devrel-interviews

Reverse Interview Questions for Developer Advocate/Technical Evangelist roles

Please, feel free to send PR!

Questions

• Which product(s) or service(s) will I evangelize?
• If there is many programming languages involve, do I need to focus on one or all of them?
• What is the enterprise’s culture?
• Is the career path about meritocracy or seniority?
• What is the team’s culture?
• Is it a junior, senior, principal, lead or manager role?
• What is the career path for that role (possibilities to grow inside the company)?
• Is it a remote job or do I need to move to a specific location? If so, is there a moving package?
• If I need to move to a specific location, do I need to go to the office?
• How the rest of the company sees the work of the evangelist team? Do they understand, and welcome such work?
• If it’s a remote role, how many people on the team are remote versus people working at the office?
• If it’s a remote role, is there any issue if I move elsewhere by myself? Where would I still be able to work for you if I move elsewhere?
• If all the members of the team are not in the same city, how often do they meet in person?
• How are you defining the role of a Technical Evangelist?
• What are the goals the team had for this fiscal year?
• What would be the perfect starting date for the new employee?
• Would you be able to wait a bit longer after the perfect starting date? If so, how long?
• Are you expecting an evangelist to work on other tasks while at conferences or to focus on the conference itself (presenting, attending presentations, networking…)?
• How much travel time compared to other tasks?
• Are you looking for a developer who will evangelize or an evangelist who has technical skills?
• What is the target market for the product or service I will evangelize?
• What is the territory I will cover?
• What is the salary range?
• If it’s a startup, is there any equity? If so, how much percentage?
• What is the salary revision process and within which percentage range?
• In addition to the salary, what are the benefits (health insurances, 401k, gym membership, cell phone & internet payments…)?
• How many weeks of vacations per year?
• If there is a bonus, what is the structure of the bonus (percentage range, and decision criteria)?
• What hardware will I get?
• Do I need to work from 8 to 5, or is it up to me to create my schedule?
• What is the management style of the actual manager?
• What is the latitude I have to achieve my assigned goals?
• How will you attest my progress toward my goals (1:1 meetings, formal reports every week or so…)?
• What are the politics on travelling (food expense limits, flying economy or premium economy…)?
• While travelling, is there any issue if I extend my stay if I pay for my travel & expense for those extra days (ex.: time off to visit new cities)?
• What is the average time an employee stay on the team or how long the actual team is working together?
• Who are the actual members on the team?
• What kinds of skills or personality would complete the actual team well?
• Is there any specific project or program I’ll be responsible off?
• Is there any latitude to bring new ideas on how to achieve the team goals or is everything set in stone?
• Is the evangelist team part of the marketing or engineering department?
• Is there a good relationship between the product team and the evangelist one?
• Is the role involving being a spokesperson with (technical) media?
• How the product or service is doing right now?
• How is the relationship with the developer community?
• Why did you approach me or accepted to make an interview with me?
• How do I stand compared to the other potential new employee?
• Is there any reorganization or management’s change in the air?
• What are you expecting from me in the first three months? In one year? In other words, how do you define success for this role?
• Are you OK with my personal style and brand (example: jeans & t-shirts)?

Todo

• Review 2014 questions (probably fix typos)
• Add categories
• Add more questions