Assessing Organizations
These are the questions I draw from evaluating a potential employer or consulting engagement.
Basics
- How do you measure success?
- How big is the whole organization? How is it structured?
- How big is the engineering organization? How are the teams organized?
- What is your market? Who are the big players in this space?
- What challenges are you facing now?
- What moat do you have around your competitive advantage?
- What virtuous cycles have you put in place?
Functional
- What is your product design process?
- How do you develop and execute strategy?
- What is the structure of your technical leadership?
- What behaviors do you encourage?
- How do you measure software delivery performance?
- What do you do to ensure software quality?
- What are your internal and external change management processes?
- How do you communicate about objectives, status, and priority?
- What is your performance management process?
- How do you encourage continuous learning and improvement?
- What do you do to ensure the success of your junior team members?
- When does the company get together, face-to-face, and how do you make the most of that time?
Financials
- Are you profitable? If not, what is your path to profitability?
- What drives revenue growth?
- How big is the market for your current products?
- How do you control marginal costs?
- If you accepted external investment to drive growth, what is your burn rate?
- Do you give employees equity? If so, what are the details?