Just 3 Questions to an Awesome Programmer Job

1. Ask questions about how a manager would handle a situation. If you're not being interviewed by your direct manager (why not?), ask what the company would do. Start off simple, "I want to use a new technology that we don't already support but I believe will make a project easier/quicker/more profitable. What's your response?" and work up to harder things "We're pushing to a rapidly approaching hard release date and someone vital quits. The team is already at breaking point. There's no way we'll deliver. What do you do?"

2. Ask to see the working environment and sit down and talk with other employees of all kinds (programmers, designers, secretaries) without management present. Not for long, just 15 minutes. If they say no, it's a problem.

3. If you're expected to maintain and existing code base, ask for code examples. They often do it of you, it's only fair. Nothing in particular, just something so get an idea of the quality.

Just a few of the things I'd be more than willing to do as a manager.

3. What percentage of the developer’s time is spent in meetings versus uninterrupted coding time?

Interesting questions, but I prefer to not beat around the bush:

1. What will I be building?

2. What will you pay me?

If the answers to these 2 questions are right, I don't care that much about anything else. If they're not, nothing else matters.