Two questions you must ask your hiring manager before signing the offer letter

An interview is a two-way street. It is the company and hiring manager vetting you as much as you are trying to vet them.

There may be many dimensions of questions you may be interested to ask your manager - perks, company strategy, financial strength, the opportunity for growth, team members, etc, but all that is secondary.

Your future manager’s quality is arguably the most important factor in your future success and growth. Vet that by asking these two questions.

What is your vision for the team, and how far have you executed towards it?

If they cannot sell you on a vision that is exciting, get the hell out of there.

Regardless of how bad or good the actual nature of work is if a manager cannot sell their vision convincingly, it is a large red flag. The second part on how far the execution has come along will give you an idea of whether they have been able to operationalize that vision. It is ok if they have not, but have a future plan to do so with some details.

Perfect score, if they have executed part of it.

What are the traits someone needs to be successful in your team?

A manager’s role is that of a coach. You need to vet if your manager is a good coach for you to be successful.

One of the most important abilities of a coach is to identify how someone can bring out their best. Strong managers know the environment they are operating in and will provide you with pointers for that. They can describe things like being good at pivoting quickly, working towards a deadline, going deep into tech, or needing to design with short-term hacks in mind. Regardless of the specifics, them knowing this is critical.

Second, they need to know the qualities an engineer needs to have to be successful in that environment. They can describe things like good in distributed systems, data analysis, product midset, and so on.

If they give you details on both the environment and the individual abilities for success, you have found yourself a winner.

go ahead and sign the offer.