone liter someone tagged me on someone else's post and said um hey like I think Nick could answer this for you and they were asking about what the culture was like at Microsoft because I had a friend that was considering applying and wanted to kind of you know pass that information along to them so you know I said hey like send me a message and uh we can connect and I wrote them a ton I just gave them a ton of information about my experience at Microsoft and what that's like so my point is like if you are curious you can create

those opportunities and you can ask uh that was a complete stranger to be completely honest I don't recall who even tagged me on this stranger post but this is like one of the powers of social media networking right you create some of these opportunities for for this type of stuff so the um the next part I kind of wanted to talk about that was like what should we be asking about and this is interesting I think this is going to be a lot more situational personal and the things that you're looking for um some things that come to mind are I hinted at some of them already sorry I have to yawn I feel like I was holding that in like the entire time it like needed to escape but um I hinted at a couple of these and like work life balance is a

big one I think uh Team Culture by the way this will change from Team to team but you might get an idea if you ask a few people so team culture work life balance could be if you're interested in like um I know some people will ask like okay proprietary technology like and I think it's a you know Fair concern to be like if I go work somewhere and it's all proprietary if I want to leave like am I getting totally isolated from what the rest of the world is doing that could be a concern uh people uh sometimes are curious about like the Legacy systems and whatever is going on by the way basically every single company ever will have Legacy systems part of uh being a sofware Vel oper is working on Legacy systems um another quick reminder Legacy systems are usually the

ones that are making the money so um try not to be afraid of these things but I think that if you're curious about how Legacy systems are handled that could be interesting right like you could ask questions about how much time is spent like sort of creating Green Field stuff versus maintenance because that could be a a difference is like hey we have this Legacy code base on for our our Flagship Legacy product but like um we're iterating on it like we're still building on it or is it like this thing's in maintenance mode and basically you're going to get stuck on the team that's just keeping it afloat so that that could be some you know different aspects you're thinking about there um but ultimately we we want to come up with some questions and when I make videos like this and I'm trying

to explain things the I'm just trying to give you ideas uh you know sometimes it's perspective maybe Frameworks that you can try working with and ideas right because I can't tell you what you value but I can give you some ideas for things that you might think about and at least some patterns for that so you can go okay Nick mentioned like work life balance but like um I like I want to know if they have good perks maybe for you um in terms of like health care and like health insurance I don't I'm I'm from Canada originally I don't really think about these things but I guess it's a a thing and Microsoft has good benefits so I just yay like I don't really know a lot about it so um I think that if these things are important to you like find an

identify those things for you and come up with your list right that way you can use that in the first part we were talking about which is some Outreach and then we can start to sorry there's two parts the Outreach that you may do you could try to uh check that out from glass door blind and wherever else so a couple of examples then we can even take those and we can say okay let's talk about the reverse interview part because so far I've been not avoiding that but I've been trying to tell you the things before um you actually get to the interview so let's assume you've done your homework um sorry I'm getting a message and I'm it's right behind my camera and I want to respond to it and I can't yet um the uh the part where we're in the interview

so you've you've done your homework you've um you know job application did the the trick you're going through your rounds of interviews um this is an opportunity and like you know people have different opinions about this uh where they'll say hey look if you're getting the opportunity to ask questions in the interviews like here's like five of the best questions that you should ask to nail your interview um I'll be transparent from my perspective like for me and it like being the interviewer uh it's kind of like a it's to me to say that there's like some secret questions you should be asking um that portion of the interview for me is an opportunity to sell you on the position um I think and this is just a little bit of a tangent uh I spent all that time interviewing you right um You trying

to prove to me why you're a great fit for this position I want to make sure and even if someone if I can tell like they're not going to be a good fit and I maybe I knew that earlier in the interview I still want to make sure that I can sell them on the position I want to I want to talk about the the awesome things we're doing and like why where I'm working is someplace that I enjoy so in my head like my Approach To That portion of an interview when there's time for asking questions and stuff is for me to to sort of represent the company I want to tell you why we're awesome so um that just means that any question you have like I'm ready to try and you know kind of explain our perspective or at least my perspective

on on the things we're doing which means like I am like personally I am mentally preparing for you to ask me questions like this kind of stuff like like okay hey can you tell me what the the work life balance like can you tell me about the team culture um so the point is that when we're talking about reverse interviewing I can't speak on behalf of every interviewer I hope you get that I know for videos like this when I have an opinion there will always be someone watching that's like that's just not how it works Nick and I'm like dude I get it like I can't possibly represent every single scenario it's just it's impossible so deal with it my point is that I'm trying to explain how I do it um and if I think that I'm a extreme outlier I will try

to give you some other perspectives on this um so you may have people that are looking for some fancy schmancy good questions in that part of the interview but uh my philosophy and what I've always kind of you know seen as being part of interview groups is use that to sell the position right to to tell people and candidates why it's great but that means being prepared for asking those questions so I don't think there's like a secret to reverse interviewing except for being prepared for the things you actually care about sometimes they might come up in the conversation in the interview right maybe in some of the behavioral interview questions someone will be saying like hey tell me about a time where you had a conflict on a team and how you resolved that you walk through that and they're like okay awesome great

