Ask HN: How do you evaluate the culture of the dev team you're interviewing for?
It is definitely challenging to get a sense of culture fit when interviewing, and Covid has forced some rapid changes for teams that may still be adapting to &quot;temporary&quot; work from home six months later. Companies that are focused on culture fit tend to have some declared core values and a mission statement, but these aren&#x27;t always part of the ethos of the company&#x2F;team goals or recognition.<p>Interviewing is a discussion of fit for both you and the employer, so you should feel free to ask questions (and they should allow time for this in the interview process). I would try to determine how committed the interviewers are to adhering to the company&#x27;s values and mission, or if those are just words for the careers page.<p>For example: What is your company&#x27;s mission statement? Does your team have a mission statement or vision? What is your favourite company value, and why? How do your company values factor into decision making or planning? Tell me about a recent decision influenced by your company values? If good values are embedded in the company culture, I would expect some passion and examples of their influence.<p>My company tries to be strongly aligned to our core values, and we have value-specific interview questions to be transparent about how those values are applied. For example, for our &quot;Be Intellectually Honest&quot; value one of the interview discussion points might be &quot;Can you describe a time your manager took a stance or action that you didn’t agree with, and how you responded to it.&quot;. The spirit &amp; intention of this core value is that we have courage in our convictions but work hard to ensure biases or personal beliefs do not get in the way of finding the best solution. This is not a pass to use candor as an excuse to make kind or unproductive remarks.<p>I think the specific examples you&#x27;ve mentioned (video during meetings, agenda&#x2F;format for stand-ups) are more about connection and collaborative workflow than culture. I expect companies will probably have a core value that maps to collaboration, so you could ask how that value is reflected in team activities. Daily stand-ups in scrum are normally quick updates rather than social chatter: what did you work on yesterday, what are you working on today, any blockers. Ideally there will be other team activities that encourage more social interaction (share &amp; learn, beverage o&#x27; clock, etc).<p>Personally I would encourage video-on for synchronous stand-ups and sprint planning. as otherwise it is challenging to feel engaged in the discussion. However, if your team isn&#x27;t doing this you should be able to have an open conversation on why that is the case. Perhaps there is some underlying issue (video is distracting or unreliable for some) that you haven&#x27;t considered. Great company culture is owned and shaped by the employees, so you should feel empowered to help make your company culture better.