Finding the right team at a new company

Finding the Right Team: Questions to Ask Before Joining

The larger a company is, the more choices there could be for teams to contribute to. In a small company, you could meet your teammates during the hiring process. However, in large companies hiring for generalist software engineer roles, you don’t get the opportunity to feel out the team before you join. The team matching process has large variance across the industry, from companies interviewing for a specific role in a team to joining an org within a company to joining potentially any team with an open role across the whole company.

It is almost always better to talk to the manager and team members before joining the company. However, if that choice isn’t available, it’s important to understand that internal transfers are commonplace in most companies. The inertia of staying in a team which is not the right fit is not ideal when there are many opportunities, both internal and external, for engineers.

What are the projects the team will be involved in? Are they interesting for you?

Specialization in a particular technical stack or a preference for a specific problem space are both useful. Let’s assume certain things. Let’s assume that in a job, when we are working, we do want to give it 100%. We have a limited amount of time and want to feel a sense of autonomy, mastery, and purpose. The biggest leaps in my career came when I was so engrossed in my work that it stopped feeling like work. Being interested in your end results is also very important. If you really want to be close to the end users, you may not do as well in a systems team far removed from users.

Where is the company going and what does it need?

Think at a higher level - new projects can be exciting. But is this new project congruent with the company’s vision? What would it take to fund a project? Sustaining a team of engineers, PMs, support, and others is a multi-million dollar per year venture. Does the output that the team produces justify that venture? Challenge your EM and PM to understand this. Ideally, you want the value your team produces to far outweigh the costs. This makes it sustainable beyond quarters and halves, and gives the opportunity to contribute at higher and higher levels. Finding the intersection between the company’s pressing needs and your skills and interests is key to finding the right fit.

How are the team dynamics?

Joining a team can be like joining a new family. You have to see them almost everyday, work together, trust each other, help and push toward the common goal while everyone maintains individual career plans. The dynamics of the team will have a big impact on your quality of life.

When do people begin work and what time do they leave? Check if this aligns with your view of work-life balance. If you want the team to engage outside of work, you may be disappointed if everyone in the team takes it as just a job and doesn’t socialize outside.

How a team handles disagreements and conflict is key to how well they work together. A subset of team members should be able to reach decisions without always relying on the EM, PM, or more senior colleagues.

The distribution of seniority across the team will have an impact on your goals. If you’re early in your career, you want some more senior members in the team for support. If you want to mentor engineers, you don’t want a situation where everyone else is at least as senior as you.

Besides leveling, it’s useful to find out when there have been promotions in the team. This is an indicator of how the organization views the place of the team and that there is a track record of people growing in their roles.

Questions to Ask

Team Responsibilities

• What are quarterly vs yearly goals for the team? What are the challenges to achieving those goals?
• What has the team been working on for the last 6 to 12 months? Has the team been meeting its goals?
• What are the key challenges the team faces?
• Are there any low hanging fruit? Is there work that no one wants to touch?
• What do on-call responsibilities look like for the team? Are there runbooks for common outages? Are there post-mortems for the most recent outages?
• How does a feature go from idea to general availability? How does the team iterate on a shipped feature?
• What percentage of the team’s work is new projects vs maintenance work vs paying back tech debt?
• How much flexibility is there to get involved in different streams of work, in terms of technology and projects?

Team Positioning in Broader Org

• How long has the team been around, and what is the expected longevity of the team?
• Explain the distribution of responsibilities between this team and the broader org, including but not limited to the upstream and downstream teams.
• Does the work the team is doing align with the priorities that the company has? Otherwise, how does leadership perceive the work the team is engaged in?
• Are there architecture diagrams that show the systems the team owns and their dependencies?

Team Culture

• Is the team adequately staffed to meet its goals? If not, what is the hiring strategy?
• How is the team distributed by seniority and tenure at the company?
• Does the team support remote work?
• What hours and time zones does the team operate in?
• Does the team have an onboarding process? What aspects of onboarding to this team do new hires usually struggle with?
• How does the team communicate? Is there an expectation to be always available for synchronous communication (e.g., meetings/chat)?
• Does the team engage in social activities outside of work?
• When was the last time someone left the team? Could more context be shared?

Career Goals

• Are there opportunities to get mentored and/or mentor others in the team? Are there other opportunities to grow in the people and communication axes?
• How do they foresee you fitting in? What kind of seniority and leadership opportunities are available?
• If improving mentorship skills is a goal, what opportunities exist to get training?
• What are the ways in which a new person joining the team can have a high impact?
• What would expectations look like for the first 30-60-90 days?

Team Evolution

• How has the team changed over the past 6-12 months?
• When did people join and leave?
• How long has the team been around?
• How might the team change in the future?

Final Thoughts

Find the best intersection between your skills/interests and what is important for the company and get involved. Look for managers who are strategically minded and looking out for their team and their reports. Recognition is really important, and it should not be only a subsection of the team giving demos. This might be hard to assess when selecting a team, but worth considering.