Questions to ask about yourself, your job, your company

Are you taking on a new project? A new role? A new job? There are questions you should ask to make yourself more successful.

Questions about your project

ABC as a business initiative

What are success metrics for ABC?

How core is this project? Periphery? Likely to be cut?


What is the core set of values that tie all XYZ projects together? How does ABC roll up into that?


How automated is the testing?

What is limiting the rollout to more devices? How heavy is the client?

Can customers walk away from the ABC product? Have any done so? If so, what reasons did they give?


How much support have the company's partners given?

Aren't there already widgets like this on the market? Why develop your own? Or, is the company leveraging a 3rd party one?

Who are the competitors?

What is the ranked set of features for this project? Is it well defined and well understood? Are the criteria for the ranking clear and fair?

Questions about your company

How does XYZ decide which projects to fund?

How does XYZ decide to terminate a project?

How serious is XYZ about expanding to new locales? Success stories? What happens when those remote ventures don’t work out? How are they closed down?

What if the metrics show that a new project is not bringing in revenue or is resulting in customer behaviors that decrease revenue? Would XYZ have the fortitude to close the project?

How many VPs in this area? Directors?

Who are the competitors? How are they doing in relation to XYZ?

Is XYZ expanding? Is revenue increasing? Customer base? Market penetration?

Is the overall market growing or shrinking?

What are the ranked initiatives for the company? Are they clearly defined? Achievable?

My Role

What are success metrics for me?

How much of my role will be doing hands-on development versus management?

Am I the first candidate you have approached? If not, what reasons did the others give for  turning this down?


Work week hours? Rate/pace?

Building a New Team

Why go out to the market to hire? Why not hire internally?

If this is a remote office, how to continue XYZ corp culture?

Are there other teams like this at XYZ already?

How was this remote office populated? Are they all people who worked at HQ and then moved down here? Do they carry the corporate culture already?

What size team do you envision this will be? How big is it now?

What will the team breakdown be? Does it include QA? UI? Or, do we need to get those functions from another office?

Where do the new feature suggestions come from? Would this team develop that list or are there other organizations that flow that information into this team?