and then they'll say things like yes on like here we want to make sure in our teams like this is how we address this kind of stuff so thank you for your answer that was great and in the conversation you might pick up on things here and there where you're like okay like these are values that that align with me like that's really helping but odds are because you're not the one conducting the interview you're probably going to have some gaps in what you were hoping to hear so um when PE like sometimes people say hey like it's a you know it's really bad if you don't have questions that the end of the interview for the the interviewer and I don't think that it's like bad like if someone wrapped up an interview with me and they didn't have questions I'm not going to

be like oh like X for that person doesn't make sense to me but I think it's a really good opportunity that if you're curious about anything this is the time to ask right so ask me about the work life balance ask me about like like what's a day in the life of a you know software engineer on my team um talk to me about like how you guys balance like working with Legacy code bases um like the things that you care about I don't know what those things are but ask me about those so um back to a couple of points though from the question that was sent I'm just reading it on my screen um in terms of like red and green flags um the red flags to me are when things seem like pre-canned I guess it's hard um especially if someone's been

doing a bunch of interviews in a day you might have an interviewer where someone's like so as the interviewee you're like hey like hey Nick like I just love to hear what the cult the culture is like at Microsoft and then this is my fifth interview for the day and I've been like I've been interviewing for seven hours and I'm like it's I like we're like a family here bad example but everyone gets triggered by that but um but like sometimes when the answer feels kind of canned and you're like okay but like is that from a script um so sometimes like the way that I try to answer this stuff so it doesn't feel so canned like when I genuinely believe what I'm what I'm saying right so someone will say like what do you enjoy most about working at Microsoft um and there's

there's a bunch of things I really like so depending on like where I'm starting sometimes I might say like hey like I really love the people that I work with and the fact that I can go into work and feel like I'm having like good productive like engineering conversations where we can challenge our ideas and stuff sometimes I catch myself and I'm like it sounds like super cheesy dude like the person sitting across me is probably like oh sure okay is that what Saia told you to say um and then so I catch myself and I'll be like hey look like I realize it sounds like super cheesy or cliche and and I'm like but this is actually how I feel and then I try to give them some other examples so that they know I'm actually like trying to talk about real things and

not just like something that sounds or regurgitated so I think a red flag for me would be when someone is sort of telling you things that sound canned but try to like try to understand too that like you know days for interviewers can be pretty long too and maybe they're just like that's the answer they got at the time so maybe it's a yellow flag orange flag whatever um red flags would also and I don't think I've I don't really think I've seen a lot of red flags so I'm trying to imagine myself being in this position getting like a weird answer uh people I mean if you got an answer that didn't align with you or what you're looking for I think that's a red flag just kind of like you have to think about what you value right you might have gone through

the interview aced it which is awesome congrats right might be for cool big tech company so you're excited about that you're like hey pay sounds good work sounds interesting and then you're like hey like cool tell me about the work life balance and the interview is like man like it's pretty rough like we often are working like over the weekends and maybe maybe you're totally into that and you're like cool I love to work um probably most people are going to be like oh o I'm not sure um and if that's really something where you're like not going to work for me then that's red flag right like I think that you need to look at those things the reason you're asking those questions is because you care about those things right um or they'll say like yeah I mean realistically all of our teams

are just maintaining that Legacy product that's all they do and we're just kind of keeping it afloat you might be like yeah that sounds pretty terrible like I get I have to work in a legacy code base a bunch of the time in my career Nick said so but like wait they're not even like new stuff like they're just kind of fixing bugs like maybe that's a red flag so look at those things that you really care about I I feel like that one Probably sounds obvious but I can also Imagine people going through asking these questions and being like cool I got I asked the question like I feel good I got that off my chest but like was it the answer you wanted I don't know um other red flags people not answering the questions would feel kind of weird I guess but

um ultimately I think the biggest red flag is when it's not aligned with what you're you're hoping for and you might be able to try and clarify that right so maybe someone says something and you're like oh um like hey what what do you mean by that or like do you have another example or whatever so don't don't assume just cuz you get one thing like that's a rule kind of thing but something to think about green flags definitely stuff that aligns with you um I think personally and this is going to be different for everyone um depending on sort of your your social skills and like awareness and stuff like that but you might be able to pick up when someone's actually genuinely excited about something and it's kind of I actually love seeing this in interviews where um I've talked about this where

uh for like side projects and stuff right if I have the opportunity someone's got something on their resume that's like a side project and I'm like hey like so notice your uh you know you've been building an app for a couple years or whatever and uh you know said you using these kind of things like could you could you walk me through like kind of how this came to be or like how you started building this or or why you started building it sometimes you'll notice that you know people are interview so maybe they're a little nervous and then all of a sudden something just like clicks and they're like oh man I can't wait to tell you about this I'm genuinely excited like you know they kind of turn on and I think that sometimes when you're asking questions back to the interviewer for

