What questions to ask a tech lead at a startup?
I’m joining a late-stage startup in August. I talked to a bunch of people in the company but this upcoming chat will be my first with a tech lead. This startup’s levelling system is similar to Palantir’s - the only titles are SWE, tech lead and eng. manager.
My goal in this conversation is to better understand the company’s promo culture, the expectations of each level and how to get to tech lead. What are some questions I should ask to get a better understanding?
Are there any other topics that a tech lead is well-suited to answer that I haven't considered? If so, what are some questions I can ask?
Discussion
(5 comments)- 0
9 days agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroI think your goal, especially as what I assume is an incoming new grad, is mainly to understand the codebase better so you can hit the ground running. Here's some questions I would ask:
- What are the main components within the codebase and how do they interact with each other?
- Can you give me some examples of high-quality PRs I can model mine off of?
- What are the most common mistakes you see from engineers when modifying the codebase?
- At a high level, what are the biggest problems and weaknesses of the codebase right now?
- If I want to share a technical plan with the team, what's the best way to do so?
After you get answers to all those, you can ask about things like promotion culture and what it takes to become a TL, but I wouldn't worry about those for 2-3 months at least. Onboarding comes first.
- 0
9 days agoSoftware Engineering InternTaro CommunityThanks for the answers, and I realized that I didn't go as deep into onboarding as much as I should in my previous conversations.
I should've been clearer regarding my situation. This isn't the tech lead on my team specifically. In fact they're a tech lead working on a separate product. I sent them a coffee chat email a while ago (like 3 months ago) and they only agreed to meet now.
So I'm guessing (1) and (4) wouldn't be as applicable to me since those questions address low level codebase details tied to a specific product?
For (2), they probably wouldn't be willing to share internal company PRs with me, so what would be an alternative?
- 09 days agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
This isn't the tech lead on my team specifically.
Ooooh, this is more of a general networking call then. You can zoom out to higher-level and ask about the engineering culture overall.
Some other standard questions:
- Is there anything I can help you with?
- What are your favorite and least favorite things about working here?
Least favorite is more important as it ideally exposes a problem you can help fix or at least empathize with.
- 19 days agoSoftware Engineering InternTaro Community
Got it. I asked the "least favorite thing" question to everyone else and pretty much everyone says bad WLB, which is expected of any growing startup. I don't think I can do much in this department.
Regarding the questions on engineering culture - what questions should I ask here? I remember a course on Taro recommends things like:
- Does the team strive to write high-quality, scalable code?
- Are pull requests well-documented and tested?
Are there any more you suggest?
- 19 days agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
Are there any more you suggest?
How can the engineering culture be improved? 😄
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