Ask HN: What should you ask to understand a new team and company?
6 laura2013 4 6/2/2025, 12:29:07 AM
When joining a new company, I want to understand what’s working well and where the gaps are, from the perspective of my manager, peers, and leadership.
What are the best questions you’ve asked (or wish you had asked) to uncover:
- The team's strengths
- Weaknesses or blind spots
- Communication styles
- How decisions actually get made
- How you can help early on
- What success looks like
I’m especially interested in questions that go beyond the surface-level onboarding process and reveal real insights. I understand this takes time and the first 1:1s might not be as efficient while you get to know the team and them you.
What’s worked well for you?
The question is "what is your workday like?" The direct answer to that question isn't as important as the conversation that it starts. Ask two or three people and you'll get a good idea of how things really work there.
* Is there task specialization or expertise on the project? How is that identified or assigned?
* What certifications or other external qualifiers are important for this team/project beyond the minimum required?
* How is product quality defined in writing. How is it enforced?
* Does the team set arbitrary definitions and measures or does the team make determinations according to multiple factors? This question is deceptive. It’s almost always better to have things defined in writing, even if wrong, than to frequently defer to ad hoc qualifiers.
* If after fully onboarding I have a tremendous amount of availability where would you like to see that time invested?
* If this is a consultancy how do I identify the principal stakeholders at the client and what are their success criteria? It’s often not about making the client happy but accelerating the client towards some goal not immediately clear within the consultancy.
* What are their success criteria currently technical constraints on the team that determines velocity? Almost always this is a people problem rebranded as a technology or training problem and this question should cause panic alarms in your brain.
What's the history of this first project I've been assigned to?
Who are the most important customers, or types of customers?
What's the risk tolerance (unless you've been told Move Fast Break Things)?
Things you usually can't ask directly, but need to learn quickly:
Is this a meritocracy? If not, what other factors matter?
What types of actions are perceived as throwing a co-worker under the bus?
Is most of my job to figure out what my job is (i.e., exploring how I can contribute most effectively)?