- Are you profitable? If so, for how long?
- How long until you need another round of funding?
- Are you planning on hiring more staff? If so, for what positions?
- How do you gauge promotions/raises?
- Who will my coworkers be?
- What is the office setup like?
- What hours will I be working?
- How much time is spent on maintenance vs. new development?
- Is your code unit tested, and do you have version control?
- Who do I report to?
- Is there a vision for where the company will be in # years?
- Ignoring equity, is my compensation fair?
- How fast is the company growing? What are some recent milestones?
- Is the office located in a place that's easily accessible?
- What will I be working on after my first month here?
- How often do you have meetings?
- How do you manage deadlines?
- How long have you (the interviewer) been at the company?
- What attracted you (the interviewer) to the company?
- Why did you choose the current technology stack you're using?
- Are you having any issues with stack?
- How much of the code is understood by >1 person?
might be toward the top of my list. It gets right to the point regarding stability and opens the door to further explanation regarding short term and medium term plans for company growth.
I just joined the first startup of my life, and, in a way or another, all of these questions were answered satisfactorily for me.
A couple of additional questions:
1- "What is the flow for making a change?"
2- "Will I be able to improve how things work here?"
A startup should be fairly open to changes. For example, if they develop without a debugger, can you use one? Will servers be updated for supporting remote debugging?
For some reason, a few companies seem to think that including investor infusions while computing profitability is somehow a good thing. It is wise to (gently) probe and figure whether this is what they are doing.
