I found out that the roles and responsibilities of software engineer positions at two companies weren't what I had expected. So I think the following list of questions may help clear up some doubts or confusion about a company and/or a project before you decide to join. It also would help a candidate if he/she can think about what he/she needs.
Development Environment:
- Is the build system automated, if yes to how much?
- Is there a nightly build and test system in place?
- Do developers write tests (unit) to test their code?
- Is there a best coding practice guide in place?
- Is there a development process (requirements gathering, designing, implementation, testing, etc) in place, if yes what it is?
- What collaboration tools (IM, Wiki, Mail, etc) are being used?
- Is there a central place to store project documents (not necessarily word documents) and easily accessible by everyone in the company?
- How is project status gathered and published?
- What's the project manager's style of managing projects and people?
- What's the background of project manager?
- How is the change managed? For example, bug fixes in the version V1 and developing new features for version V2 of a product.
- Who takes care of a customer and how, customer problems and bugs in a product?
- Does manager has development background and does manager aware of latest technologies?
- Is the organization agile and adapts easily to changes?
- Does the organization provide an environment for creativity and innovation?
- What kind of office environment (open, cubicle, office, etc) does the organization provide?
- Is the project solving significant problems, possibly using innovative/creative ways?
- What's a typical release cycle?
Conclusion:
The above list may help you assess the potential of a job, I think the right way of finding out if a job is suitable for you and you're a suitable candidate for a job is to date a job for 3 months or so.
