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.
How much time they spent asking you questions? I hope that was 5 minutes too, interview is a 2 way thing, you need to know that you will like them too. If a company told me I have 5 minutes, I would take it that they don’t care what I think about them and they’re not interested in sharing information about themselves which is a massive red flag.
Check this list https://github.com/viraptor/reverse-interview
To be fair in every interview I’ve had so far the first half was always a presentation of the company and the role. So most crucial questions would automatically be answered.