the like sort of this reverse interview part sometimes you'll you'll pick up on this from people and I think that's a really big green flag because it's I don't want to say it's impossible to fake but I feel like it's pretty difficult um and especially if you if you know what I'm talking about and you've seen people do this where they just kind of like genuinely get very excited about something um it's cool um it it I say it's cool and I'm smiling because it actually it makes me very happy to see people like kind of get into that mode because it's I don't know I feel like people we don't get to see that enough so you might see that with your interviewer you'll say hey I'm just going to make this up right like hey like um so tell me about your favorite

thing about working at Microsoft and then the interviewer might have been kind of going through the motions and they're like oh like actually this really cool thing our team is responsible for building this product and like I actually was a really big part in building this thing up in the earlier days now I've moved on to like being a you know senior software developer but like the you might notice the way they start talking about that stuff they're like I'm so glad you asked like I've been waiting for someone to talk to about this so anyway that might be a very big green flag for you um so I think that's something to look out for um and then so the the only other part in this question that I don't know if I've done a good job answering is like they specifically said like

what questions to ask to get a good idea of what the work environment is like I think uh something something I think that kind of works well is like can you hey can you walk me through like a typical day in the life of a developer on the team and acknowledge like I know that every day might be different but like you know um they mentioned that they have like cross geography teams like maybe like kind of mention that like in terms of like having to work with the the engineers that are in China or in India or in Europe like could you you know kind of walk me through a typical day of a developer here in North America and maybe what those interactions look like so if you have some specifics to call out this is maybe one of the tricks right if

you ask generic questions you get generic answers but if you can add in some specifics that might help get you some information about what you're curious about you might say like hey like maybe this is going to backfire now I feel like these days people are so up in arms against it but like hey like do you do Agile like that used to be a thing where people would be like man if I'm not going to work at that place if they're like not an agile shop but now everyone's an agile shop and everyone's like oh R's so dumb so I don't know fine you can ask something about how their development process works but I I kind of like the what's a day in the life look like because you can get that opport opportunity to focus on some specifics that you might really

care about um maybe depending on your level I'm kind of I'm going to wrap this up in just a sec but maybe depending on your level you could say like if you're a junior software developer hey like what does it look like to be on this team and uh you know the sort of balance of like Junior to senior to principal staff whatever they have um and like what does that kind of look like and what's kind of like the team culture around like I don't know collaboration and stuff like that and just see if you can maybe navigate that because that might be really important for you as someone who is just getting started and like probably would really benefit from an environment that's really like that so um ultimately I think a couple things just to kind of circle back there's work that

you can do way before the actual interview so please do that I think you really want to understand for yourself what things you care about the other video I made on a similar topic was around like if you're going to go I think I titled it like the grass is greener on the other side or something so I'm probably not going to link it above because I'll forget but you can search for it on my channel and um the idea was really like if you're going to leave like it's it is always going to be a bit of a gamble right maybe the pay is better but you're going to go there and you don't really like working on that team the Dynamics off so I think it's important for you to think about what you want okay so trying to put imagine you're doing

the work at the place put yourself in that position think about what you want come up with a list of things that you really care about um you can use that list then to go get the information from reviews you can reach out to people online social media does work for this a reminder right if you were like hey Nick what does it what is it like to work uh what is it like to work at Microsoft I don't know that was hard to say send me a message I don't do resume reviews but if you want to know what it's like to work at Microsoft I'll tell you from my experience send me a message I don't care um but you can do this with other places right so do that and then when it comes time for reverse interviewing just remember that what

were those things you care about ask those questions right you try to be prepared because if you're given that opportunity to ask questions like it's it's only going to be more difficult to get those answers if you don't take that opportunity final thought that I forgot to mention is sometimes during the recruitment process like the back and forth there could be an opportunity to ask extra questions um when I interviewed for Microsoft I was interviewing for Amazon at the same time I had three offers from Amazon not to brag um was actually it was a really good set of interviews I I really enjoyed it and um they had after I had the offers they let me do three additional interviews with the engineering managers of those teams which is super cool this is a really smart move on their part in my opinion if

they if they wanted me and it seems like they did they put on three extra interviews one for each team not to interview me but to give me like a fullon half hour to just go ask them questions and that was how they tried to say okay we want this person let's try to sell them on the position right um and like I I'm not like uh calling them out on it or anything but like you could tell like they're like hey hello no our team's the best and that was one of the funny parts right was like um it wasn't at that point it wasn't Amazon trying to hire me it was those teams trying to say our team of the three were the best one like come come to us uh which is just a funny Dynamic but anyway the point is that

I'm I'm trying to give you an example like I'm not making it up when I say that in those periods that's generally trying to from my experience something where the companies try to sell you on the job position so try to be prepared with your questions for that um I hope that helps um again if you have questions put them in the comments I'm happy to try and answer or do as some of these other people have done find me on social media just look for Dev leader send me a message and Linkedin it's just Nick centino my profile should be open you should be able to message me and I'm happy to try and give you some perspective so thank you so much for watching I hope this helped I'll see you next time